realize so i reseated everyone who's here and i look forward to seeing you also i want to tell you about our next meeting which is our annual meeting will be may sixteenth here in the assembly room it's a wednesday night we'll be giving out historic house plaques will be giving out preservation awards and we just made arrangements for joe cornish to come and be our featured speaker joe is very active here with our organization but also in belmont as a whole for many here so pretty happy to get him back as a speaker to talk about the preservation of well but today i'd like to welcome tearing up and i'd like to have nancy come up and then give an introduction for her thank you television after this intimate look at how boston's television stations refracted the culture in unique ways and set high standards for creativity and excellence tarion are his work as a t v critic for the miami herald and the patriot ledger and was also a boston globe correspondent specializing in television or finance cases have appeared in columbia journalism review the new york times the boston magazine and in numerous scholarly journals a three time winner for boston t v critic in boston his magazine annual wife best of boston awards she was our still voted best columnist by the new england women's press association she has alarmed timelike sure in boston university's journalism department her book has been touted by the wall street journal as well as the boston globe so before i just and presenting terri and i just very young for your age and i know kitty when i was a customer service she was a legendary a designer in cambridge and when i first came to school up here i spent a lot of time her dress shop which was on brattle street because she designed the best dresses that you have ever seen and i have often wondered whatever happened to you i'm so delighted that you're still around europe you chose to come back here and yeah there was an assignment once and i don't even know how i knew about it but there was a mayor of i believe it was everett and he was obviously mentally ill and he got producer i can't do this and that was from her riches and she said she knew he had psychological and mental issues and she just could not see doing that and for every journalist there was a dilemma between doing what you're told to is somebody who was equally accomplished in the television this just stand let some of you may know there's been a longtime producer for channel five legendary is not over thirty years or forty years thirty show a series of slides times to my friend paul and we'll see if you can guess who that is ok live number one yeah that was too easy man i only have my list right her and she behind the scenes was always pushing the station in terms of the issues of diversity and she never really got the credit that she should have but the other person whom i also greatly  you really don't remember her i only wish you were here  rather was such an interesting guy we're standing as he was addressing the new england broadcasters association and i remember you know they got a lot of money for these speeches he spoke and then they opened it up to questions and he one child and not only has become a doting grandmother although i have i did happen to have brunch with her some time ago and she told me that there's a little bit of throw that would like to get back on t v and i can tell you if you saw what she looks with when the book came out both to celebrate the golden age of boston television and to bring people together in what was really a stylistic reunion i invited all the people that i used to cover and we had a wonderful turnout and i have i wish i had put it up to have a great picture of harvey leonard were very good friends and then three years rather three three weeks later because he i can't even remember it so but the first job i had was just as a t v critic which i did for about twenty years that's fascinating people just fine it was entertaining it was draining once i actually worked on the old good day show and the man of higher than you bruce morrison one said at the end of the interview are you a little crazy and i said you know it's a man you're hired because working in television was a very crazy life plan when you reflect on it you'll see it differently because i was so busy covering the events of programs and lose and scoops and all that stuff that i did not realize until many years later that boston misleading because it makes it sound like it's it's the golden age of only boston it was the best damn market in the country and it was only ranked six you know ahead of us for this new york was number one l a was number two the chicago was number three i forget who was four and five but we were only six and nobody could compare to the degree of programming  programming that we have a ton and there were i think several reasons one it's always been very unusual to have a t v station that was locally o and for this brief time in our history both channel five the first and later challenge center were the only locally owned stations in the country the rest were owned by corporations  affinity for the local community and because the times are so good particularly during the late seventy's and eighty's that was the second reason for the golden age when we had the so called massachusetts miracle that was money  salaries and this we shall see at some point it all engine but those were some of the reasons along with back that we had a station a public television station here to masterpiece theater victory gardens i can't even think of all of the shows and even though they did not have the degree of local programming that the other stations did they were they shined and in a way because they had such high standards they said people are for the rest of the stations in the market that was where their influence was so those are some of the reasons why  the golden age occurred in in boston so what were the characteristics of the goat how was it different well first it was what we call the merry were just some of the there was a part of that it was a personality driven programming than any other market i believe in the country indeed we have no less than four talk shows how many do we have today everything difference we also have a great deal of the original programming friends of staff and variable know what i'm going to mention next we had a a very creative show called park street under this is going back a ways and it was about a bartender in a boston bar who had a group of colorful people sitting around the bar telling stories does that sound familiar to the show  it was created by another legendary figure who saying probably go no name carl again he was the chairman of the board of westinghouse sometimes called group w television and he was the one who pressure relentlessly the f c c to establish what is called the prime time axis rule which meant instead of the networks controlling everything but the local six o'clock news  they had to have off network programming in the seventy seven seven thirty in the slot now many of the bad people in television got around it by having syndicated programming so they started the show called pm magazine and here of course it was cold and he beginning magazine in which local people would be hired would produce and star in a lot of local segments and then they'd swap stories with the other stations that westinghouse own was a brilliant and creative programming thing and it became an enormously successful for the non ten cameras they wanted to see what everybody was doing at the same time all over massachusetts and it was a brilliant way didn't have to be at the same time they were on the same dish on the same day and the y also sent eight still photographers and then they edit it down into an exquisite special called a day in the life and what was so wonderful about it you hampshire and above it if nothing else was very very charming and he was very good at persuading