Sometimes when “The Tech Guy” podcast is at its wildest, it reminds me of an old favorite local television program, but the memories of that didn’t get kicked into a higher gear until a couple of weeks ago, when I found out WBOQ in Gloucester, MA, had a familiar voice manning the morning drive, the guy who was once one of the voices of New England.
This story starts with the “TV Guide.” The real “TV Guide,” that is, the one founded by Walter Annenberg, not today’s magazine-sized “People” knockoff that knocks off IQ points when you read it, but the digest-sized one with the glossy pages of national stories enfolding a unique black-and-white print center that differed depending on where you lived. The Northern New England edition didn’t look like the Southern New England one, and differed from the New York City edition as opposed to the Adirondak edition and the Buffalo edition and the Schenectady edition, the eastern Pennsylvania edition, etc. They each had their own channels with their own programming and their own ads, no cookie-cutter cable series in sight. Most of this local programming showed up early in the morning. The coastal editions had boating and surf reports, the Midwest its farm journals, the mountains their hunting and fishing shows. And among the public affairs programs in the New England (later the Southern New England) edition was a little program squirreled away on weekend mornings called Ask the Manager. I got curious about that listing one fall day in 1978 and decided to tune in. It was a love affair that lasted two decades and a change of venue during which I had my mother record the show for me.
WSBK-TV38, an independent station, premiered this simple little diversion sometime in the 1970s with the concept of having the station manager, for a half hour each week, answer viewer questions via letters read by an offscreen entity. The offscreen entity was “the voice of WSBK,” the distinct baritone notes of announcer Dana Hersey. Once you heard Dana’s voice you never mistook him for anyone else. So many letters came in asking to see the person behind the voice that Hersey finally ended up on stage as well.
For its fans, “ATM,” as it was affectionately called, became a weekly habit occasionally disguised as a vaudeville act. Perhaps manager Bill Flynn wanted a static question-and-answer show, but later managers Joseph Dimino and Daniel Berkery loosened up the format so that testy viewers often shot off letters asking the guys to “stop goofing off and answer the questions.”
Those fools. It was the goofing off that gave the show its charm. Really, how was one to keep a straight face week after week plodding through the weekly letter (sometimes it was multiple weekly letters) asking when the Three Stooges were coming back on (or if they were on, when they would be shown at a better hour). WSBK’s premiere attraction in the Boston market was the broadcast of the Red Sox and Boston Bruins cames, but they were Boston’s telecast address for the Stooges for years, and when Larry, Moe and Curly were missing, the audience got restless without their fix. The next most highly requested show was Hopalong Cassidy, and those of you who have seen Hoppy endlessly bouncing along on the new digital subchannels probably won’t understand the frustration of fans who couldn’t understand that at that time William Boyd’s estate was holding up the reruns. Some days most of the letters were an endless litany of “can you get [fill in the blank series],” so to break up the monotony, some joking was inevitable and some weekends we got it in spades, whether it was Dana’s snarky remarks or Joe getting Dana in trouble for alleged snarky remarks or Dan tossing a mini-basketball in a hoop to make decisions. Sometimes it was hard to get to “the piont” (a running gag engendered by a typo in a letter). Once in a while, the letter routine was broken up by an interview with someone in Boston broadcasting or featuring some new technology: one show was about the then-new process of colorizing black and white films. Another introduced those new home video recorders in both flavors, VHS and Beta. (Yeah, we know which one won now.)
