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  • Re: Newscasters from long ago

    I'd like to know and others have asked me, does anyone know where Kai Maxwell (former KITV anchor mid to late 80's) is these days? If you know where she is please drop me a line. Mahalo!!

    Comment


    • Re: Newscasters from long ago

      Some well-deserved recognition for former TV reporter and excellent person Matt Levi in Dave Shapiro's column this morning:

      http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/2...or_youths.html

      Comment


      • Re: Newscasters from long ago

        WAY old newscaster Wayne Collins - who did the PanAm News on KGMB in the 1950s - toured the now-empty Channel 9 building recently with his sidekick cameraman Ted Shibuya. Hawaii New Snow doing the story this week.

        Comment


        • Re: Newscasters from long ago

          Originally posted by Kimo View Post
          WAY old newscaster Wayne Collins - who did the PanAm News on KGMB in the 1950s - toured the now-empty Channel 9 building recently with his sidekick cameraman Ted Shibuya. Hawaii New Snow doing the story this week.
          http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/Global/...asp?S=13990573

          Comment


          • Re: Newscasters from long ago

            Originally posted by BigD View Post
            Does anyone remember KGMB's first news anchor in the early fifties ? Wayne Colllins and The 10'Oclock Report. He never did crack a smile while doing the news. LOL The pay must not have been very good at the time. Aloha, BigD
            I wrote about Wayne Collins in my Friday Honolulu Star-Advertiser column. It was about a day when things didn't go well, and Collins was unable to keep a straight face.

            Comment


            • Re: Newscasters from long ago

              Originally posted by Creative-1 View Post
              I wrote about Wayne Collins in my Friday Honolulu Star-Advertiser column. It was about a day when things didn't go well, and Collins was unable to keep a straight face.
              Wayne is a very good friend of mine and I was glad I was able to let him see the old KGMB Building on a recent visit.

              Great story Bob!

              Comment


              • Re: Newscasters from long ago

                Originally posted by Creative-1 View Post
                I wrote about Wayne Collins in my Friday Honolulu Star-Advertiser column. It was about a day when things didn't go well, and Collins was unable to keep a straight face.
                Too bad they didn't record that. It would have made for a great YouTube video.

                Comment


                • Re: Newscasters from long ago

                  Barbara Tanabe popped up in the news, helping her 93 year old WWII vet father, Frank Tanabe, cast his final vote before passing away. She was a favorite newscaster of mine, and I remember her friendly but straight forward approach, along with Joe. [I cannot stand the style that some current newscasters have of trying to be part of a comedy team, or the inane chit-chat throughout the newscast.]
                  Now run along and play, but don’t get into trouble.

                  Comment


                  • Re: Newscasters from long ago

                    My condolences to the Tanabe family. Barbara also lost her husband a couple years ago. Frank Tanabe was a high school classmate (in Seattle) of Les Keiter, who happened to be Barbara's KHON co-anchor with BJ Sams during the
                    1970s.

                    Comment


                    • Re: Newscasters from long ago

                      Barbara Tanabe was the best local newscaster I've ever seen at keeping her eyes on the camera. She almost never looked down at notes.
                      But I'm disturbed! I'm depressed! I'm inadequate! I GOT IT ALL! (George Costanza)
                      GrouchyTeacher.com

                      Comment


                      • Re: Newscasters from long ago (Part 1 of ???)

                        Originally posted by buzz1941 View Post
                        Not the excellent British actor. This guy was more like Ted Baxter. He had a white pompadour, a basso profundo delivery and a tan so deep he was mauve-colored. I think he was with KITV in the early '80s, tho I may be wrong.

                        Hawkins wrote his own story intros, which were messterpieces, delivered with overweening, swashbuckling brio, like the guy in a '50s scifi film warning you to watch the skies for aliens and Commies. One went, "Doctor Ariyoshi prescribes financial medicine, and TOMORROW WE EAT THE BITTER PILL!!!"

                        But my favorite, for a story on head lice, just went "Oooh oooh oooh OOOH OOOH UKUS!!!"

                        He was shown the door, I imagine for demographic reasons, and instead of a cheerful farewell, he launched into an intensely bitter and sputtering tirade that was painful to see. And hysterical. I think he did some car ads after that and vanished from Hawaii.

