Mornings With Barney (4 page)

I don't recall exactly why QUBE took a chance with me, but I think that, like my teaching job, I was the beneficiary of being at the right place at the right time . . . when the people in charge were desperate.

Columbus Alive
reached only a small audience, but because the technology was unique, so state of the art, it was not uncommon for reporters from all over the world to be in the control room watching the show. I became a master at what was called a PQ, also known as an interactive question. “Do you think gays should be allowed to teach school?” I asked the audience during a related debate. Then I would proclaim: “touch now,” which meant the home viewer could push the appropriate button and register his opinion. Once, during a particularly boring interview, I polled the audience, asking if it was time to excuse my guest and go on to the next portion of the show. The viewers voted. The guest was soon history. And I made a little history. Had something like this ever happened before on a television show? I'm sure not.

One of my first guests on the evening show was Jack Hanna, director of the Columbus Zoo and now a regular with Larry King and David Letterman. So nervous was Hanna on his first TV interview that when I asked him whether the snake he had wrapped around my neck was poisonous, he just stared at me blankly. During the pause, my eyes widened in mock fear. Timing is everything. The crew broke into laughter. I told Jack after the show, “That's a funny bit. Just pretend you're not really that informed about the animals ... be a little surprised by what they do.” Almost thirty years later, Jack is still doing that very act. Is Jack pretending he's clueless or is he acting? You're never sure. That's what makes Jack Hanna so much fun to watch.

The show was like my classroom. There was no live audience, but I often imagined there was a roomful of kids in front of me. It worked. In fact, it worked so well, I became the first cable talk-show host to win a regional Emmy.

We wanted kids, but not quite yet. How about a dog? Enter Sabra, a terrier mix from the Humane Society. She was our first dog together and soon became the central focus in our lives.

Sabra must have always wanted to be a mother because after being spayed, she would steal socks out of our laundry hamper, distribute them on the floor, and guard them as if they were her puppies. If we approached her, she snarled. Socks only a mother could love.

Sabra did fill a void in our lives. We were past twenty-somethings, but an immediate plunge into parenthood did not seem advised given the uncertainty of the TV business. Caring for a dog might give us a little confidence that we could be good “parents,” or at least provide some comfort we could move on to the next level of parenting.

In 1980, I received an Emmy Award for Best Talk Show Host in a three-state region of the Midwest. This was the first time in history that the prize had gone to a cable host, as opposed to someone in traditional broadcast TV.

Within weeks, a Boston network affiliate offered me a job as a late-night host, moving me from the tiny Columbus market to the number-five station in the country. While Mary Ellen was off to Bean City searching for an apartment, another call from Burt. “Dick, WABC in New York just called me. They want you to audition for their morning show.”

This program, along with its counterpart in L.A., was the number-one local morning show in the country. As a New Yorker, I knew the time slot had a history of turnover after the exit of host Stanley Siegel, a certified neurotic who had left television, probably for long-term therapy. He was a therapist himself, so he probably spent the next few years just talking to . . . well, himself.

Dozens of hosts from around the country had tried out for the gig. But the spot was still vacant.

Incredibly, I was not the least bit nervous during the live on-air audition. I had a firm job offer in Boston, and I was getting the hang of this talk-show thing. And what did I have to lose?

My first guest that morning, a flamboyant fashion designer from Manhattan, was demonstrating the proper beachwear for the summer. He placed a huge sombrero on his own head and said, “No sun will ever touch me.” I did a take to the audience, then: “No son of mine, I'll tell you that.” Laughter and applause from the spectators and crew. But it was better than that. My mother loved it, too.

The next day I was offered the job on
Good Morning, New York
. My salary was five times what I made in Columbus. But something didn't seem right. And for the next six months nothing was right. My career in the Big Apple was brief, less than a year. Big stars like Woody Allen, Mickey Rooney, James Mason, and Louis Armstrong sat across from me promoting their books and movies. But overall, it was a painful experience. Lots of politics and backstabbing. And not the TV market where they give you much time to
grow
into the job.

Memories of those years have faded, but there were two people I met who I will never forget. They, along with Art Buchwald, shaped my developing sense of how to connect with people. And how to make them laugh.

I had watched Steve Allen on TV in the '50s. When my parents were glued to CBS at 8 PM on Sunday nights watching Ed Sullivan, I took the hipper option and retreated to the basement to watch Steve Allen on ABC. Steve was
The Tonight Show
's first host and the inventor of late-night TV talk shows. Many of the routines we are so familiar with today, from Johnny Carson's Carnac to Jay Leno's man-on-the-street interviews, were Steve Allen's creations.

