Threads: Total Communications
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Letters
written by me, updated September 2003 |
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Background: My third job in the television industry began in the fall of 1980, when I began working for my third local origination cable operation, in New Kensington, Pennsylvania. Unlike my two previous jobs, this TV3 was not operated directly by the cable TV system. Instead, it was operated by a separate company, Total Communication Systems (TCS), which had a number of other interests including two local radio stations and a syndicated TV sports series. These other properties would eventually offer me opportunities to move into a new phase of my career. My letters and memos from the TCS years make a rather lengthy article, so I've broken it into four quarters. Highlights include: |
Start
of 1st Quarter . . .
Monday, January 24, 1983
To
my TV3 duties have been added others with TCS Productions, another
division of our company which produces sports for broadcast (not
cable) television. My specialty has become "electronic graphics."
Using a Chyron or Vidifont character generator, I type the scoreboards and statistical notes and promos that appear on the screen. This can become very hectic. For example, in basketball I might need to call up within a few seconds
JOHN
DOE
3rd
Personal Foul
JIM
SMITH
Shooting
One and One
JIM
SMITH
3
for 4 from Line
and, after Smith makes the free throw, the new score. There are some tricks to increase one's efficiency at this, and learning them is part of the challenge.
For basketball, to conserve Vidifont addresses I interleaved the two teams, listing in numerical order WVU players in blue and Pitt players in red. If both teams had a player with the same number, I gave the Pitt player an alias number (the left column).
Then I could record the scoring average graphics, for example, at 603 for Pitt #4 Bryan Mitchell and at 604 for WVU #4 Vernon Odom.
My
address chart for the West Virginia at
Pittsburgh
basketball game, January 15, 1983
Credits
for
Penn
State
Football
Show,
September
16, 1983
Executive
Producer
NELSON
L. GOLDBERG
Coordinating
Producer
THOMAS
V.
HUET
Technical
Supervisor
JOE
STOVCSIK
Production
Coordinator
CAROL
ADAMEK
Producer/Director
THOMAS
V. HUET
Associate
Producer
THOMAS
J. CLARK
Assistant
Director
TED
BEAM
Engineer
in Charge
MARK
BROOKS
Technical
Director
MIKE
KOBIK
Video
ROY
OTAKE
Audio
JAN
STIEF
Editor
KEN
GARDNER
Tape
DAVE
ECKENROTH
Cameras
GREG
BOWSER
TIM
SWARTZ
BARRY
CARNEY
BOB
McBRIDE
ALAN
MURPHY
Audio
Assistants
JOE
SEBAK
DAVID
PATERNO
GREG
SILVER
Electronic
Graphics
TOM
THOMAS
Statistics
CHARLIE
FISHER
Spotter
RON
RICKENS
Associate
Producer
TAMI
RIPPY
Associate
Producer
ROB
GROSSMAN
Remote
Facilities
Supplied
By
CLARION
REMOTE TELEVISION
Chicago,
Illinois
Remote
and
Technical
Facilities
Supplied
By
TCS
PRODUCTIONS,
New
Kensingon, Pa.
This
has been
an
exclusive
TCS
SPORTS
presentation
There's also travel. After working half a dozen Pittsburgh Pirate baseball games last summer, I went to nine of the eleven college football games of the eventual national champions, Penn State. (TCS produces a weekly PSU highlights show.) This included away games at West Virginia, Boston College — a beautiful place to visit in October — and Notre Dame. Each was a 48-hour escape from Western Pennsylvania. And in December, I returned to my other alma mater to work the Ohio State at Syracuse basketball game from the Carrier Dome. So the hours have been long, but it's been a lot of fun.
Monday, June 6, 1983
About half my work this summer is with the Pittsburgh Pirates (now one game out of the cellar in the National League East). Warner Cable in Pittsburgh is televising about 60 of the Pirates' home games this season, and TCS Productions, a part of our company, is providing the technical crew. My particular job continues to be graphics. So two weeks a month, I spend about five days a week down at Three Rivers Stadium, creating the little panels that tell what the batter's average is, and what the scores of other games are, and so on. It's getting to be sufficiently routine to be almost easy.
So
that I can better understand how to operate my machine, which is a special-purpose
computer called a Chyron, I'm scheduled to go to New York the week
of June 27 for five days of classes. Back to school.