                        Of course, if he was on again, I'd watch every night.
                        ***

                        RE: TV'S REAL LIFE "TED BAXTER" (Mary Tyler Moore Show's buffoon anchorman)

                        PART 1
                        (This has to be chopped into parts because it is long)

                        The incomparable BURL BURLINGAME – you are amazing. I grew-up reading you all the time. I just found out you passed last year... r.i.p.
                        I can expand on some of Jack Hawkins' parting words, leaving co-anchor Lynne Waters speechless and almost frozen (this was LIVE after all).

                        Let me start by apologizing in advance to anyone reading this: I am gonna jump around to various topics – all related to TV broadcasting and the subject at hand – but still, long-winded and a curvy journey. I am trying to weave together the environment at the time of Jack Hawkins and his departure. We in film and TV know that our visual mediums have to also add a "look and feel" of the station in the way things are presented: The colors of the logo... the music ... the chosen announcer and what tone is used. ("You're watching KITV: Island Television" seems simple, but everything is all by design, because it adds to an emotional tug that is often subconscious to viewers, but equates to how you feel about what you just watched and if you 'take it with you' – so please bear with me as I get long here to do this for you. I'm also in a rush and this is not carefully drafted.

                        I would love to hear your comments on here or on social media, so please reach out – always love to hear from people from my original homeland!



                        IF YOU WANT TO JUST JUMP TO THE BOTTOM LINE, look for my dashes and arrow at the bottom of this reply ( marked like this: -----------> )



                        I grew up in Kalihi, then Aiea and left my island homeland in 1996 when Hollywood enticed me and I needed to spread my wings. Growing up in a gang-infested neighborhood (right after we left, gangs burned down 4 schools in one day including my Puuhale Elementary), I never thought I would be working/producing on the Academy Awards® (our team garnered a Primetime Emmy® nomination for my first Oscar® broadcast); never thought I would get invited to meet BIG stars and have drinks with them; or have the successes and failures I have had in my 24 years in La La land. I still marvel at Hawaii television, and am honored when anchors like Diane Ako interact with me on Instagram. Maybe one day, I will make Hawaii proud, though I am aging quickly.

                        Growing up, I was fascinated with TV, video and Hawaii's broadcasters ever since my parents caught me tuning into KHET-11's sign-on TEST PATTERN and would call to identify the instrumental music they played during that and ETV logo slides that filled time before the next educational program started. Just from memory, after I moved to Hollywood in 1996, I would in the late 2000's re-create the test pattern and all the music tracks, and made Blu-ray/DVDs and sent them as a gift to Hawaii Public Television – now branded as PBSHawaii. VP Robert Pennybacker was impressed and even shared the discs with a few old-timers who were about to retire.

                        I was a strange kid: I would sit with my mother's alarm clock watching KITV and other channels and time each commercial break, and would notice a pattern back then: Obviously, it must have been FCC rules. In the 70s, primetime TV had a limit of 9.5 minutes of commercials and 2.5 minutes of station promos; and you could not break away from the main show more than 5 times; a 6th time was the "Adjacency" (end break) that followed a show's credits, and preceded the start of the next show. I bring this up for two reasons: to introduce myself here on this wonderful Ryan Ozawa blog – and to show people how much my memory holds-up 45 years later and how detailed I could be. Fast forward to today, where I sometimes re-cut old tv series (I worked on re-cutting the original "Hawaii Five-0") to, unfortunately, squeeze-in more commercials. We take those old 1-hours and make room for 18-20 minutes of commercials and also, break away from the show 10-12 times an hour. That means trying to cut scenes or shots out without taking from the story. A lot of editors just hack it because they have a quota to meet per shift. I was always a fast editor, but as a director and writer (and producer), I genuinely cared about respecting the legacy of anything I touched, so I watched the episodes carefully then went back to decide what to trim, with respect to the original artists and storytellers (and disdain for what I had to do to earn a living). After we re-cut the show, from there, the episode is sent to "vari-speed:" Yes, they take the new shaved edit we did and they speed it up 1.5%, but keep the audio pitch the same so actors don't sound like Mickey Mouse. That 1.5% speed-up fits in yet another :30 second commercial. And broadcast and mainstream cable wonders why their audiences eroded.

