A Producer's Nightmare: The Critique!

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One week after taking on the responsibility of Managing Editor, Larry Klaas started a new Channel 6 tradition: critiquing (or was it nitpicking?) the previous night’s newscast. Klaas (who was Larry #1 in a succession of three Larry’s that would be in charge of the news in the ‘80s) usually made an effort to be fair, but everyone who’s ever been around a live program knows that things can, and do, go wrong. All the Monday Morning Quarterbacking in the world won’t change that fact. I would take Larry #1’s critiques over Larry #2’s any day. (Larry #2 was a real piece of work, and even though he’s no longer alive to defend himself, I’m going to have to tell his story eventually.)

It’s nice to see the names of my old friends Nick Bogert (Mr. Cubs fan), Natalie Segal, Marianne Murciano, Dave Levine (who taught me a lot about conversational writing), Frank Lasko, Bill Lobean, and others. I was fortunate to run into both Bogert and Segal in the past few years.

While The Ten O’Clock News may have been a joke on some fronts, we had some talented folks who gave their all day in and day out. That’s why critiques can be so demoralizing. It’s great to get feedback, but you’ll notice there’s no criticism of the anchorman in here. I do agree with a lot that Larry #1 said (and not just his praise of my crafty Chyron work). We did need to pay more attention to things such as half track and match cuts. The best critiques are the ones that offer solutions and not just criticism. Little did we know it at the time, but things would get a whole lot worse, before they’d get any better.

Larry #1

This memo signaled a much-needed change in philosophy, when it came to management of The Ten O’Clock News. With our only newscast being at night, and with News Director Dick Descutner working only daylight hours, something had to be done to strengthen our nighttime management situation. Harlan Levy (the assistant news director) was simply too ineffectual to get the job done, and after yet another Larry Klaas memo complaining about him, Descutner decided to make Klaas the managing editor, and “reassign” Levy.

This, as you’d expect, presented problems. Klaas was both the anchor and the managing editor. When news would break, or when the producer would make any kind of in-show call, it was Klaas who had veto power over those decisions… while the show was on the air! Klaas was smart and quite competent, but he also had a gigantic ego, and many times there was just no reasoning with him. Still, it was a big step-up, news-wise, from what Harlan Levy offered in the evenings.

A year and a half later, Klaas was let go, replaced on the air by Barbara Sloan. Descutner would soon be out the door as well, but that’s a different story for a different day.