A Kicker Has To Deliver (And That's No Tease)

The voice on the other end of the phone was filled with sorrow.

“He missed it? What do you mean he missed it?”

Sue Kawalerski, our future WCIX news director, was in Israel, covering the Gulf War with reporter/anchor Giselle Fernandez and videographer Mike Hernandez. But at that moment, she was not concerned with scud missiles or other imminent dangers. She was concerned with a missed field goal, by a kicker named Scott Norwood, that would have given the Buffalo Bills – Kawalerski’s beloved team – their first Super Bowl championship.





I hated to break the news to Kawalerski. That great Bills season – the performances of Jim Kelly, Thurman Thomas, et al – came to a crashing end with Scott Norwood’s miff. The lesson that day was clear: having just a so-so kicker really isn’t enough. A kicker has to come through when it counts. A kicker has to deliver.

So it is with TV news. A kicker, in news-speak, is the last story in the newscast, just before the anchor says goodbye and the credits roll. It’s generally the most promoted story in the show, and it’s not something that should ever be taken lightly.

Our consultants had lots of rules, when it came to kickers. Promote it early (pre-show headlines are preferable, depending on the video quality). Promote it in the mega-tease at the end of the first block. Promote it again. And again.

OK, fine… if the story is as good as the tease. But in the real world, the tease is often much better than the story. How many times have you waited to hear an item on your local news – an item that looks like a must-see – only to be disappointed by the short, vacuous, master-of-the-obvious voiceover that you waited nearly a half hour to see? How many times have you shouted “that’s it???” at your TV, when the kicker misses the goal posts once again?

I’ve dealt with writers who’ve written kickers long before the video was back in house. It was usually a by-the-numbers, insta-poof kind of story with meaningless phrases from a press release. Here’s the type of thing I mean . Fill in the blanks, kiddies!

“Thousands took to the streets of Downtown your-town today, for the __th annual ____ Festival. There was food, music, face painting for the kids… even a clown. A good time was had by all. The festival will continue throughout the weekend.”

Instant story… but there’s a problem. Let’s say thousands really did turn out. If it’s a major weekend event, one that you’d want to tease throughout the newscast (and in the preceding shows), then there’s a good chance many who saw the station’s cameras will tune in to see the coverage. Boy, are they going to be disappointed! Writers must… MUST!... look at the video, and try to put themselves in the place of that camera, seeing the event the way viewers would. The event wasn’t just fun. It was FUN! Sell that!

Superstar anchor John Hambrick understood the importance of kickers. He would often argue “THAT’S not a kicker”, when a producer would try to sell a story that didn’t deliver in any way. Hambrick loved to write his own kickers, whenever possible. His verbose writing style, which worked so well for him, didn’t translate to his co-anchors… meaning there was no way to switch anchor reads, should the need for that arise. But John earned that right, just as Ann Bishop did at Channel 10. He may have given producers heart attacks at times, but he understood that a poorly-written kicker… like a poorly-written lead… was a huge turnoff to viewers. A kicker that doesn’t leave the viewer feeling it was worth the wait, is like a field goal kicker sending the ball wide right in the final eight seconds of the game.

Just ask the Buffalo Bills.


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The Lyle File, Part 1

They say it’s not nice to say bad things about the dead. Yet I can’t talk about Larry #2 without presenting both sides of his highly-complex personality.

What a nice guy, with a big, big smile.

What a two-faced, divisive #@&*!

This is not going to be an easy post to write.

It will probably be best to break this down into more than one part. In this installment, I want to concentrate on Larry Lyle’s good points. I want to tell you how he was the first manager at the station to see my potential. How he moved the station forward. How he cared about both our content and presentation. How he made some really good hires.

But I warn you: the other side has to come out, too. Not because bashing the man gives me any pleasure, but because of things that happened under his watch, things that played a big role in WCIX’s history.









First, a little background. Long-time Channel 6 news director Dick Descutner was fired on July 22, 1983. News directors generally get shown the door when new owners come in, and in this case it was Taft Broadcasting that decided to inject some new blood into the operation.

Station management had been planning the move for a while. Lyle, who was the assistant news director at WTSP in Tampa, had made a couple of trips to Miami to meet with general manager Harvey Cohen. Six candidates vied for the job, but Lyle had the inside track. He’d already served as assistant news director at the Taft station in Birmingham, so he was a known quantity. Lyle also spent time at the pre-WSVN Channel 7 in Miami, so he knew this unique market. Sort of. South Florida had changed radically in the nine years since Lyle’s Miami days, something it took him a long, long time to realize. Lyle accepted the WCIX news director job on July 21, 1983, and began his 2 ½ year reign on August 10. He started off with a bang.