Steve would smear his body with dog food and unleash a pack of assorted dogs. He strapped a kite to his back and ran into a huge fan. Mr. Allen put a live camera on the corner of Hollywood and Vine and commented on the people who walked by. Sound familiar? Carson, Letterman, and Leno have all copied it in one form or another.

I first met Mr. Allen during an interview on
Good Morning, New York
. We were talking about the great comic actor Stan Laurel. “Where can you find people of that ilk anymore?” asked Mr. Allen. “You could join the Ilks Club,” I said. It was a Steve Allen kind of joke. And we both knew it. He laughed. Yes, I had made Steve Allen laugh.

If there was anyone sillier than Steve Allen, it was Soupy Sales. As a twelve-year-old, I was glued to the TV while Soupy sparred with his off-camera puppet friends: White Fang, “the meanest dog in the U.S.A.,” and Black Tooth, “the sweetest dog in the world.” Only the paws of these puppets were shown, and White Fang did little more than grunt. Soupy would then translate the incomprehensible sounds. I had the opportunity to work with Soupy Sales for a week while at WABC. It almost made the gig worthwhile. Almost.

Six months after I started in New York, I was done. My cohost didn't like me. The producer didn't like my style. The general manager, I discovered, didn't know who the hell I was. He had been in Europe when his station manager hired me. I knew things had been too easy. I was toast. The meeting with the station manager was short and ugly. “I'm afraid you're not quite what we are looking for, but we wish you the best of luck.”

All of a sudden that $1,100-a-month apartment on Third Avenue didn't seem like such a good deal. I spent Tuesdays in the unemployment line, often signing autographs for people who thought I was doing some kind of news story. I tried to find freelance work doing commercials, but I was so bad at it that I auditioned to play a talk-show host in a beer ad, and I wasn't even good enough for a second audition.

Mary Ellen had a good job as a marketing director at one of the local hospitals. The first six weeks, we lived in the Essex House near Central Park until we found an apartment. Everything was courtesy of WABC, including meals. A dream come true. My wife compared herself to Eloise, the little girl in Kay Thompson's 1950s children's book, who lived at the Plaza Hotel and endlessly roamed the hotel in search of adventure. Why not take it easy for a while and enjoy the Big Apple? We had not anticipated how rotten things would get.

Mary Ellen and I moved back home to my mother and father's house in New Rochelle, just a mile from New Rochelle High School, where I once held the world's most secure job. I bartended for a few months and Mary Ellen, America's best-looking MBA, took part-time work as a Kelly Girl temp at six bucks an hour. Two months earlier I had been picked up in a limo to get to work. Now I had no idea what we were going to do. I was thirty-five years old, newly married, and living at home with Mom and Dad.

After I left WABC, another entourage of hapless hosts tried to make the cut, rarely lasting more than a few weeks. Within a year, WABC finally hired my permanent replacement, a guy named Regis Philbin, who was then in L.A. doing a similar show. People tell me he's done okay.

In August of '81, I responded to an ad in
Broadcasting Magazine.
The local CBS affiliate in Indianapolis needed male and female hosts for a new show. At the time, Indy was more the butt of jokes than a mecca for media, but I was in no position to be choosy.

For the audition, I had been paired by pure chance with a midwestern gal who had been on the radio in Dayton, Ohio. Patty Spitler was a feisty, quick-witted blonde. The chemistry between us was evident to everyone. The next day the general manager called the two of us into his office and offered us the job. Then this:

“Dick, this may be the dumbest decision I have ever made.”

I had heard this before. That was the kind of insightful thinking that had gotten me my high school teaching job.

“Our viewers will not like you at first. You're too New York. This is Indiana. But the show needs an edge. I think you will grow on people.” Nice—he made me sound like some kind of fungus. But at least I had a job. Like most mushrooms, I lasted little more than a season.

In a cost-cutting move,
Indianapolis Afternoon
was dumped. Now I had been canned twice in two years. When most TV personalities lose a job they split to another TV market. You look like damaged goods. But Mary Ellen had a good job. As for me? Writing, teaching, bartending? Something would come up . . . wouldn't it?

WPDS was a new independent station. Maybe there was something there. I marched myself over there after managing to wrangle a meeting with the GM, whom I convinced to let me create a late-night show, not unlike the one I had been offered in Boston, to feature what I called fringe people, locals who didn't usually get much air time because of their out-of the-mainstream lifestyle and beliefs.