DIPLOMA, JUNE 30, 1983
My
address chart for the Penn State at
Syracuse
football game, October 15, 1983
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On
November 1, 1983, TCS premiered the Meadows Racing Network. It
originated from "The Meadows" harness racing track north of
Washington, Pennsylvania (the city where I had worked from 1974 to
1980). We televised all of each night's harness racing
card: 12 or 13 events spaced fifteen minutes apart.
Viewers were invited to establish Call-A-Bet accounts so that they
could phone in their wagers while they were watching the races.
For the first couple of years, I was there on about half the nights
to provide the graphics.
Friday, March 16, 1984
As time goes on, I'm giving up most of my TV3 duties in favor of working for TCS. That's the part of our company that televises sporting events across the country, frequently with me operating the Chyron graphics machine.
Last weekend (Thursday through Monday), I was in Waterville Valley, New Hampshire, where we were covering a couple of women's Alpine skiing events for ESPN.
Tomorrow and Sunday I'll be working harness racing at The Meadows.
And two weeks from now, the baseball season gets under way as we televise a Pirates exhibition game.
Thursday, March 22, 1984
To
Betsy Overly:
This "Lisa if she's ready" apparently was not Lisa Cirincione, who tells me she didn't start operating the Chyron at The Meadows until 1985.
According to the memo Marcy put out yesterday, there is racing at The Meadows on Easter Sunday night. The Chyron operator would probably be you, or Lisa if she's ready, since it looks like I will be going to St. Louis that weekend for boxing. But maybe we should check to make sure Marcy didn't just fall into a pattern and list April 22 racing by mistake.
My information has it that the truck we'll be using for all of April and May at The Meadows is the Schulman truck from California, with an old Chyron IV aboard.
Also, we may be using an old IV for the first two Pirate games on April 17 and 18. That's what's on the Video Voyager 2, which may be making its maiden Voyage at those games.
Therefore, I think that once the Schulman truck arrives, we should start composing Pirate graphics incorporating your suggestions in the old-IV format. Once a truck with a 4100 shows up at Three Rivers, we'll just copy our old-IV message disk and make the copy our 4100 message disk.
Wednesday, March 28, 1984
To Chyron operators other than Betsy and me:
You
should have been given a system disk and a message disk, each with a
written sheet detailing
what's on it. This memo is intended to tell you the rest of
what you need to know at The Meadows.
BEFORE ARRIVING, buy a newspaper. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is recommended during the week; on Saturdays, the Washington Observer-Reporter includes data for both Saturday and Sunday racing, or you can get your Sunday data from the Sunday Pittsburgh Press.
On the agate-type page of the sports section, you should find a column headed "Meadows Entries" in which the horses for that night's races are listed, not in numerical order but in the order that Roger Huston predicts they'll finish. Roger is the track handicapper and announcer, and he's also our on-the-air host of the Meadows Racing Network. We'll explain later what to do with his predictions.
AS YOU ENTER THE GROUNDS, stop at the guardhouse at the fork in the road about halfway from the main entrance to our TV truck. Inside this little building, the guard should have for you a packet of Meadows programs marked "For TV Crew." Take one program for yourself, and take the rest to the production area of the truck.
ONCE YOU'VE TURNED ON THE CHYRON, the first messages you need to compose are the race banners. These are generally stored at disk location R00, where R is the race number. In other words, the banner for race 1 is at 100, for race 2 at 200, and so on through the banner for race 12 at 1200.
The colored stripes indicate the color of the horses' saddlepads. Horse number 1 always wears a red saddlepad, horse 2 is white, horse 3 is blue, and so on. These colors are listed in your program immediately under the horse's number. So that you don't have to keep making up different backgrounds for different situations, on the message disk we've stored sample banners for a nine-horse race, an eight-horse race, a seven-horse race, and so on.
The name that follows the name of the horse is the last name of the driver. In your program, the driver is the one whose name is in all capitals and followed by his weight.
At the top of the banner, in addition to identifying the race ("1st Race") we also indicate what combination bets apply ("Daily Double"). In your program, these are listed in white-on-black bars near the top of each page.
AFTER
COMPOSING THE BANNERS,
the next step is to create the morning line pages. These are
similar to the race banners, except that the names of the drivers are
replaced by the odds. There's an autodisplay on the disk that
does part of the work of converting a given race banner into a
morning line page.
We indicate Roger's picks by putting "1st" beside the horse he thinks will win (in other words, the horse which is listed on top in the newspaper), a "2nd" by his second choice, and a "3rd" by his third. We make "1st" flash.
