J.R. Ewing double-cross 32 years later

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.

By Ron Flatter

NEW YORK

The anniversary sneaked up on me today. I was getting ready for work around 5:40 a.m. Wednesday, trying not to wake up my wife as I scrolled through Google News on my cell phone to see what would greet me when I rolled into Fox News Radio.

Up it popped somewhere between Mitt Romney and the melting Antarctic. “L.A. Riots, 20 years later.” The headline from the Los Angeles Times continued. “Rodney King still gripped by past.”

Immediately the flashes ran through my mind. How I was just starting work at a new radio station. How I felt helpless as the news built like a tidal wave. How I fled Los Angeles to fly to Northern California. Yeah, that last one looks pretty bad. It feels even worse.

I had to look it up again, but April 29, 1992, was a Wednesday. That would make it I believe the fourth day KMPC Radio was in its all-sports format on which I was working as a part-time producer. That was in addition to my full-time work as the assistant sports editor at the Star-News of Pasadena, Calif.

My job at the station was basically to book guests and screen calls for the midday show hosted by Joe McDonnell and Todd Christensen. Todd had not yet joined the show; that was a whole other mess that was yet to begin. So it was just Joe, board operator Lew Stowers and me – the latter two of us being frustrated, on-air performers who were mostly without microphones.

I don’t remember one thing about that day’s show, but I do remember vividly something that was said right after.

Host Jim Lampley, working with “Wonder Boy Producer” Todd Fritz, was told early on that the jury was in with a verdict in the case against the four police officers charged with beating the living hell out of Rodney King. (For the uninitiated, Google “Rodney King” or go back about whatever else it was you were reading.)

As Jim was also the news anchor at KCBS Channel 2, he felt compelled to allow calls about the King case as much as those about the Lakers and Angels and Dodgers and whomever (that would be the Clippers and Kings). Those calls came to overwhelm the sports calls, and eventually the show simply turned into Rodney King talk.

Along the way Jim was asked if he felt there would be any abhorrent turn of events should the jury, God forbid, came in with verdicts of not guilty.

Jim followed with a response from which two remarks are seared in my memory. “I think the black community has bigger fish to fry,” he said. “I don’t think there will be any violence in the streets.”

Hoping Jim was right I was expecting to enjoy an evening off from work at the Star-News that evening. That proved fateful.

Once the jury came back with the not-guilty verdicts, it was not long before hell broke loose. (Again, Google “Rodney King” to see what happened next; I’m sure YouTube will fill in the gaps.)

Because I had had my own brush with the law not so long before – namely a drunken-driving conviction – I was without a driver’s license and therefore a car. So I was not going anywhere. A woman “just friend” whom I had been seeing in hopes of being more than “just friends” was not about to drive from her apartment in Santa Monica to mine in Glendale just so I could get away from the mounting chaos.

As I was channel surfing to follow what was going on via analog TV, I was also on the phone. At least one or two conversations were with one local TV sportscaster with whom I shared my darkening mood and the feeling I might be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This was a sportscaster with whom I felt a simpatico. After all, I was among other things the TV-radio sports critic for the Star-News. And sometimes I felt like I was the only critic who understood this guy – although in reality Tom Hoffarth at the Daily News and Bob Keisser at the Press-Telegram did, too. The guy had actually left L.A. some months earlier to go to work for ESPN. Amazing to know that I was once had that kind of kinship with Keith Olbermann.

Some time that Wednesday night the report came that the anger and the burning and the rioting were working their way from Hollywood toward Brand Boulevard and in the general direction of Glendale.

Now I felt trapped. Panicking – yes, panicking – I called a friend in Northern California and begged him to let me stay with him when I flew up there. Mind you, I had no flight booked. No car to get to the airport. No way of knowing if there would even be a way to the airport. I just had to flee.

I notified my bosses – Randy Hill at the Star-News and Len Weiner at KMPC – and said I was calling in sick and freaked-out for the next few days. For whatever reason they accepted this, even though they could have insisted I show up during this emergency.

There were no more flights out that night, so I booked myself on the first one the following morning to get to San Francisco or Oakland or San José or whatever Bay Area airport would land me and get me close to someone willing to give me a ride.

I stayed up all night – waiting for the riots to creep up my street. Riots that never got close to Glendale. Not that I knew that at the time. So the SuperShuttle got me to the airport hours early. The flight got out on time. While my friend was out of town on some sort of holiday I chilled at his house in his guest room and in his hot tub and called for delivery food and little else.

By the time I returned to L.A. the following Monday the city had calmed down. My apartment was still standing. I still had jobs waiting for me. And life returned to about as normal as could be expected under the circumstances.

My first day back at the newspaper I remember seeing one of my colleagues – André – as I walked into our newsroom on Colorado Boulevard. We caught each other’s eyes in a way that spoke volumes about our long conversations over beers and rides and whatever else. Long conversations about race.

“’Dré,” I said, “I’ve never been so ashamed to be white.”

“Ron,” he said, “I’ve never been so ashamed to be black.”

My shame was in part from the jury verdict but also the manifestation of my fear Wednesday night. How I fled town. How I was not there when others had to shoulder more than their share of the work at the station and at the newspaper.

I am pretty sure I did not feel the same shame as André, since I cannot put myself in his place. He said he was disgusted by the violent reaction to the jury verdict that was delivered two hours away in Simi Valley. I am sure Google got you to the fact the court case was moved out of L.A. because of all the pre-trial publicity.

Twenty years later I am not entirely sure where André is. I remember contacting him on Facebook, but since I abandoned Facebook I have lost track. Randy is writing in Arizona for FoxSports.com. After he and I worked for a few years together at ESPN Radio in the ’90s and early ’00s  I believe Len wound up programming a radio station in Florida. Todd also went through ESPN on his way to “The Dan Patrick Show.”

And I am pretty sure you are aware of what happened with Keith, who was actually instrumental in my winding up at ESPN Radio. About two or three weeks after the riots he called me and asked, “Do you still want to get out of L.A.?”

“That might be a bit strong,” I said, “but what do you have in mind?”

“I have been asked if I could identify candidates for a producer job in radio, and I have him your name. Are you interested?”

Long story endless I wound up at ESPN. For that I have Keith to thank, although I am also certain I lost his respect during my time there since we realized we were not as simpatico as our arm’s-length, critic-performer relationship allowed in L.A. He warned me he wore out producers. I can vouch for that.

I did, however, present him with a gift of sorts upon my arrival in Connecticut. It was a cassette tape of some old KMPC moments, including bloopers and other sundry curiosities. Among other excerpts on it was Lampley, shall we say a rival of Keith, with that “fish to fry” line and the incorrect prediction about the streets of L.A. that March night in 1992.

Finally, one thing about Rodney King that goes back to the Star-News. This story had probably become apocryphal within days of the riots, so 20 years brings it a grain of salt the size of what’s out in Bonneville, Utah, but it started out supposedly the Sunday morning that King was beaten 1991.

The tale goes that someone called the Star-News shortly after sunrise that day to say he had videotape of a guy getting the crap beaten out of him by some over-zealous cops. Whether it was the cameraman – George Holliday – or someone close to him I never heard for sure. Supposedly, whomever answered the phone told whomever called that the paper was not interested.

I am not sure if this inspires a prequel to “Sliding Doors,” but for me it has remained the punctuation mark to the Rodney King riots of 1992. For all the others, well, there’s Google.