people to do things that people on the to do and finally henry fonda said well alright i guess i'll do it but only if you hired my friend that's one of the most amazing and successful prices they did and you know i haven't mentioned channel seven big that channel seven has always been the whipping boy for the market channel seven most played a part of the nineteen eighties actually opera star they got to host it and they would have the right segments as a quarterly show it was just six was it and they did lots of things like that and they sort of we critics were very very tough on the one point in the book i say  channel seven was never as bad as we all said and there was good as they occurred but they were very much a part of the golden age and they also were in ferocious competition with tennis for five and  of course made everybody put their best foot forward so so you have specials channel four hundred one that's one of my favorites on all sides of the time nobody was talking about old songs and they also had a special geared at  children it was about sexual abuse and that was a very bold thing because it was aimed toward young children how they were birthed without a frightening death and that was done by the talent to produce a name go that a number of our people went national at the end by the way natalie jackson tells me i had somebody to dispute this but she tells me she was offered a job at sixty minutes but others who did era during that time and i'm not sure we're still recovering from that in the year if race boston was not an especially in light market when louis walker became the first person of color to anchor the evening of the worst fluff occur channel seven of my favorite well two favorite things first and if anybody gets this well i don't have any money on the but does anybody remember the name of the sportscaster shit was actually a soap opera scholar the younger the restless and jeff ross who was a very innovative but somewhat florida news director thought i'm going to large it was a very very special phone and then if done right because stations were no longer locally local programming was gone and the times change we had a horrible oversexed recession in the early ninety's the fact i remember losing my job as a t v critic at the time but the layoffs o television were just awful and in some ways i don't think we have a really recovered from that but it was a twenty year period of just glorious television and we should all be grateful for it sometimes and i asked you do you think it back i think it's possible i think the time spent on bickley have to be very good and i think we have to have some real leadership like people in my trunk down and they go here and are you know the polls show that local television is still very important in people's lives if you check out to see the weather i think that's yes it's more of a current but i don't know if it was preceded what you're calling the golden age but i was growing up in the late fifty's the sixty's of every shareholder but you mention four five  that ever since bloody gate and we get no there has been an enormous distrust of our institutions we don't trust we don't trust government we don't trust the media there i think a certain amount of truth to the way the news report i mean if you look at it if you look at the you know the the aspects of the way bush has covered you know  both each got a call itself for their coverage of what's going on right now we need strong institutions and we need a strong responsible media the problem is if you look at the polls as to how many people trust again here it's very low  competition good or bad i think up to a point it's healthy it's first people you know channel five does something channel four is going to come and try to do it better but i also happen to think that too much competition  drives down standards and in a market that is so fragmented where everybody every station that pre nup workers is desperate for those rating points death has driven down you know but some hurt newspapers you know of the i'm working on the book now for somebody in which i want to put together a list of media contacts and they used to be these directories so if you needed to new one that they're all going to go to in the next year or so there over what this is going to there's a new new measuring service that i think they're going to go to in the next year or so that's that's a larger sample of how so but we do we do get you know warning you get ratings every morning and they study them and you know study them like they're the gospel or you know god knows i that was there are two points into coming here number one don't bring any liquor with you because boston police are on city hall plows and they are making an effort to make sure that people don't bring a liquor here to the boston city hall closet  california university research team says about fourteen percent of the female seagulls on an island off the california coast are lesbians the researchers call it the first solid evidence of widespread homosexuality among wild outside the golden gate early today but this train is doing and i haven't the foggiest twenty foot waves and there were the rescue operation on the new york stock exchange prices were lower despite a late rally trading was very active reported burger is prepared i think to talk turkey on inflation tony you know the current inflation problem has made it very difficult to get any bargains now it's  clear skies throughout forecast goes this way for tonight it's going to be clear it's going to be very pleasant and temperatures will be in the range of about sixty degrees around boston let's now take a look at that satellite tape taken from earlier today we and generally speaking well we'll get well we'll get to the moment we have a touchy button here it's sixty fifty two away up not the streams are rising a little bit concerned i didn't do that underwear well anyway we've got the cloud is moving off to the northeast and try my brand it's sunny and pleasant in the pacific northwest and it's cool with scattered showers in the clouds diminishing through southern california the satellite continuous tape loop from the first half of the day shows a cloudiness spinning off our coastline and also shows jack williams sitting there and it's cool in southern california let's take a quick look here at a satellite tape from the first half of today well let's take a quick look here at a radar picture from right now instead of the first half of today all the birds showing up sunny and cool and windy weather for thursday and friday that's good news we'll take the sun any way we can get it this is the way tomorrow looks tomorrow night is not supposed to be here right now well anyway it's going to be some blue sky on thursday and we're going to more of this blue sky on friday but in the meantime i'm trying to give you a satellite picture and i guess i'm not going to get it so maybe i ought to walk into the time warp here and just disappear or let's go right to well to like there's a satellite picture see the clouds they went away now has a clear sky we're going to get my hands caught in there to the west clears out for a while then more clouds let's take another look at that west coast situation at this time we see how live hello  we are not expecting a hectic day today but you know it goes the eight percent tariff imposed today by canadian fish on canadian fish on the by the commerce department list and business news can walk wherever you want you can you stand right there don we're going to send it right back to you in the garden and perry will give this gentleman an autograph it has been absolutely would you mind getting over here out should look rather inviting a little present from the n b c for the first time this season all in d c beaches including this one in revamped plus pools and ponds will stay open until eight to night three hours later than usual but still the big question tonight is