Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1535953
Summer 2025 – LOCAL695.COM 9 slowly made his way down the aisle to the orchestra and asked if he could sit in on the flute. He played the entire show. It was Meredith Willson. I played in the pit orchestra for The Music Man with Meredith Willson! The show revolves around a con man selling band instruments to the Iowa townsfolk. He plans to teach the boys in his band how to play using "the think system." At the Emmys last September (congratulations to all the nominees and winners), I was having a lovely lunch with some even lovelier coworkers/friends when one, Joey Adelman, asked about an event that happened long ago. He wanted to know if a nearly forgotten story of an A2 misadventure was truth or legend. As the story goes, Murray Siegel, A2 Emeritus, and his accomplice, decided to set all the vocal mics for the live, three-hour American Music Awards by using "the think system." They … um … we … put down no marks on the Shrine Auditorium stage. Needless to say, it was quite a challenge. Like The Music Man, in the end it turned out fine … well, except that we didn't have a marching band. In hindsight, I guess it is both truth and legend. I've mentioned my start at KTLA in many of these columns. Recently, I was in a discussion about retirement (as in, why don't you stop working and let someone else have a turn), and the subject of institutional knowledge came up. Everyone has a different experience getting into our business and learning the craft. In the late 1970s, when I began, there were still a lot of staff jobs at the networks and independent TV stations. KTLA had more than one hundred engineers to keep the station on the air, tape the shows that were produced on their stages, and maintain all of the equipment. In 1979, twenty- five of those engineers had worked there for more than twenty-five years. The most senior engineers in that group started in the 1940s, the newest began in 1954. All worked with Klaus Landsberg. Even as a complete novice, the vast institutional knowledge affected me in a big way. I am not surprised when even today, I tap into some method or detail or process or even a phrase that I learned from those men like "pick up that sleeping beauty" IYKYO (If You Know, You're Old). In short, the lessons I learned allowed me to begin a career that has lasted forty-five years. Of course, my education continued in the freelance world, especially when I joined the group doing specials and award shows. To this day, we continue to invent ways to make shows work. Usually, a product of aggregate knowledge and more than a little experimentation. Even now, I love to learn new ways, and when I see someone younger applying the tried-and-true methods, I think about the audio engineering DNA that made that happen. I wish I could let those KTLA teachers know how much they have contributed. Last May, I had my picture made with fellow Local 695 forty- year pin holder, Tad Scripter, at the Academy of Country Music Awards, in Frisco, Texas. We captioned it: 95 years of television experience in three square feet. Broadcast TV has existed in Los Angeles for just under eighty years (yes, experimental stations started further back in time). Tad and I have participated in more than half of that history since the first station, KTLA, went on the air. Somewhere in my credential pile, one from the 22nd ACM's at Knott's Berry Farm is a mathematical reminder. We recently did the 60th. Man, it goes fast. I am grateful to be able to write and share these memories, in some little way, it is my contribution to the institutional knowledge of making entertainment television. I'm sorry that I didn't get to share any of these tales of musical adventures with grandpa Dave. It would have been great fun to sit him down in front of a live orchestra. I'm sure he would have conducted along. Then, we could have gone out for a bowl of soup. ACM's 1987 and 2025 with the signature pink tape pin