“Taft is committed to do news, and wants to improve the quality substantially,” Lyle told the Miami Herald. “They’re prepared to spend the money. A lot of changes are going to happen.”

One of those changes involved my role at the station. It took Lyle just one week to see what Descutner missed in more than three years: that I had potential beyond just being a Chyron operator and film archivist. Just one week into Lyle’s regime, he gave me a new title: associate producer. Well, it sounded good, but I still had to run the Chyron every night. Two weeks later (September 5) I started writing news cut-ins, and by October I was also producing the Community Close-Up news segments. In November the challenge was to produce a live debate between Miami Mayor Maurice Ferre and challenger Xavier Suarez. (Mayor Ferre lost his Rolex watch that night, and we turned the station upside down, trying to find it!) In December I worked with Mayco Villafana in putting some news shows together, and when Villafana went on vacation on January 2, 1984 (the night the University Of Miami won the national championship, at the Orange Bowl), I made my solo producing debut. Air Florida’s troubles dominated the news that week, which gave me several easy-to-decide leads. That first week went well, and in short time, I had made the leap to “producer”. There to offer support and congratulations was Larry Lyle. I thought he was a great guy. I thought I was going to love producing the news. Yeah, right.




(Click image to view full screen)


I don’t know a lot of what went on behind the scenes. I don’t know what pressures Lyle faced or why he went on do some of the things he later did. I do know the way I viewed producing the news was being shaped by his words, his memos, his critiques, and his actions. I watched him slowly torpedo the improved morale around the newsroom, for reasons that I’ll probably never understand. The man with the big smile who seemed to really care about The Ten O’Clock News was living a secret life, and bringing those demons to the office with him. I would truly love to tell his story without recalling any of those demons, but I can’t honestly tell his story… or mine… without presenting some of the rough stuff. So bear with me. There is more to come.

Sorry Scripts (Part 1)

“You’ve got to walk it like you talk it”: That was one of the first rules I would teach young writers that would come into the WCIX newsroom. News writing has to be conversational. Period. No exceptions.

When I first started my transition from electronic graphics to news writing, reporter Dave Levine taught me an important lesson. I had written a 20-second story about a child who was electrocuted in a pool. My information came from the Associated Press, which sent across information that the electrical current had somehow “coursed the pool”. I included those words in my story, prompting Dave to pull me aside. “What does that mean – coursing the pool,” he asked. I tried to explain the meaning of the words, but that’s not what he was asking. He was trying to point out that nobody speaks that way. If you, the viewer, has to stop and think about the words that were just spoken, you’re not going to be able to pay attention to the next line. Or, the next story.

Our job is to explain what we mean in an easy-to-understand manner, while making it clear to the viewer why he or she should care. If we’re writing the lead to a reporter’s package, then it’s our job to set it up – not give the story away – while giving the viewer a reason to keep watching. In other words, don’t follow the examples I’m about to show you. Don’t try this at home, boys and girls, and above all, don’t try these at work!




(Click images to view them full screen)


This 1985 lead to a Daisy Olivera package breaks several news writing rules. First and foremost, it gives the whole story away! There’s no reason for anyone to keep watching! Secondly, it’s written in a passive voice, not an active voice. If you’re going to start a script with the words “this Saturday”, it better be the Saturday coming up, not the Saturday that just passed! And then there’s the little matter of this lead being basically one long, long, long, 41-word sentence. Needless to say, I had to toss this aside and start from scratch. Next!




Well, at least this one is short, but that’s where the compliments end. “Another weekend and with it a fine array of fun things to do and see” – who ever says “a fine array of fun things”? Have you ever used the word array in a sentence? “Here’s what our entertainment editor Don Stotter suggests for the tourists and residents”. Exactly to whom is he speaking? Could this possibly have been worded in a clumsier way?




I remember this one well. I think Joyce Evans meant to say “scrambling”, not “scrabbling”. Then-producer Mayco Villafana looked at the line about the shortage of cars causing confusion, and then told Joyce, “your lead is causing ME confusion”. (To be fair, Joyce was a good writer who was just having a bad day. I think that’s probably the case with most of these examples.)




