NEW YORK - November 21, 2012
It was a brilliant idea, if I do say so myself. It came to me 32 years, 3,000 miles and a lot of technology ago.
Actually, it was 32 years and maybe a week or so. I was working at a little radio station - KORV - in a little town - Oroville, Calif. I was the morning announcer and one of the evening, play-by-play sportscasters.
And so it was that Nov. 21, 1980, fell on a Friday late in the high-school football season. My assignment that night was to broadcast the Northern Section AA championship between Biggs and Winters at, believe it or not, a rodeo ground 45 miles away from Oroville in Colusa.
The bigger deal, though, on the night of Nov. 21, 1980, was the "Who Shot J.R.?" episode of "Dallas" was to be shown on CBS. For uninitiated or the young - or both - this was the night we would learn after eight months of waiting the answer to television's best cliffhanger question ever - a claim still justified nearly a third of a century later. Who shot and wounded J.R. Ewing at his office late at night in the episode that closed the previous season?
Being the skinny, 21-year-old schemer that I was, I wondered what would prevent me from having a friend on the East Coast tell me by 8 p.m. Pacific time whodunnit? Furthermore, what if we promoted it on KORV? "Don't wait until after 10 to find out who shot J.R. when we will tell you during our halftime news at around 8:45."
I contacted a friend in Washington D.C. who said, sure, he would provide the information at around 11 p.m. Eastern time - 8 p.m. Pacific. But just to be on the safe side, I contacted our wire service - UPI - to find out if it would be moving the story on the teleypes. I was told it absolutely would be coming over the wires - with bells ringing.
With all this in place I went to my boss, Vernon Uecker, to see how he liked the idea. He did not see how much benefit it would do the station, but he gave me the go-ahead to make it happen.
By now you must realize we did not have the internet, social media or cell phones to communicate. Pagers only provided phone numbers; no messages. It was not like millions of people were on Twitter ready to react to what was happening on "Dallas." I suspect if there were as many media choices then as there are now, far fewer than 83 million people would have been watching. But 83 million people did watch. Nielsen further says 3 of 4 TVs turned on those six nights before Thanksgiving were tuned to CBS to scratch an itch that became unbearable over the summer and half the fall.
In an era when a solar cell was a big deal to have on a pocket calculator, broadcasting a high-school football game on a small, radio station was similarly primitive. We would have "the" phone company (the Bell System monopoly had not yet been broken up) install a "dry pair" into which we would connect wires from an audio mixer and start calling the game. If we were too far from the station to hear our broadcast, we would just stop for 65 seconds during commercials and presume they were airing. To make sure the station was getting our feed, we could set it up about an hour in advance and then go to the nearest pay phone - sometimes a half-mile away - to call collect and make sure we were getting through.
So everything was set. Phil Getman, Walt Sena and I loaded up in the car and headed on the rural back roads to Colusa. I had left a note for the KORV evening crew reminding them that we were running the "Dallas" story. That if it was not on the UPI teletype, they were to telephone my friend in D.C. to find out who shot J.R.
We made it to Colusa in routine fashion if there is such a way. We were all talking about J.R. And we made it known (OK, I made it known) that we would have THE answer at halftime. Pretty soon the crowd beneath our broadcast location heard us talking about it, and the entire section of spectators nearby were in on my scheme. They, too, wanted to know at halftime the answer to America's mystery.
So we got to halftime, and I threw it to the newscast back at the station - whose signal was scratchy but coming in clearly enough for me to hear whether it was Sue Ellen or Bobby or Ray Krebs or whomever pulled the trigger.
After stories about President Carter and President-Elect Reagan made their course, the big moment neared. With God as my witness, I can still hear the voice in Oroville saying, "Yes, we know you're waiting to hear who shot J.R. And yes, we have the answer right here."
As he was saying it, I was repeating it for the benefit of the people in the stands in Colusa.
"And you want to know who did it?" he said. "Well ... I'm not going to tell you. Because I know you may be planning to watch 'Dallas' tonight, and I don't want to spoil the ending."
A week's worth of promotion was shot - just like J.R. As I told the crowd beneath me I didn't have the answer, there was more than a bit of frustrated reaction. Eight months of waiting would be extended by another couple hours.
I was seething, but I had to try and hide it. Not that I was any good at doing that when I was 21. I haven't improved on that very much in the past 32 years. I thought of sending Phil or Walt downstairs to call the station, and I may very well have done so. But we came away without any answer.
After the game we drove to a pay phone, and I called the station. It was then and there that I was told it was Kristin who shot J.R. By this time the night guy who moonlighted for us from his day job at a TV station in Chico had replaced the perpetrator of the don't "spoil the ending" plan. And by this time, "Dallas" was already showing on the West Coast. No use going on the air with it now.
I was numb for the entire drive back. I had the plan in place, but it was foiled because I had not spoken face to face with the people who were to put it into action.
There were actually two people at the station that night. One would eventually become KORV's program director after his predecessor and I were fired in the ensuing two years. His then-wife was a successful account executive selling commercials at the station. That was an early lesson on who has the power at even a small radio outlet. While I bear plenty of the blame for my own demise there, I am sure this guy helped light the gas.
The other person wound up leaving KORV shortly after to become the promotions director of the TV station that was showing "Dallas" that night in our area.
Me? I wound up back working at KORV eight months after I was fired.
While I don't get as boiled about this more than three decades later, the mention of J.R. and "Dallas" does evoke and refuel the memory. But it also reminds me that I have succeeded in radio and achieved what I set out to do three decades ago. The two guys at KORV that night? They are out of the business completely.
I would mention their names here, but really, why should I? I really don't want to spoil the ending.
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