My Autobiography, Chapter 8: Broadcasting Memories, Part 5: Memorable Highlights from 3 Decades at WHEC Channel 10

by Paul Pakusch

It’s tough to come up with details about every single event and every single person you met while working a job in one place for a long time.  My time at WHEC covers almost my entire adult life.  So, my goal with this chapter is to present some highlights; things that stand out in my mind for one reason or another.

When I started at WHEC in August of 1982, I was entering my senior year in college at SUNY Geneseo.  The job was part time on weekends.  I was engaged to my college sweetheart.  For 32 years, I always humorously told people it was a college job I never left.  By the time I did leave, I had three grown daughters.

One thing about broadcast technology is that it is always changing.  When I think of various significant news events or things that were happening on the job, my mind pictures the equipment that was in the control room at the time.  In 1982, TV stations were still showing some programs on 16 mm film, but it was on its way out.  Many of our programs were on 2” quad tape.  We used ¾’ videocassettes for ENG news.  1” reel to reel tape was on its way in.  Master Control was switched manually between sources, and the video switcher had no presets on it.  Every visual effect had to be set manually.  By the time I left, everything was computerized.

The control room positions at the time included a master control operator, a video switcher, an audio operator, two camera operators in the studio, a videotape operator, and a character generator operator.  I ultimate did all of these jobs.   All of this was tied together by a director, which was in a different Union.  Control room techs were NABET and directors were AFTRA.  We also still did some film operations; when 16 mm films of shows came in, they had to be spliced to fit our commercial schedule.

In my first year and a half of full-time work, I was the vacation relief guy.  I worked the schedule of whoever was on vacation that week, so I was all over the place.  It gave me a lot of valuable experience.

A typical weekday morning schedule at first had me coming in at 6:00 AM and getting out at 3:00 PM.  We’d come in to broadcast live 5-minute local inserts during the CBS Morning Show between 7:00 and 9:00.  At 9:00, we had a half-hour window to do some production work.  One a week, legendary Rochester newsman Dick Tobias would walk over from WVOR radio to record three commentaries that aired during the 6:00 PM news.  Warren Doremus did the same on another day.  Lunch hours were from 9:30 to 10:30 for the first group, then 10:30 to 11:30 for the second group.  We were also getting ready for the 12:00 news during that time.  After the noon show, we might have more production, such as recording the Sunday Mass for Shut-ins, or an interview show called Newsmaker.

I think it was around 1985 that we started recording a morning show with Warren Doremus hosting.  It was recorded at 9:00 AM and was played back at 6:30 three weekday mornings later.

The evening shift started at 3:00 PM and ended at 12:00 midnight.  The afternoon typically had some production time, and then we got ready for the 6:00 PM news.  We’d then have dinner breaks, followed by time to “cart commercials.”  That means we transferred videotape reels of commercials onto a videocassette that would be played in a legendary broadcast control room machine called a TCR-100.  It’s tough to explain this thing; you’d have to see it yourself!

There was time for more production in the evening, followed by short news updates during prime time TV programming and then the 11:00 news.

Weekends were more of the same, but at a much more relaxed pace.  During overnights and weekend mornings, generally there were two people in the control room and eventually just one, running master control.

Through the years, the basic structure of the workday remained the same.  Over time, there was a lot more emphasis on news production, less emphasis on commercial production, and earlier workshifts as the trend in local TV news grew to have morning news programs lasting two hours or more.  Technology changed as everything gradually transitioned from film and analog to digital.

We did a lot of interview shows, between Warren Doremus’ morning show, Newsmaker, and noon show guest segments.  I saw a lot of famous people come through our studio, including Marie Osmond, Richard Simmons, Chuck Mangione, Pat Sajak & Vanna White, Patti Page, Peter Noone, Graham Nash, Mitch Miller, and so many more that I’m forgetting as I write this.  One of my favorites was Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary.  He was in town for a children’s show and they were promoting it on the noon show interview segment.  I was on audio that day.  He was the most wonderful person to work with as we got his audio set up.  My only regret is that I did not save a videotape of that segment.

