Yesterday I wrote an article about the collection of videotapes housing all the news coverage of WTVH-TV.  The Channel 5 building is all but cleared out and I don’t know if the tapes are still there, or stored some other place.

As the longest-tenured member of the newsroom, former Chief Editor John Ellis knew those tapes best.  I asked him for his thoughts on that treasure trove of Syracuse history.   With his permission, here are the words he Emailed to me:

You can barely see him; John Ellis stands in the top row, second from the left

Whether they like it or not, TV News operations wind up being the keepers of local history. In their archives rest not only the record of important people and events, but a scrapbook of the mundane things that make up modern life.

As the task of historian is not listed in the statement of goals or the business plan, keeping track of these things is, at best, a sometime thing.  This is understandable, if regrettable.

I first got involved in this process because I was the new kid.  In the days of film, it was the new kids’ responsibility to keep track of the hundreds of little reels of film that made up the newscasts.  I usually went in to the station on a Sunday night, filled out my time card, then gathered up all the film from the previous week’s shows.    I sorted them out and spliced them all back together so there was one reel of film for each show.

You must remember that in film days if you needed film from a previous story, you had to physically find the film, remove it from the past show, then edit it into the new story.  This made my job very important. I had to keep track of where the footage was last used so it could quickly be retrieved for the new story.   If it was a continuing story that lasted weeks (or months!) you couldn’t waste time searching.

By the end of the film era we had shelves in the edit room that held three years worth of old shows.  How to find a story?  Each day the newsroom assistant filled out a 3X5 index card with the titles of each story on it.  You had to manually go through those cards, find the card with that story, then go find the film reel for that day, then wind through the film and hope to find the story you were looking for.  If it had been pulled for another story it was back to the index cards and try again.  My detective skills were honed with this cumbersome system.

With the advent of videotape, the job did not become  easier, just different.  In the first place, it was almost a year before we were totally video, so now we had to keep track of video as well as film.  Initially, it was the job of Dennis Jones, our designated video editor, in consultation with Andy Brigham, to decide which of the previous day’s video stories would be archived.  This arrangement didn’t last long.

Soon we began saving all video stories.  In those days, unlike the system adopted later where there were show tapes that would be filled up, then retired, each show tape was dubbed onto an archive tape, then erased and re-blacked each day.  It took hours!  By this time Dennis had left us for CBS and the Video Editor position had been eliminated.

I inherited this task as well as all the other things I had to do as Chief Photographer.  Now, photogs had to edit all their own stuff.  Finally we came up with the system of using show tapes only once, then retiring them.  Each tape was numbered and that number was written on the rundowns for each show, and the rundowns went into large 3-ring binders.

So now we searched through the rundowns to find the tape number and retrieved the footage that way.  Well and good, except that video tape can be reused.

During one of the recessions of the late ’70s, it was decreed that in order to cut costs, we would re-use the archive tapes!  By the time this order was rescinded we had lost forever everything on video from July 1976 to early 1978.  A year and a half of history- gone!  Everything we had of Al Roker, for example, was destroyed.  Al had in fact been the very first video story we ever aired.

When I became Chief Editor in August of ’88, The job of quasi-historian became mine permanently.  It became a little easier once we had computers to refer to.  I could type in a key word and receive a list of shows and numbers to refer to.  But I still had to find the tape!  It was still a detective story.  Take into account the physical size of the operation.  I had to find places to store 600 or so tapes a year.  And that was just the show tapes.  We had hundreds of other tapes besides the show tapes.  We saved many shooting tapes from important stories and “stock” tapes of footage from places we knew we would have trouble getting into again, such as factories, military installations, schools, jails; places that could keep us out if we wanted to do a story not to their liking.    All these tapes added up.

By the time I left TV-5 we had in the archives between 10 and 15 thousand tapes!  Not to mention 25 years worth of film!  That’s a lot of tonnage.    I spent a lot of time going through all that film and tape for various special projects.  As an example, PBS in Washington asked for film from the Robert Garrow case for a special on legal ethics.  We had owned that story when it transpired.  I was able to go through our archives and offer them over four hours of film.  It formed the backbone of the special.  I was able to dig up a lot of film and tape for the Alexander case, back to footage of him as a brand-new candidate for city council and his first inauguration as mayor.

And, morbid as it sounds, I used to keep “obit” reels of people of local interest.  They came in handy when (police chief) Tom Sardino and (Onondaga County Executive) John Mulroy passed.  I was also able to track down local visits of national and international people.  The night Princess Diana died, we were able to track down the visit she and Charles had made to Kingston, Ontario in time for the 11.

Every year for a dozen years or so, I put together a reel of significant stories from the past year for the Syracuse Press Club to donate to the Onondaga County Public Library to add to their local history collection.  In the cause of full disclosure, Channels 3 and 9 also submitted tapes.

