In 1965 I was hired as an audio man at WRVA TV (now WWBT), Channel 12, in Richmond. The current evening shift audio man was in the National Guard and was soon scheduled to leave for his active-duty training. The station was looking for someone with audio training…I had been in radio for years…who was available to step in immediately. Actually, I was a transfer from WRVA Radio, where I had been hired in the news department but hadn’t actually started work. (This created some hostility between the program managers at the two facilities but since they were owned by the same company, it quickly smoothed over.)
One winter evening, in ’66, when a heavy snow fall was predicted, the GM requested the evening crew remain on site over-night to sign on the next morning if the day crew couldn’t make it in. Back then, TV signed off just after midnight and returned to the air at 6 the next morning. This gave engineering time to run equipment tests that couldn’t be done with an audience watching.
I set up a bed roll…which I had gotten on a quick run home between newscasts…on the floor of the conference room. It had the thickest rug. Four inches I thick.
And then it snowed. And snowed. And snowed…one Richmond’s heaviest snowfalls, 33 and a half inches. Everything was shut down. A couple of the engineers put chains on the former Nolde’s bread truck’s tandem wheels…the one normally used for remotes (see earlier posts) and started picking up stranded employees. I was awakened at 5 AM and ran the audio board the rest of the day.
The scheduled morning production was a commercial for Pepsi Cola. The producer with the script was unable to make it to the station, but a Pepsi commercial had to be made since it was scheduled to be aired later in the day. The commercial was about a two for one sale…buy one 6 pack, get the second free. Gerald, the director came up with the idea of opening the studio door to the outside, put two 6 packs in the snow and shoot each with a separate camera.
The cameras would be lined up with one 6 pack exactly covering the other so that even though both cameras were live at the same time, it looked like one 6 pack. Then at the spot in the commercial promoting the 2 for 1, one camera would pan right, raveling two 6 packs. Today this would be easy. In 1965 we only had a single re-entry mechanical switcher. Which means you couldn’t do what was described above.
Unless…and Gerald was a genius at coming up with ideas like this…you physically held down two buttons on one row on the switcher…. which put both cameras on the air at the same time, then dissolved to a slide promoting the two-for-one sale. (My job was to move the dissolve lever since both of Gerald’s hands were tied up on another switcher row holding down two buttons).
It was a great spot. The client loved it. The production manager loved it. The chief engineer, not so much. Sandy didn’t like us using his equipment in a manner for which it wasn’t designed. Oh well. And the next day I got to go home to a shower. -dm