                        All of us kids would like it when KGMB had "technical difficulties" in the 70s and would play a cool song: Mason William's "Classical Gas," putting a 35mm slide up saying programming would resume momentarily. I mean, it was as cool as hearing the Hawaii-Five 0 theme.

                        ***


                        (End of Part 1)
                        Last edited by KeoniHiroshiTyler; February 17, 2020, 07:20 PM.

                        Comment


                        • Re: Newscasters from long ago (Part 1 of ???)

                          PART 2:


                          KITV's JACK HAWKINS on "Newscenter 4" ... Others in this thread noted the amazing marketing the station did with mysterious "HAWKINS" – that was it – just a name, then back to "The Love Boat." People would ask me, "What is that?" I replied, "I don't know." That was followed by various islanders replacing the standard KITV SID (Station Identification required every hour) - they stood and looked into the camera: "Hawkins is coming." Huh? The last phase of the promos gave the answer: "Hawkins is coming... to KITV. Hawkins is Jack Hawkins." The man is revealed to the camera. Ahhhh, it has something to do with the news. This was the late 1970s.

                          You have to touch on the TV environment at the time. CNN was not yet born. Neither was the Internet. The Big-3 affiliates in Hawaii made all the money. KITV-4 (ABC) would be sold in this era for $50mil (1290 Ala Moana Blvd, where Nauru Tower now sits); so it went from owner Western Telestations to Tak Communications.

                          KHON-2 (NBC) was right behind KITV on Auahi Street. Both had their red & white TV transmitter towers ON-SITE, so you could look into the sky and see 2 large TV towers very near each other. When I pitched a TV series to KHON (I was only 17 years old), the receptionist took me to a bar between the two stations (yes, I shouldn't have been in that bar as the legal age was 18). She said, "We call this bar 'Channel 3' because it sits in between Channels 2 and 4. You see that Japanese guy in that booth over there – he was just fired today by GM Dick Schaller." I replied, "Oh, he got fired by Mr. Schaller because of what I read in the paper: 'KHON caught with its pants down.' He's the Program Director." She would sadly say, "FORMER P.D." (His sin: He bought and aired a movie without checking it ... there was frontal nudity. The movie aired late at night, but still, it could've cost KHON its license).

                          People who know Richard Schaller all love him (he aired my TV series when he moved to KIKU-13 (now KHNL), and replaced most of its all-Japanese language TV shows when he rebranded it "Entertaining 13."

                          Out of 5 TV stations, KGMB used to have a 52% market share – unheard of in TV's 1960s~70s days in any of the 210 TV markets. But, in just a few years, Joe Moore would leave the sportscasting desk of Channel 9's news - led by 'Hawaii's Walter Cronkite' Bob Sevey – and head over to last-place KHON-2 to anchor. Could a sportscaster LEAD the news? The rest is TV history in Hawaii.

                          KITV was caught right in the middle of this.

                          Once Joe Moore's numbers took off, KGMB's news would continuously slide. KGMB would start to knee-jerk and tinker: Move the news earlier; then expand it to an hour; re-hash national news in a second half-hour, etc. They even had what would be today in the #MeToo era a sexist series of promos: Sexy women would speak in an X-rated, come-hither tone, looking into the camera: 'I just love the way Bob Jones reports the news... I get all excited at his voice ... the BIG stories ...' I think some of those women were licking their lips or putting their fingers to their mouth. It was funny, but still ... for news?

                          It was another sad day when Jones would start to raffle off prizes like a free TV set DURING the actual newscast. KGMB was getting desperate. Before you move to Hollywood to start over as an assistant grabbing coffee in the most competitive town of cut-throat sharks of film, tv, music and media, career consultants will warn you that there are two cardinal sins to kill your career: Don't be BORING and don't be or appear DESPERATE. KGMB was violating that. They would move the anchor desk to shopping malls and have people anchor from there – Bob Jones would be in Kaneohe talking about getting a Cinnabon. Shoppers would comment to the newspapers, "Wow, they get paid a lot and they don't do much just sitting there, reading." Still, THIS was KGMB-9 – so storied, respected and woven into Hawai'i culture. I did enjoy Bob's humor when he would banter with Linda Coble and Jim Leahey while signing off the news, because it could be funny. Touching Linda Coble's front, drapery-style dress, he said, 'Want our viewers to know to not adjust your TV set (touches the dress near Coble's breasts) – this is NOT a case of fallen anchors – it's just the dress design.' Cue Jim Leahey putting his head into his palm, shaking in disbelief. Linda: 'Keep your hands off my drapes.' If he did that today, Bob would be hauled off to H.R.