I remember sitting in master control through special reports of significant news events.  The biggest had to be Sept 11, 2001.  I was working the evening shift at the time, so I was home when the planes hit.  When I did arrive for my shift that afternoon, I was assigned to stay in Master Control for 9 hours straight.  We truly did not know what to expect; NBC was broadcasting from New York City, which everyone knows was under attack, so we received messages from NBC that they could not guarantee they would stay on the air.  At the time, we did not know who had hijacked the planes and no one knew whether buildings other than the World Trade Center would be targeted.  So, we, like all NBC affiliates had to be ready to go on the air with something if we lost our signal from NBC.  We stayed on the air with coverage from NBC and did local updates.   That night when I went to bed, visions of buildings collapsing kept playing over and over in my mind as I tried to get to sleep.

I recall coverage of political campaigns, conventions and election nights.  I recall sitting in Master Control, watching Presidents be sworn into office.  I remember sitting through the Oliver North hearings and the Iran-Contra hearings; the space shuttle launches and landings; Challenger exploding; both wars with Iraq; DOS and Windows; Chernobyl; the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union; Tiananmen Square; Exxon Valdez disaster; Nelson Mandela’s release from prison; the spread of AIDS; construction of the Chunnel; the fear of Y2K (which I laughed all the way through until nothing happened); and the birth of the internet.  I can remember being in Master Control during all of these events.

I spent a lot of time on weekends running Master Control for sports.  I was never much of a spectator for sports, but I grew to enjoy watching golf and auto racing from Master Control.  I was assigned to Master Control for one Super Bowl.  It was pretty cool, knowing that everyone in the city and beyond was watching my work.  And no, it never made me nervous.  Switching a program and commercials was the same, whether 50 people or 500,000 people were watching, or whether the commercials being played cost $10 or $10,000.

I spent a lot of time on audio during my early years at WHEC.  Eventually I transitioned to video switching for about a decade.  I was a videotape operator for my entire tenure until tape was finally abandoned.  Everyone on the crew did studio camera until operators were displaced by a remote control panel.  I was a character generator operator sporadically; sometimes I would do it for awhile, then I would not be assigned to it for several years.  CG eventually became a source of frustration for me because of the constant going back and forth, “You’re a CG operator; no, you’re not a CG operator.” It reached a point where I had trouble keeping up.

In 2007, I was unexpectedly handed a job that took me off the control room crew for a good chunk of the day in my remaining years at WHEC.  The perk was that my schedule was 7:30 AM to 4:30 PM Monday through Friday.  The job was what my boss and I called, “Program Media Coordinator.”  Essentially, I was in charge of making sure programs we needed were recorded, and then made ready to be played back at the scheduled time.  I enjoyed it, and it was enhanced when Channel 10 added a weather channel.  We were required by FCC law to air some children’s programming on it.  It was my job to make sure those programs got on the air.

Business is business, and the purpose is to make a profit.  In spite of the FCC’s declaration that broadcasters are public trustees and must “serve the public,” the reality is that they are businesses and are in it for the money.  Like any business, they want to keep their expenses down and their profits up.  By the spring of 2014, WHEC had finally come out of 1980’s style technology with the installation of automation equipment for its Master Control system.  When a company invests in automation, it wants to reduce salary expenses.  I get that.  I harbor no resentment for the company wanting to be state of the art while keeping expenses down.  That’s how you earn a profit. 

There were a bunch of us who were making “top scale” salaries and seemed to be targeted during lay-offs.  By mid-summer 2014, the signs that I would be the next one to go were glaringly obvious.  No offense, but my immediate management did a piss-poor job of hiding that fact from me.  Training for the new equipment was under way, work was being taken away from me, and the rumor mill was in high gear. My morale plunged.  In mid-August, I cleaned out my locker and took personal items out of my desk. 

On Friday, September 5, 2014, I was simply told that the new automation equipment was working as expected and that my “position was eliminated.”  Fine.  At that point, all I wanted was my severance pay.  Once it was confirmed that I would get it, I was ready to walk out of the building.  Escorted, of course, because I was no longer an employee.    

Since then, I’ve pondered the fact that when one spends decades on a job and leaves or retires on their own terms, they get cake and accolades.  But when you are forced out the door during a cost-reduction event, you are erased. 

I went home that late afternoon and spent a couple hours catching up on my NABET treasurer bookkeeping duties.  Then I sent an e-mail to the executive board to tell them that since I was no longer employed at WHEC, I was resigning as treasurer. 

Then I booked a trip to Florida. 

In my next chapter, I will discuss how I rebounded from losing my job in my early 50’s.

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