To avoid errors, read the name of Roger's pick from the newspaper, not the horse's number. If you don't find the horse he names listed in your program, it probably was scratched from the race between the time the newspaper was printed and the time the program was printed.
NEXT
COME THE INDIVIDUAL HORSES.
These are about a hundred panels, each giving the number of the race
at the top left and identifying a horse, his driver, and his trainer
at the bottom.
.
. .
HALF
AN HOUR BEFORE AIR TIME,
put on your air channel the panel that says "Next:
Harness Racing." This will be used over color bars to
identify the satellite feed.
.
. .
RACE
SEGMENT ONE.
Begin with another "live" panel out of the break. The
director will probably show the tote board, so give him one of the
Call-A-Bet numbers to super over it. Then comes the post parade
of horses in the first race. At the end of this parade, we'll
want the race banner. Then it's back to the tote board with the
Call-A-Bet number again.
Roger then will say, "Let's take a closer look at the horses in the first race." We replay the post parade in slow motion, and as he gives the facts and figures on each horse, you read-next your way through the individual horse panels. After this, it's back to the tote board again.
Now the director will start looking for shots of individual horses. Suppose he says "Number 5 is Roger's pick and the current favorite." On your preview channel, call up the individual horse panel on number 5, followed by the autodisplay which cuts out everything but the horse's number and name and adds the line "Roger's pick/Current favorite." When the director shows horse 5, you can now identify it graphically. Other autodisplays will turn individual horse panels into ones that say "Long shot on the board," "Current co-favorite," and so on.
When the horses get behind the starting gate, use the race banner again.
Once
the race starts, call up "the four," a lower-third which
says "1st 2nd 3rd 4th" with space for four numbers
underneath. Your job is to make those numbers match the numbers
of the horses that are running first, second, third, and fourth.
To learn that information, you can watch the screen or listen to the
call of the race; more likely, the director (with an assist from the
TD and cameraman two) will tell you the current order.
.
. .
About
the time we go to the replay is when the results become official and
the payoffs are announced. You can see these payoffs (from the
track's computer) on one of your monitors. Write them down if
you wish, because they're there for only a couple of minutes.
Use them to build your results panel, which must be finished by the
end of the two-minute replay of the race. Don't forget to
record the completed results panel at its proper location on the
disk, because you'll need it later.
Promo
taped Saturday, March 31, 1984
(Don't
blame me, I didn't write it)
Roger, trackside at winners circle
This is Roger Huston with Zivko Kovulcheck at The Meadows. And this is the watch we'll give away to the first 3,000 fans who pay admission on Saturday night, April 28th.
Zivko
I've checked it over, and it's a pretty good watch for a giveaway. It's a six-function quartz digital.
Roger
And it's more than just a watch. It's even a stopwatch, which means you can time anything to the second — including your horse.
Zivko
And to show you what a great watch it is, I'm gonna give it the Zivko Kovulcheck endurance test by Scotch-taping it to this sulky wheel and giving it a ride around the racetrack. Adios muchacho! (Zivko waves goodbye as horse and driver depart)
Graphic
TWO MINUTES LATER
Zivko,
waving
arms like John Madden
(Horse and driver arrive) It's not here! Where the bleep's my bleep watch? What'd you do with the watch?
Roger,
holding
watch
Believe me, it's a nice watch, a stopwatch, and it's free on April 28th at The Meadows.
Sunday, May 6, 1984
We're still using the Knox character generator at The Meadows. An engineer from the Chyron factory came down on Friday and spent all day and night on Schulman's machine, plus part of Saturday. He finally determined that Schulman had modified it to the point that he didn't know how to fix it any more. He could take it back to New York and rebuild it to Chyron specifications, or Schulman could take it back to California and repair it to their specifications, but it was hopeless in Pennsylvania.
The last I heard, Schulman was sending a Chyron 4100 from California to arrive here Monday. You may have it for Tuesday night.
In
the meantime, if you have to use the Knox you should know what I've
been doing.
For the results at the end of the show, I'm using six pages like this. In the small font, T, Q, P, and DD mean payoffs for Trifecta, Quinella, Perfecta, and Daily Double.
Because of the eight-page memory limitation, I don't start typing these panels until the final hour of the show, and the panel for the 11th and 12th races isn't typed until we're in the replay of the 12th.
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The TCS baseball telecasts for the 1984 season began with a Pirates at Dodgers game on Friday, April 6.