                          When I briefly worked at the beginnings of Hawaii's last VHF station to go on-air, KFVE-Channel 5, Linda Coble was doing a project and I got to finally meet her in person. "I grew up watching you... all of you on Channel 9 are amazing. Cec Heftel is amazing. I had lunch with him and his son awhile back, trying to start a 24-hour music video network from Hawaii. Don Ho is supportive of this and came to my house to see the demo – said I was a genius." (MTV would not yet be born, and I was the first VJ and doing music videos since 1978 in high school and nightclubs). She said to me, "That is so nice. What are you doing here at KFVE?" I said, "I'm in master control." She shocked me with a retort: "Oh, I thought you said you were master-bating." I remember now I didn't laugh, because, well, only if you knew Linda in person you'd know that was her humor, but I looked-up to her as a respected journalist and the retort just caught me off guard. Plus, I grew-up with strict parents and am old-school with standing when a lady enters the room, etc etc. So to hear her blurt that out to a stranger in a professional environment left me without words. But this does explain Bob Jones' frank banter with her on-the-air, LOL. (Master Control is the final switching that puts everything you see on-the-air; those technicians put the commercials in, count-down to live studios like News (or in NBC's case, going from News to Saturday Night Live's studio; etc); If Master Control doesn't punch it up, you don't see it at home. They make sure things stay on-time. National master control can be 1,000x the stress, especially during big events like the Super Bowl. If something goes wrong, millions of dollars are on the line and millions of people are watching your goof. I'll comment on another thread about the day Leslie Wilcox had to field angry callers all day when KGMB was caught delaying the Super Bowl to insert more local commercials – they wouldn't have been caught, until a power outage happened, sending viewers to radio to hear the game. When the power came back up and viewers returned to KGMB, they found the game was back at a previous point of play. Leslie gracefully opened that newscast: "We are sorry." KGMB had to explain "Inst-Delay" technology. This goes back to me inserting more commercials in old TV shows, huh?
                          $$$

                          ***

                          Continued in Part 3

                          Comment


                          • Re: Newscasters from long ago (Part 3 of 4)

                            Part 3 of 4

                            Joe Moore's bold move to KHON-2 couldn't have been better timed. NBC as a national network was the butt of jokes (see Fred Silverman: "Loud as as Peacock" on YouTube). Johnny Carson would tease his own network about being in last place – always. In those days, though, if you were a Big-3 broadcaster you didn't care... you were minting money. The Big-3 had 90% of the TV audience, so even last place NBC was in the black and making millions. Silverman, a genius and the only network president to work all 3 networks, had made CBS then ABC number one. So going to NBC was a sure-thing, right?

                            Again, as I digress, here's a sidebar: The #1 show one year was "Charlie's Angels." ABC aired so many Aaron Spelling shows that it was jokingly called "Aaron's Broadcasting Company" instead of American Broadcasting. The 3 stars on Charlie's Angels: They made $5,000 per episode. I remember reading as a kid that the Governor of Hawaii made $60,000 a year – took out my calculator – that was $5,000 a month... yes, to a kid in the 70s, that was like "Wow!" In this era, if your show did anything less than double-digits Nielsen ratings on TV, you were cancelled. Charlie's Angels would average a 27 or more: 27% of the country was watching ABC (ditto KITV!). It would have a 40 share (of all the TV sets that were on at that hour, 40% was watching your show, while smaller slices of the pie were watching something else. Today's fragmented, long-tail media: Law & Order SVU is renewed with a 0.9 rating – that's right, not even 1%. Its star demands $2 million per episode. (Broadcasting is still prized because everything else is getting 0.2; and DVR ratings are added after 3, 7 and 30 days).