Former reporter Mark Tudino really topped himself with this stinker of a lead. “A rash of rock-throwing incidents has cops on the Florida Highway Patrol...and surrounding agencies are now going to help in trying to find out who’s doing the throwing.” Not only does the first part of that sentence make no sense, but nobody I know would ever say “a rash of rock-throwing incidents”. If Villafana was still at the station, he would have told Mark “you’re giving ME a rash!”





And then there’s this lead to a movie tie-in that was left for me by a special projects producer. Not only is it painfully long (two pages!) but it’s totally convoluted and boring. It also includes the line “The answer is… maybe yes”. Which is it, maybe or yes? Did I rewrite this bad boy? The answer is DEFINITELY yes, not maybe yes!

To those whose examples I’ve cited: remember this is all in fun. Your scripts are the reasons why there are producers and editors. Thanks for keeping me employed all those years.

Next week: more “sorry scripts"... and the one and only John “Hambone” Hambrick.

I-Missed-It News

Even the most experienced producers, assignment editors, and reporters blow it occasionally. Anyone who lived through CBS’ woeful coverage of Princess Diana’s death knows that even the big boys choke on a big one from time to time. No one’s immune. Certainly not me!

I always felt I had good news judgment, something you either have or you don’t. It cannot be taught. Yet in May of 1987, I made one of my biggest blunders. It was a Saturday morning, and the Miami Herald had just published their expose about presidential candidate Gary Hart, and his no-longer-secret tryst with celebrity wannabe Donna Rice. It was a salacious story. I hate salacious stories! The Ten O’Clock News was not a tabloid, and I was adamant about it. Still, the assignment desk sent our only weekend reporter out to pursue this ode of infidelity, and the manager on duty agreed it was the story of the day. Everyone agreed, except me. I’m glad I was overruled. Boy, did I blow it! I hated the freaking story, but the public gobbled it up, and soon Gary Hart was out of the race, throwing the democratic challenge for the nomination into turmoil… and ultimately handing the White House to the first George Bush. Yeah, I’d say it turned out to be an important turn of events. I’d say that was probably my biggest brain fart in my nineteen years in the newsroom.




(Gary Hart & Donna Rice:
Too Much "Monkey Business")


But I wasn’t alone! I’m about to name names, which doesn’t mean these producers weren’t good at what they did. It just means they, too, blew it on occasion. First, Rob Puglisi… and what came to be known (thanks to Dangerous Dan Slade) as “The Killer Cheese Incident”. It was June 14, 1985, the day a TWA plane carrying 80 Americans was hijacked by Lebanese extremists. A U.S. Navy diver was murdered; dozens of Americans were taken hostage, and held captive for weeks. The story was quickly unfolding, and was turning into a huge international crisis. How much time did it receive on The Ten O’Clock News that night? Thirteen seconds. Thirteen seconds!! The ultimate afterthought, after five minutes devoted to a Jalisco cheese recall that didn’t even reach into South Florida. After the newscast, a frowning Solon Gray spoke up and said, “Rob, I’m not pleased with our coverage of the hijacking”. It was the talk of the intern party that night at Monty Trainer’s, and of course the hijacking/hostage crisis would go on to dominate, and lead, the news for weeks. Hindsight is 20/20, they say. Rob made a lot of good decisions, but that sure wasn’t one of them!




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Now turn the page to June 13, 1994. Evy Woods rushes out of the feed room, to inform us that a body has been found at O.J. Simpson’s home. Howard Bernstein, who was producing the 5PM show, turned to Evy and told her, “Okay, I heard you, keep me informed.” A little while later, he added the story to the show… in the 6th block! With all the other celebrity news! Evy came out and argued her case, telling Howard that she thought the story deserved to be higher in the show. Evy would have made a good attorney, because she convinced Howard to move the story up, and to book a satellite window to carry a live report. Good move. (Of course, the Associated Press going ga-ga over the story might have helped convince him as well.)

It all reminds me of a line from Steve Boyer, the one-time WCIX intern who worked his way up to become assignment manager in 1988. After we got completely killed by the other stations on what turned out to be an important story, Boyer turned to news director Larry Wallenstein and said, very calmly, “We out-thunk ourselves”. That line has stayed with me all these years.

The truth is, all news people occasionally outthink themselves. It’s how we recover, and how much we learn, that determines our worth to a news operation. It’s how we grow, evolve, and how flexible we allow ourselves to be.

I still hate that sleazy Donna Rice story.