A sidebar:  Besides all the film and tapes that were up in the attic, I found a cabinet drawer that contained all the airchecks from WHEN Radio for the entire four days of the Kennedy Assassination. Unbelievable treasure!  I was able to give Ron Curtis Jr. a cassette of his father doing a downtown MOS (man on the street interview) from Nov. 23, 1963. Along with the air checks  I found that someone had saved every foot of Associated Press wire copy from the moment Kennedy was pronounced dead until he was buried.  Astounding treasure.

One day many years later we ran a story about an auction at Sotheby’s where eight feet of AP wire copy from that day had been auctioned off for something like 15, 000 dollars.  I took the wire copy home and measured it.  We had something over 900 feet of priceless history.   I wrote a memo to the Chief Engineer explaining that at that rate we had nearly a million dollars worth of paper in the archives.  That got their attention!  The wire copy went into the safe the next day.

It can get personal: One day in 1990 I was flipping through the file cards for December 1970.   I read one card and froze. The story slug read: “The parents of SP4 Steven Haight receive his posthumous medals.”  Steve Haight had been my roommate for a time at Manlius.  He was in my class.  We had been in the same company.  And I hadn’t known that he had been missing and declared dead in Vietnam for 20 years!

So what now?  I have no idea what might have happened to all this carefully preserved history.  One big problem is that the stories are on four or five different formats: 16MM film, 3/4 inch VHS, 1/2 inch BETA, 1/8 inch DVC-PRO, and whatever they have been using recently.  The stories are there, but there is no way to retrieve them. All that history and no way to access it. That is the real tragedy.

John Ellis is now retired and enjoying travel with his family.  Thank you for your fascinating story, John.

Long before I began this blog, WSTM-TV anchor Matt Mulcahy started his.   His article about my dismissal from WTVH-TV where we had anchored together for six terrific years was about the most gracious thing anyone has ever done for me.

I saw Matt and dozens of the most wonderful faces representing decades of employment at TV5 at Riley’s Pub on Syracuse’s northside last night.  For it’s proximity to channels 3 and 5, Riley’s is the “Cheers” of Syracuse television, the most convenient and comfortable place to slug down a beer and a piece of pizza after work.

I have no idea of the actual head count, I never got in the building.  The party out the back door in the parking lot was a blast all by itself.  Never had the pizza, never even got a drink and my friends should be thankful for that because I would have spilled everything down everyone I spent all night hugging.

The only time photojournalists were included in the State Fair postcard

Matt dropped this off in the comment section this morning, but I would love to post it as an article, because there is no description of last night that I could write as well.   Matt, I don’t think you’ll mind, as I kept in your plug for channel 3 at the bottom.  One of us has to keep working to support this group!  Here goes:

RILEY’S REUNION

The din of small talk, clinking glasses and wait staff excusing themselves through the shoulder to shoulder crowd laid the rhythm track for a rapid succession of conversation. One after another familiar faces stepped through the line past the antique bar and deep wood panels of the great Syracuse neighborhood institution Riley’s. Those of us who found a treasured space held our ground and greeted the newcomers as if we were in a reception line. It wasn’t a wedding reception, but more of an Irish wake. A toast to Syracuse’s first television station WTVH Channel 5.

By now you know the story of pending shutdown of the building at 980 James Street. This gathering was not about the building, but rather the blood, sweat and tears of the people who made it run. It was only fitting that longtime producer Lou Gulino organized the gathering. He started thinking he might get ten or twelve old timers together to share war stories of carrying the camera and sticks, of chronicling local history, of laughing at what went wrong on the air and behind the scenes. He didn’t get just ten or twelve… the count pushed over fifty.

The group was intergenerational and interdepartmental. Broadcasters with a Channel 5 past reached back to the 1970’s, 80’s, and 90’s. The group from this decade was able to match some faces with the stories they may have heard about past glories and mistakes. There were engineers and directors, reporters and anchors, producers and photographers. There were more gray hairs than their used to be, more pronounced crows feet and maybe an extra pound here or there, but the personalities were the same. They came to life recalling the late night shifts, the hours spent in news cars and the uncontrollable laughs that should not have made air.

Mo Green, Lou Gulino, Terri Peters. Wake up Lou, it's Rip Time

Lizzie Ayers hugged everyone…twice. Maureen Green’s familiar smile beamed. Bob Kirk, Dave Bullard, Rich Isome, Tom Hauf, Donna Adamo, Scott Atkinson, Randy Wenner, Terri Peters and Bill Carey are some of the other names you know, but hardly an inclusive list of people who energized the reunion or who once produced the news. Those people include Jay Labarre, Dan Roach, John Duffy, Joe Picciotto, Pete Peters, Don Rugg, Bryan Honeywell, Greg Turner, Kevin Rinaldo and Butch Charles. Others like Steve and Molly Herwood, Katie Kramer, Dan Young, Rob Jason, Loren Tobia, Jodi Milewitz and Peter Spartano. My apologies for the rest of the names that escape me as I prepare to post.

Randy Wenner wears his memorabilia proudly. All year long.

There were so many names and faces the crowd squeezed out the back door into the remarkably warm late winter air. That catching up continued on the edge of that ten space parking lot. Kids, careers and everything else needed updating. It was the stories that made the night sing. They could hardly be interrupted long enough for a string of digital group photos taken from the back stoop that leads to that lot.