                            The angry and always-screaming Silverman – who recently passed away – failed at NBC and was on his way out. A young, nice guy named Brandon Tartikoff was about to turn the Titanic around. NBC would become #1, and the Channel 2 News with Joe Moore was the perfect rainbow for KHON and the perfect storm for KGMB and KITV. Hill Street Blues, Cheers, The Cosby Show all contributed to the the Eye and the Alphabet's slide.

                            Hawaii loved Joe Moore. He had personality. He was the local Aiea boy done good. But was KHON's news rise a fluke? Would it last? What would KGMB do?

                            ***

                            KITV would have an embarrassing TV reporter strike in the late 1970s. This was when they built Emme Tomimbang as a star – she was the only one allowed on the Charlie's Angels set when they filmed in Hawaii... she was the new Linda Coble TV sweetheart.

                            Don Rockwell was News Director and lead anchor, but he would soon step aside after a few years. Unlike the TV technician IBEW strike which left management running all the complicated broadcast gear at the Big-3 Hawaii stations (this was REALLY funny to watch as things went wrong*), this sudden reporter strike only affected KITV, and not KGMB or KHON. Why? Because people like Emme were making about $5.50/hour under GM Dick Grimm. In fact, KITV took out a full-page ad in the two daily newspapers (Star Bulletin/Honolulu Advertiser) and posted everyone's hourly wage! I think that weakened management's argument – people were commenting, "I thought TV people made good money and my son wait's tables and makes more than that in tips!" The minimum wage was around $2.30 at the time. A Big Mac was under $1.00; coffee was 10 cents.

                            * Star Bulletin political cartoonist CORKY had a great drawing: A couple is on the sofa watching TV, but the picture is upside down. 'Gee honey, I don't notice any difference since the TV technicians went on strike.' The poor sales and management teams of the Big-3 had to run very complicated equipment and there was no Master Control automation like there is today – everything was manual. Stations constantly had "Please Stand-by" slides with nothing happening for long stretches of priceless air time (they couldn't even manage getting "Classical Gas" music to play along with that slide graphic!)

                            Being news, KITV had to cover IT'S OWN REPORTERS picketing outside!!! There were no reporters (yet) to cover their shifts. Everything was stuck on JACK HAWKINS on the anchor desk, reading story-after-story. The cameramen (all men at the time) didn't want to cross the reporters outside. Worse: KITV's competitors started to show up: KGMB reporters (like Candy Fleece) and KHON reporters would join the picket line in support of KITV's journalists.

                            There was Jack Hawkins, microphone in hand on a story "package," chasing down reporter Kathy Collins to ask her a question... the picture was all out of white-balance (a purple tint) – maybe it was not a union camera operator. The technicians were eventually forced to cross the line or risk losing their jobs, and their colleagues on strike did understand – after all, reporters had to cross the technicians' strike line when they were out, right?

                            Kathy turned around to face Jack: "We don't talk to un-professionals."

                            Cut to Jack on the anchor desk: 'Well, this un-professional will continue to try and report on the strike.' – all in his Ted Knight/Ted Baxter tone. KITV would soon bring in 'scab' reporters from out of state, and no experienced reporter would dare cross that picket line, so you can just imagine how this group of 5 "journalists" looked and sounded gathering the news – it was a fiasco and tarnished the Fifth Estate and what it meant to be a professional broadcaster.

                            Kathy told me one day at KIKI-AM 83 radio where I ran into her meeting with another island legend, Kamasami Kong (Robert 'Bob' Zix, who was on my TV series and is now famous in Japan), that Jack felt so excluded so he kept putting heavy orange make-up on his face to give the impression he was on the beach every day. It made him look worse and added to the 'buffoon' persona.

                            Back at Channel 2, with Joe Moore's rise in tandem with the Peacock network's hit "E.R.," KHON could charge $950.00 per 30-second spot in E.R. and carry those rates into Joe's 10pm newscast. The other stations were getting $350~475 per spot in their news. I know this because I would buy $25k of spots for my various productions in those days.