But five days later, HSE went out of business. Only 7,000 subscribers had signed up at $10 a month, so there was no way that the channel could be profitable. We at TCS had been planning to televise 75 home Pirates games for HSE, and now there were none. (In future years the failed pay network HSE would be replaced by the advertiser-supported network KBL, and KBL would eventually become the Pittsburgh part of Fox Sports Net, later spun off as ROOT Sports.)
Because there were virtually no experienced Chyron operators in Baltimore — and because I was unexpectedly available — TCS agreed to supply me as well.
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It
was carried on the one-year-old Pittsburgh regional cable sports
network HSE, with Steve Blass, Bob Prince, and 
Fortunately,
in 1984 another regional network called Home Team Sports was just
starting operations in Baltimore, and TCS had a contract to supply
their equipment. Our new mobile unit, Video Voyager 2, provided
what we trumpeted as the "only six-camera cable baseball
coverage in the country."
Monday, April 23, 1984
To Julie Scaffidi:
As you requested, here are some notes to future Chyron operators about the system we're presently using for home Orioles games.
OPEN SEQUENCE.
An autodisplay at 0988, when invoked on Channel 1, causes the top
and bottom of the title page to appear, with a blank middle. A
subsequent keystroke causes the names of the teams to slow-reveal in
the middle, and then the logos pop on. As I recall, the
top-and-bottom part is a dual-channel message recorded at 0910, the
names of the teams are at 0930, and the logos are at 0940.
BATTING ORDER. For the Orioles, there's an autodisplay at 1050, a message at 1051, and text-only messages at 1054, 1056, 1058, 1060, 1062, 1064, 1066, 1068, and 1070. The corresponding numbers for the visitors are 25 greater.
Call up the autodisplay at 1075 and hit the spacebar until all the names have appeared. Note that they read out in white, then change to yellow before the next name reads out. Note also that there's a record mark at the end of each row.
Change the logo, if necessary, to indicate the correct visiting team. Change the names to the correct batting order, including the current batting average for each player. You should still have ten record marks on the screen, and the players' names should be in white.
Send the cursor home, enter address 1076, and RECORD. Hit NEWLINE, CONTROL, RECORD, T. Hit NEWLINE, CONTROL, RECORD, T. Continue until all the rows have been recorded, one at a time.
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Thursday, June 7, 1984 From newspaper reports: Cheryl and Scott Piechowicz worked at the Warren House Motor Hotel in Pikesville and were scheduled last year to testify in federal court against Anthony Grandison. Grandison, 31, a small-time West Baltimore drug dealer, hired Vernon Evans to eliminate the witnesses for $9,000. Evans went to the motel in April 1983 and machine-gunned the two people in the lobby that he thought were Cheryl and Scott. However, it wasn't Cheryl; her unmarried sister Susan Kennedy was working for her that day and was killed. Both Evans and Grandison have been sentenced to death for the murders. |
Thursday, July 12, 1984
After Tom Huet approves the letter below, please send it to the Sports Information Director of each of the colleges on the attached list. We'd like the letters to go out within the next week. If you haven't sent them by Thursday morning, July 19, I can sign them at that time as I pass by the office on my way from Baltimore to vacation; otherwise, forge my signature or whatever.
When we get the logos in the mail, we'll compare them with the Chyron disks that Paul Karlsson is sending from Metrosports. Any logos that we don't already have on disk will be given to Chip Connolly to send to his Los Angeles contact Jerry Cole, there to be put onto disk before the end of August.
The letter:
We at TCS and Metrosports are planning our television coverage of 1984 college football.
There are presently 58 schools that might appear on one or more of our live or delayed telecasts. Yours is one of those schools, and I'd like to request a copy of your team's current logo.
We want to include the logos of both teams in the Chyron-generated electronic graphics that we insert throughout the football telecast. Ideally, we'd like to have a color print of your logo, plus black-and-white camera-ready artwork of each of the colors used. (If your school uses a different logo for its basketball team, please send that one along too. We're looking forward to our basketball telecasts as well.)
Notes: It appears that the Pac-10 schedule originally called one of the West Coast schools "OSU," which our typist interpreted to mean Ohio State. It should be Oregon State. The TCS combined schedule has UCLA playing two games on November 10: versus Ohio State on campus, and then versus Oregon State at the Los Angeles Coliseum!
