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Sports memories
--Bruce Macgowan
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I started my broadcasting career in the mid-1970s, a short time after graduating from the University of Denver in Colorado. One of the first jobs I had turned out to be perhaps the best experience I ever enjoyed in broadcasting.
In the summer of 1976 I went to work as a sports anchor and general news reporter for KIEM TV in Eureka, Calif., in Humboldt County. At the time, many TV news departments were still shooting their stories with film, so you had to learn quickly how to shoot footage for news and sports, and how to edit.
We only had a five-person news staff, but we were responsible for putting together two half-hour news, sports and weather programs each weeknight, one at 6 p.m. and the other at 11 p.m..
I remember my starting salary was $12,000, which doesn't sound like a whole lot now, but it went a long way in 1970s Humboldt County.
Eureka was primarily a logging and fishing town, and nearby Arcata, which is 8 miles north of Eureka on the other side of Humboldt Bay, was where I chose to live. Arcata was and still is a college town, with Humboldt State University up on the hill, east of Highway 101.
We also had six high schools to cover: two in Eureka, two south of town in Fortuna and Ferndale, and two on the north side of the bay, in Arcata and nearby McKinleyville.
So we had football, boys' basketball, high school baseball, Division Three football and basketball at HSU, and just south of Eureka, there was also the College of the Redwoods, a junior college that had very good football and basketball teams.
In addition to this there was a semipro baseball team, the Humboldt Crabs, that played in the old Arcata baseball park right next to City Hall; a small pro stock car racing track; several local golf courses; and lots of recreational sports nearby.
On weekends, armed with a camera and lots of film, I would go down about twice a month to stay with my folks in Marin and cover a Raiders, 49ers, Giants, Warriors or Cal game. I would have a friend hold the camera for me in the locker rooms while I did post-game interviews, and he would also shoot any footage we might need from the sidelines.
We also did three Super Bowl trips, to Pasadena, New Orleans and Miami, and I would do daily reports over the telephone each day during Super Bowl week.
We had a great group of energetic and enterprising young people to work with, and I kept in touch with several over the years after leaving the station. Since I was in the Bay Area quite a bit on the weekends, I developed some excellent contacts and found out about opportunities in places like Sacramento, Knoxville and Spokane, but my big break came when I was hired to be a weekend sports anchor and weekday reporter for KPTV in Portland, the TV flagship station of the NBA Portland Trailblazers, who were just coming off their one and only NBA title.
The best part about working in small-market television in Eureka, however, was that I had to learn a lot of different skills: writing for TV, filming and editing, interviewing, producing and anchoring.
Much as I loved living in a beautiful part of Northern California, when it was time to move on in my career I was eager to get involved with another adventure in broadcasting. After working in Portland in 1979, I later worked in radio in Seattle and New York City before coming home to the Bay Area just in time to cover the 49ers' first and perhaps most memorable NFL title run in 1981.
The opportunity to work at KNBR came several years later and lasted almost two decades. I still feel blessed to have fulfilled the dream of getting to work in my own backyard.
The broadcasting industry has gone through tumultuous changes, particularly in the last 10-15 years. I would never discourage anyone who was so inclined from trying to get into the business. I would caution, however, of the capricious and unpredictable nature of what goes on behind the scenes, the crazy hours you work (lots of weeknights and weekends and holidays), and the lack of job security for those in broadcasting.
Many people get into the industry by accident; some get into it as early as high school and others fall into it naturally after working in a related field.
I have to say that knowing what I do today, after nearly four decades of professional work, I wouldn't trade any of the experiences I've had or the people I've been lucky enough to have met or worked with along the way. It's been a wild but exciting ride.
While working those three years in Eureka, we had our share of unusual situations that happen in the minor leagues of broadcasting. One time when I got ready to go on for a segment on the 11 p.m. news, I had three film stories lined up and they were going to be the bulk of my six-minute segment. I called for the first one and it never came up. In my earphone I suddenly heard the director say, "We've got some clogged heads on the film machine. Just keep talking!"
Well, I had no choice, but unfortunately I didn't have a lot of material in front of me other than my lead-ins for the other film stories. I filled in for about 30 seconds, hoping they could get the problem taken care of, but when I called for the second film story, I got the same response - dead air, a black screen and another explanation of "clogged heads," on the film chain.
When the same thing happened after I called for the third film story, I lost it.
"Well folks, I don't know what to tell you. We have no sports stories to give you tonight because (and I angrily looked off-screen in the direction of the glass booth across the studio, where the director was sitting) we apparently have some 'clogged heads' in the control room!" I said this with a great deal of almost theatrical exasperation.
"I don't know what else I can tell you. Gene will be back to wrap up the news after this break, and I'm hoping that our commercials will not have the same problem with 'clogged heads' as my sports stories did."
Within a few minutes a load of apologies were forthcoming from the young director but the news director and my friend Gene Silver (who was also our anchor) looked at me and said, "Geez, Bruce, that was pretty harsh." And he was right.
It was probably the most embarrassing and unprofessional moment I've ever had on the air, and I later apologized to the director, who was very understanding. The young man, who was only about 23 years of age, kept telling me, "Don't worry, you were right. It was my fault."
The fellow, whose name is Rich Nicolas, was actually one of our top young talents behind the scenes, and the problem was not completely due to him. Somehow some residue got onto the film chain that made it impossible to play any of the stories in my segment. Rich went on to have a really nice career in broadcasting, working for many years in TV, behind the scenes in Sacramento.
And I learned a valuable lesson that day: Never lose your cool on the air!
Bruce Macgowan is a longtime radio-TV sports announcer who has worked in Northern California for almost all of his near 40 years in the profession. He currently works at KGO radio
and co-hosts a syndicated radio show, Sports Econ 101, on the Sports Byline
radio network. Bruce has been a frequent contributor to the Ultimate Sports Guide.
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