This reflection goes way back to my seminary days, just prior to the beginning of my first radio shows in Richmond. As I’ve mentioned earlier in this journal, in my middle year at Union Seminary in Richmond I worked as an intern at the former WRVA-TV (now WWBT 12). Knowing that my path to ministry was headed, one way or another, into a media-oriented environment, Dr. Robert White Kirkpatrick had steered me toward an internship sponsored by the National Council of Churches Broadcast and Film commission.
“Dr. Kirk” knew the station manager at WRVA-TV and with his help, my summer intern program was accomplished. I was to work in the production department, starting on the floor crew. My direct supervisor was Bob Griggs who oversaw all studio production, from the two evening news shows to local commercial video production, from the remote broadcasts to his own very popular children’s show, “Sailor Bob.”
My job was primarily two-fold. One piece was to be the “floor director,” relaying commands to talent (“30 seconds, Doug”) from the director’s booth. (The director’s only view of the studio was through the camera lens, and since this was 1968, the talent didn’t have their own ear pieces… thus the need for a floor director.) Alternating with other members of the floor crew, I would run camera while another person took on the floor director’s job. Running camera was a natural for me, since I had a photographer’s eye and had no problem composing a shot, if not always the shot the director called for.
Production for the live news shows was pretty straightforward: same format, same shots night after night. It’s no surprise that many of today’s news programs are captured by robotic cameras, and computers can establish the shots for each segment. But back then, when color was new to the local stations and equipment was huge (heavy cameras on heavier pedestals and videotape machines as big as pickup trucks), it took human beings to run the show.
As I look back on some of the pictures I took back then, I remember how primitive it was. When the newscaster referred to an event, the primary visual might have been just a black and white photo transmitted via “wire,” trimmed with a paper cutter, and dry mounted to a piece of heavy black cardboard. While one camera was trained on the newsreader, the other moved to the “hod shot,” the photo mounted on a tall easel. The weather segment was little more than two or three maps with erasable markers indicating trends and temps.
Far more creative were the local commercials we shot in studio. And the “Sailor Bob Show,” a widely popular Popeye cartoon framing device, with our boss as host. Rather than spending words here to describe the program and its wonderfully personable host, just do a search for “Sailor Bob” Griggs, and look for segments of the show. You’ll smile, as kids and their parents did back in the 1960’s in Richmond.
Maybe sometime I’ll write about the other aspects of that sojourn in TV, including running camera each Sunday on a remote from a large downtown Baptist church, and later having an invaluable opportunity to direct a syndicated show from the booth. Suffice it to say, my TV internship that year was a solid foundation for my vocational future when cable TV opened up opportunities for some creative local programming, and when I was invited to found the Video Education Center at the Presbyterian School of Christian Education.
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