It was a rare television gathering where the crowd grew before the news was off the air for the day. This group is no longer running on that schedule. The old days at Riley’s were a different story. The Election Nights, the stories around the long table in back, the pitchers of beer and lunches where plans were hatched. Tonight it seemed fitting a notepad passed around with a pen. Journalists scribbled names, numbers and e-mails the points of contact that help keep groups together. For this group the bond remains even when apart, they comprise the last ones to work at the first television station in the City of Syracuse.

You can always read the blog on CNYcentral.com.

Thanks for another masterpiece Matt. And if anyone has other photos to share, please let me know.  Would you like to start a blog of your own?   Contact Dick at richhill58@gmail.com. And I see the New York Daily News online picked up Matt’s article.  Way to go Matt!

In nearly three decades in the public eye in Syracuse, half the people predicted recognition was a blessing for me and half thought it a curse.  They were both right with a nod toward the blessing.   I moved from New England to Central New York to attend the Newhouse School at Syracuse University in 1980.  Once I put myself with all my inexperienced glory in front of an audience, I knew I was inviting criticism.  I thought a trip to the grocery store would have shoppers judging me as a neophyte who had more nerve than talent, trying a career at TV.  I  was so wrong.  The audience was more than supportive and kind in those early days.

The early days evolved into months and then years and eventually decades, and the perks of working in the public eye grew along with the resume.    I never took it for granted, and certainly I never counted on it, but more than once this procrastinator failed to make a restaurant reservation in time and ended up in front of the maitre ‘d at seven o’clock on a Saturday night, asking if there was a table available.  I don’t recall ever being told the answer was no.

I was also pretty sloppy with my store receipts.  I won’t name names for fear of getting the manager in trouble, but a certain favorite discount department store took back many an item it was not supposed to because I no longer had proof of purchase.

I believe it speaks to the issue of trust.  I think the restaurant workers, the store clerks and others cut me a little slack because they trusted me not to rip them off.   And I’m not the only one.  All the Syracuse TV veterans are treated in this kindly manner.  It’s a terrific town in that way.  Businesses think we watch over the community and they thank us with these favors, big and small.   Now retired from the news business, I’m still charmed by the thought of it.

There is one measure of local fame I did not like much at all.   Sitting in a doctor’s office, waiting for an appointment, I know I’d take a second glance if some politician or college athlete entered the room and I sensed plenty of people watching me too.  But I settled in each time and buried my head in a magazine, quietly waiting my turn.  And it was pleasant and relaxing and quite peaceful in there, until the nurse entered the room and shouted “Maureen Green”!   Like woodchucks poking their heads out of the field, yikes, all eyes rose to watch me go.

I don’t know why that bothered me so much.  I’d done nothing wrong to be there.  Often I wasn’t even sick.  I was just getting a check-up.  But that icky, exposed feeling never seemed right to me, and it was the one time I wished I’d had a pen name. Or maybe I should have just counted my blessings,  remembering even then  how well I was treated everywhere I went, before heading to the restaurant where I still didn’t have a reservation.

Sometimes the news is darn depressing.  And it doesn’t have to be a gigantic event like the World Trade Center attack or the Christmas Tsunami to bring on despair.  It can be the report about the family pet who died outside the burning home even after firefighters fashioned some sort of mouth-to-snout resuscitation.  Or the elderly man who wandered away from his home and was found frozen to death in the woods just beyond his back yard.   Sad tale upon sad tale, every night on the TV news.

You’d think it would drive the news staff crazy to be subjected to this as a line of work, but it’s really the opposite.  I’m living proof that news anchors and reporters really are crazy, but in this way, they’re the sanest people around and we can all learn something by their example.

As anchor of the evening news on WTVH-TV in Syracuse, New York for nearly three decades, audience members  often asked me if I got depressed reporting so much sadness and crime every night.  The answer was no.  I had therapists all around me in the form of other anchors.

Once the commercial hit, we started started talking about everything that wasn’t the news.  Sometimes it was our plan for the dinner hour, but many times, it was about what we had just watched on the program.  We talked and we shared.  Sometimes we got momentarily weepy, often we were outraged, but we always got it out.

We did the weather segment, and then the sports segment, but as those commercials kept coming  so did our feelings.  By the time we got home to our families we were all talked out.  No more anger and grief.  Our feelings were in their rightful place, the guy next to us.

Seriously, you can’t get stuck with something if people take it from you, and in that way my news colleagues were my therapists, and I like to believe I was theirs.  We took the stress away from each other. I used to be surprised my non-news industry friends so often felt blue about the news and now I know why.  Without the benefit of the other anchor and the meteorologist and the sports guy, the news can really get to you.

So if you feel down about what’s happening in the world, and you can’t find a news anchor, or a weatherman or a sports guy, pick up the phone and call a friend.  Tell them what you just saw and heard.  They’ll take it from you.  And if you do it quickly, you’ll still have time to catch the last story of the newscast, the one about the water-skiing squirrel in Iowa.