                            TV is divided by number of TV sets a signal reaches, there presently being 210 markets in the USA. The Top 25 are prized – more eyeballs means more cash per commercial. A signal does not know man-made landmarks - it goes as far as it can and then fades out, so market rankings are based on that potential reach and number of TV households with a TV set.

                            While Honolulu is in the top-30 of metropolitan cities, its TV market back then was in the 73~78th place out of 210... not even in the Top 50 (Hawaii is now #66 out of 210). Before the Internet grabbed a younger generation to getting its news from computers and phones, local news was a huge moneymaker for stations. For KITV's Rob Fukuzaki – who started on Hawaii FM radio doing "Love Songs on the Krater (KRTR) at 1am – then did part-time on KITV's sports desk – being discovered by a KABC-7 (LA) producer and recruited meant pay dirt. I mean, local KCBS-2 anchors (in last place) only doing the 11pm news and not even in the newsroom for most of the day/evening would snag $4m/year – because you were in market #2 of 210.

                            While a local station really depends on its national network doing well, Joe Moore and his loyal viewers have bucked that trend, validating the big paydays they grant to him. It was a sad day when new owners of KHON would voluntarily abandon their NBC agreement and move over to a new, Barry Diller-led Fox Broadcasting Company. Diller had started FBC for Rupert Murdoch, but also owned a station group that was acquiring KHON, so it was natural that he force Channel 2 to abandon NBC and move to being a Fox affiliate.

                            Joe Moore famously did not hold in his anger: Almost every night, he'd take a swipe at the station's decision: "Just think folks, instead of your Channel 2 News following quality programs like "E.R.," you will soon get to see me right after "COPS!" (LOL!) Can you imagine an employee saying that about his boss – to the public? Good for you, Joe – my fellow Aiea Ali'i !!!

                            KIKU-13, rebranded KHNL-13 Hawaii's Very Own by a new GM who formerly did sales at KGMB, would spend the money to license UH sports – a bold and smart move. When KHON abandoned NBC and became a Fox station, KHNL-13 quickly grabbed the Peacock's feathers, which gave them less available air time, so UH sports moved to KFVE-5.

                            ***

                            End of Part 3 of 4

                            Comment


                            • Re: Newscasters from long ago (Part 3 of 4)

                              Part 4 of 4

                              Corporations own local stations today (sad!). Gone are the days of broadcasters like Cec Heftel who LOVED this business, this Industry, and his local community. As someone in the Industry, I feel strongly that it is a proud privilege of flicking a switch and becoming a broadcaster to serve the public. I still hold those values that were pressed upon me by Hawaii's storied broadcasters. De-(R)egulation – started in the (R)eagan era (error) – really dismantled things in a bad way. The former "ownership caps" like 7-7-7 (one owner can't own more than 7 AM, 7 FM and 7 TV stations, with no two in the same market, and without owning a major daily newspaper in that market) really allowed people like Cec Heftel to flourish and create KGMB as the community's station. Other rules like PTAR (Prime Time Access Rule) and FIN-SYN (Financial/Syndication) helped people like Merv Griffin and King World Productions be independent and have a shot at success, forcing local stations to open up evening air time to people other than their own network parents.

                              Jack Hawkins had a long run, at a time when the Big-3 still dominated and watched local news ... but KITV had to do something about their fall. Unlike KGMB, they didn't panic and weren't desperate to make sudden changes, then walk-back those changes. KITV had given Jack a long time to steady the ship, but no matter how hard he tried, he would never be one of us in Hawaii. KITV would quietly bring in someone considered local (only us in media knew it was Tim Tindall – the public was left guessing).

                              This preceded the Tina Shelton and Paula Akana era at KITV news.



                              --------> FINALLY, THE END OF THE STORY, HERE:

                              So now, finally, you've been patient and read this far – If you're not in the business I am privileged to be in, you have a good idea of the environment of that time. Here is what I add to Burl's well-remembered comment about Jack's final broadcast:


                              Burl's Post: "He was shown the door, I imagine for demographic reasons, and instead of a cheerful farewell, he launched into an intensely bitter and sputtering tirade that was painful to see. And hysterical. I think he did some car ads after that and vanished from Hawaii."