It was quite a ride for over a year. I interviewed Holocaust deniers, professional wrestlers, and the KKK. Pornographers, transsexuals, transvestites, gay teens, prostitutes, they all appeared on
Night Talk
. But the show aired only once a week. Lots of mayhem. No money.

It was time for action. The $10 million project to refurbish the old downtown Indianapolis Union Station as a festival marketplace was about six months from completion. I looked at the building and realized it would be a perfect place for a morning TV show, something Indy had not had in several years. Something I hadn't had in a few years myself.

Using a little New York chutzpah, I managed to convince both the local TV affiliate and the Union Station developer that the idea had merit. Incredibly, they agreed. I would be host and producer of this morning TV show.

AM Indiana
held its own for almost five years—quite a long run in the talk business. But it was a bad time to be in the talk business on a local station. After five years, the combined competition of Oprah and Phil Donahue, airing at the same time on different stations, buried us. I ended up with more awards than viewers. Out of work again. I was getting good at this—losing my job, that is.

What was I doing wrong? Why did every TV position I ever had start with a bang and end with a whimper? I didn't know it then, but my career breakthrough was six months away. This time it would
begin
with a whimper.

There were only two kinds of meetings
I had ever had with a general manager: the kind where I got the job and the kind where I lost one. So it will come as no surprise that I was a bit nervous when I was called into General Manager Paul Karpowicz's office. I didn't bring Barney with me, although Paul was such a nice guy that I thought it would have been hard for him to look into the beagle's deep brown eyes and tell him his career was over already. Of course, I had a fair amount of experience in this area, so I prepared for the worst.

“Sit down, Dick.”
Always a bad sign,
I thought. “Did you think that was funny the way the dog urinated on the TV monitor?” he asked sternly.

Paul's question was an awfully good one. I did think it was funny . . . but did he? He didn't ask me if I thought he thought it was funny. He asked me what I thought was funny. Now I was so flustered I opted for something against my better judgment: the truth.

“Paul, I thought it was the funniest thing I've ever seen.” I held my breath.

“So did I, Wolfsie, so did I. The dog will be a great addition to the morning news.”

“Even though he peed on a TV in front of all our viewers?”

“If the ratings go up, he can take a dump in my office.”

Two weeks later, that's exactly what Barney did—right next to Paul's prized ficus plant, after a station meeting.

At that point, Barney and I were on Paul's good list. But it hadn't always been that way. When I was originally hired as the morning reporter, it was, I later discovered, not without some clear reservations on his part. My short list of potential news stories had included segments on how the corned beef was delivered each morning to Shapiro's, the local eatery that had a reputation for being as close to New York (and heaven) as any delicatessen in Indiana. I also included a possible segment where I would sit in on a conversation with a small group of Jewish men, including several Holocaust survivors, who for thirty years had huddled at the deli every morning at 6 AM to kibbitz about the world while they gobbled lox and bagels. Oh, and it would be cool to show how they make bagels. Oy, what a mistake.

When Karpowicz saw the list, he told news director Lee Giles that he was concerned that I was obsessed with Jewish things. He wondered if I would be able to expand my horizons and find other kinds of segments. He had a point. The Jewish population was not exactly a big demographic in Indiana. I submitted a new list that was more ecumenical, and I ultimately got the job. And, with Barney and a little luck, I would keep it.

Months after that incident in Paul's office, Barney had what you might call an encore performance. I did a
Daybreak
segment just outside the PR firm Caldwell Van Riper on Meridian Street in Indianapolis. We were highlighting a sports mural that had been painted on the side of their building, showcasing the Indiana Pacers.

Right next door to Caldwell Van Riper is WRTV Channel 6, the ABC affiliate, one of Channel 8's rival stations. Normally, I'd do everything possible to prevent their sign and logo from being seen on our program. But as the live shoot began, I noticed that Barney had roamed away from me and was sniffing along the grounds of the Channel 6 property.

What I saw next required an immediate journalistic decision, a judgment call that put into play all of my experience as a broadcast professional. Should I tell Carl Finchum, my new photographer, to pan over to the Channel 6 lawn and get a shot of Barney? Sure. Why not? “Carl,” I said on camera, “show the viewers what Barney thinks of the competition.”

The camera panned . . . and . . . you guessed it: tens of thousands of loyal Channel 8 viewers watched as my lovable beagle squatted next to the Channel 6 sign and left a substantial reminder of his visit. Man, talk about product placement!

“How'd you get him to do that?” people asked me the next day.

“We've been practicing for weeks,” I said.

And I think some people believed me.