August 1984:
TCS / METROSPORTS
GRAPHICS
MANUAL FOR 1984 FOOTBALL
This manual is in two parts.
The first, approved by Tom Huet and Paul Karlsson, shows how we'd like our graphics to look on the air.
The second part describes what I'll call the Thomas System, which is a way of realizing these graphics by using specific addresses and autodisplays on a Chyron IV. You don't have to use the Thomas System. You can use your own system if you prefer. But in many cases TCS/Metrosports will try to make your job easier by providing you with a message disk on which one or both rosters have already been recorded, and naturally that disk will use the Thomas System as its standard.
In designing this system, I've tried to speed your work by keeping keystrokes to a minimum while conserving disk space. For example, each player's name needs to be typed only once. For another example, any possible combination of down, yards, and yard line can be called up with no more than eight keystrokes, and this capability uses only 9 of the 2495 "points" of memory available on the disk.
AUTODISPLAY
0003, "3rd Down and XX"
Waits
for two keystrokes, which are the yards to go.
If
fewer than 10 yards to go, use space bar for the second keystroke.
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FNT3 |
YELW |
ERAS |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
Erase any existing text; prepare to type in yellow |
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DEFS |
0008 |
TAB |
TABC |
DEFE |
HOME |
. |
. |
Clear up to eight existing tabs |
|
CTRL |
B |
HOME |
ERAS |
CTRL |
. |
. |
. |
Erase any existing background |
|
DEFS |
0008 |
NEWL |
DEFE |
. |
. |
. |
. |
Position cursor eight lines down from "home" |
|
3 |
R |
D |
_ |
D |
O |
W |
. |
Type |
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CURL |
SHCL |
SHCL |
CURR |
. |
. |
. |
. |
Kern the W two hits closer to the O |
|
N |
_ |
A |
N |
D |
_ |
. |
. |
Continue typing |
|
DELY |
0000 |
DELY |
0000 |
. |
. |
. |
. |
Get two keystrokes |
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CNRO |
SHRU |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
Center the row and shift it up slightly |
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DEFS |
0014 |
CURR |
DEFE |
. |
. |
. |
. |
Position cursor in case the last number needs to be revised |
On Friday, November 30, 1984, I worked the TCS/Metrosports telecast of yet another college football game, Toledo vs Temple.
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But this one was different. It was played indoors. Sod had been laid over the concrete floor at the Atlantic City Convention Hall, which was the home of the Miss America pageant. |
Temple alumnus Bill Cosby, starring in a Temple Centennial Celebration show later that night, was on hand at the game. He helped the grounds crew replace the squares of grass as they became dislodged.
At one point Cosby tried to move the penalty-marred action along. He picked up a yellow flag that was lying on the field and hid it under one of the squares of sod, much to the consternation of the officals.
Monday,
December 17, 1984
I've now moved almost completely out of TV3 and into TCS, as a Chyron operator. I've worked something like 140 remotes in the past year.
A third were Orioles baseball games in Baltimore, where TCS supplies trucks and crews for the regional pay-cable network Home Team Sports.
Another third were nights of harness racing in Washington, Pa., where TCS originates the Meadows Racing Network for regional cable.
Then I've also done World Cup skiing in New Hampshire for ESPN.
A Celtics NBA playoff game in Boston for USA Network.
A Maulers USFL football game in Jacksonville, Florida, for KDKA.
Boxing in Washington, D.C., and soccer in North Carolina for Home Team Sports.
And college football and basketball games all over.
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The local college football team, the University of Pittsburgh, had been a disappointment. They became the sixth team ever to go 0-3 after being ranked in the top 10 of the preseason AP poll. The season before, defending national champion Penn State had done likewise. |
This Saturday, I'm leaving for the West Coast to work on our telecasts of the Freedom Bowl and the Aloha Bowl. This travel can be fun!
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Our
boss Nelson Goldberg has just about achieved one of his other
goals: the TCS offices have now been almost completely
transferred to RIDC Park. (The address is 701 Alpha Drive,
Pittsburgh 15238.) It isn't the custom-designed TCS building
that he wanted. Rather, we're renting space on two or three
floors of the four-story Navco Engineering building. They make
valves. Not there in that office building, but they make valves.
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Late one chilly afternoon in front of the Navco building, Nelson (in the white sweater) parked the TCS fleet — a satellite uplink truck, two Video Voyagers, and a Subaru station wagon — and summoned everyone out of the offices for this staff picture, enlarged below. |
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