                              Jack Hawkins would look into the camera, saying: 'Starting next week, there will be someone else in this seat giving you the news. It has been great to know you and I've enjoyed my time here, but management feels that there needs to be someone "more local" – and well... you and I know that is just POPPYCOCK!'

                              Someone tell Jack that NO ONE uses the expression Poppycock in Hawaii. He just buffoon-ed himself on his swan song broadcast, and underscored KITV's decision.

                              As Lynne Waters looked down at her script, speechless, the camera dissolved to the wide-angle camera, the end music faded-up, the KITV copyright appeared on the bottom of the screen, and a floor director would walk up to the anchor desk and hand good ol' Jack a bottle of wine or champagne.

                              By chance, I would edit a project with Lynne 5 years later. I brought-up that last broadcast and Jack's use of "Poppycock." Lynne had nothing to say in response, which is just like Lynne: a class act.

                              I believe Jack Hawkins eventually filed a breach of contract lawsuit against KITV. I'd be surprised if he won or got any settlement.

                              Hope I did you proud, Burl... Rest in Peace, Sir.



                              P.S.
                              I am sure Bob Jones is gonna comment about all of this one day. I never met him in-person. I admire the guy – he should be back on mainstream TV news, ending with his often-controversial commentaries (which lean conservative, I think).

                              I have a lot to say about his recent comment on Academy Award® nominations last month – while in general, we all agree with him, he misses the point, big time. I will save this for another post.

                              Unrelated Sidebar: AMPAS moved the Oscars® earlier by 2 weeks, giving the TV team much less time to work on over 500 clips needed for all nominees announced in January. If you were alert watching the show this month, you may have noted how things were a lot simpler (less change of sets on stage; simpler clip packages). This experiment for 2 years was done to curb "campaigning" by nominees to Academy voters, which can get your nomination yanked, as a sound nominee learned the hard way 24 hours before Oscar-night. This has now been cancelled for 2021 - the Oscars® returns to its regular 'last Sunday of February' perch – and in 2022 moves a week later into March due to the Winter Olympics.


                              TRIVIA SIDEBAR:
                              KITV has a lot of firsts:

                              - First local news to switch from 16mm film to then-new Sony 3/4-inch U-Matic videotape (ENG: Electronic News Gathering). KGMB would follow (with Bob Sevey explaining that some viewers won't notice, but the picture will be clearer and more immediate as film didn't have to be developed).

                              - First station of the Big-3 to move their transmitter and antenna off their studio lot and onto a tall building. KHON would follow, so there were no more sights of 2 tall, near each other red and white TV towers in the sky where Nauru Tower sits today.

                              - After I left Hawaii, I heard KITV made huge promos (no, not "JACK HAWKINS is coming back!" - LOL) – KITV was the first in the nation to go Digital Broadcasting. This didn't mean stations HAD to broadcast in High Definition; it just mean the signal was digital. In fact, KITV news, to save money, initially had their news in wide-screen ED: Enhanced or Extended Definition, which is tech speak for "Widescreen Standard Definition."

                              - The theme music for "Newscenter 4" with Don Rockwell and Janet Zappala was taken from Tom Scott & The LA Express: "Good Evening Mr. & Mrs. America & All The Ships at Sea" (1974)

                              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5cFmCsCcLc



                              Keoni Hiroshi Tyler
                              Film & Television Director-Writer-Editor
                              Hollywood, CA.

                              The World's First Music Video VJ (1978) – The only in the world to smooth-mix videos back-to-back – years before MTV's launch in August of 1981
                              Returning to the stage in 2020 with @VideoSuperMix #VSM

                              Keoni Tyler's last project was preparing the new studios for NBCUniversal's syndicated yakker, "The Kelly Clarkson Show" on Stage 1 on the Universal lot.
                              He has several projects he is trying to move through the maze of film/TV development, and left his hometown of Hawaii for Hollywood in 1996.
                              He has produced and edited for the Academy Awards® and the Primetime Emmys®.

                              Twitter: @KeoniTylerPub or @KeoniFilmTV
                              Instagram: @KeoniTyler

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                              • Re: Newscasters from long ago

                                I have written a lengthy post about what he said – and searching my Aircheck library for that recording.

                                -Keoni Hiroshi Tyler
                                Hollywood

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