Sometimes the ATM joke was on someone else, mostly on Cliff Allen, the good-natured producer of the show, who was ribbed for eating too many doughnuts or being “yes-man” to the current manager. Basset-eyed Sean McDonough, the sports reporter, promoted to the reader’s chair when Dana took a sabbatical, brought deadpan, and often deadly, straight-faced humor to his
role. And lest you think ATM was a boys’ only club, Meg Lavigne, the assistant manager, gave as good as she got—but with Cliff as the reader, especially if Leslie Savage was sitting at the desk, the shows were a bit tamer. Often a bit of shakeup at the desk brought unexpected fruit. A couple of shows had Dana in the manager’s chair squaring off against Sean, and one totally undisciplined effort had Carla Nolan in the reader’s seat while she and Dana had trouble sticking to the letters. (Along with Dana, Carla contributed one unforgettable visual the day that Dan Berkery’s successor, Stu Tauber, was late for an ATM taping and walked into the studio still in his National Guard uniform. Both she and Dana promptly snapped to attention and gave him a salute. The crew howled.) One of the usually unseen fan favorites on ATM was Kim, the floor director. Kim was camera-shy and the letter writers and the cast were always trying to coax her on stage. Once she skittered out like a timid deer and fixed Joe’s microphone, a major victory for her fan club.
The cast’s family lives often crept into the broadcasts. Joe used to needle Dana about his small flock of chickens (“If there was such thing as a Gucci chicken, Dana would have it.”) and eggs from the Hersey flock often made their way to Dan’s ten children. The show followed Cliff’s bid for selectman and Kim’s trip on a sailing vessel. Dana’s wedding photos were shown on the program and later snapshots of his children, and I still wonder what Dan’s daughters said after the broadcast of an ATM where he complained about the girls’ predeliction for leaving training bras hanging all over the bathroom. I’ve yet to get that imagined, horrified “Daddeeeeeee” shriek out of my head.
Two of the show’s fun traditions were the annual “tour of the station” and the yearly Christmas show. The former was anchored by Dana, who brought the camera outside of the building to answer the oft-posed “who was Leo Birmingham” question (WSBK was located at 83 Leo Birmingham Parkway, an address I once could recite in my sleep, complete with ZIP code) to show people the plaque for Birmingham, a state official. He then proceeded to walk “us” through the station, showing everyone from the accountants to the film editors to the lady who ran the Chyron graphics that superimposed words on the screen. There would always be something goofy when he came to the manager’s office: once it was out on the roof. Not to mention there was the time Dana turned a cartwheel in the hallway…
The Christmas shows could be plain or sumptuous, depending on the year, and by the second half of the show all pretense of answering questions was gone and gag gifts were distributed—one year Joe got back his own tie, another year Dan was presented with a “Movie Loft” (Dana’s other WSBK gig, announcing the nightly movies) mug that, of course, as general manager, he had authorized the purchase of. Usually the Christmas show was done on the standard ATM office set, with its stock desk and chairs and the fake books at the rear, with a Christmas tree and maybe some garland in attendance—one year low-cal goodies were spread out on the desk, another year Dan lost all interest in answering letters and started singing Christmas carols instead—but one particular year Joe and Dana filmed three shows on a Christmasy set with an artificial fireplace, a Christmas tree, and two big wing-backed armchairs. They were drinking plain old Hood’s eggnog during the three shows, and by the time the third rolled around had such a fit of the giggles that everyone suspected it was spiked.
Another particularly amusing Christmas digression had “the guys”—Dan, Stu, Sean, Dana, and Cliff--sitting in a living room type set with a Christmas tree, just chatting what they were going to do for Christmas. Dana, of course, told about his usual pre-holiday expedition with a couple of close pals: they would go up to Freeport, Maine, have a nice dinner, and then, at midnight, do their shopping at L.L. Bean, which is open 24 hours. Dan would chat about his family’s “Christkindl” tradition: each one of the family would pull out the name of another family member out of a bowl right after Thanksgiving,
and then would be that family member’s “Christkindl” until Christmas, doing nice things for them like folding their clothes, leaving them a chocolate, helping them with homework, etc. Sean then admitted he didn’t give gifts, only money, and when the rest of the guys turned on him, Stu just shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I’m Jewish.”
ATM was a WSBK fixture for years, and even had its imitators, the most famous being rival station WLVI’s Meet the Manager, which had two earnest hosts and no character whatsoever. Alas, time marched on and WSBK was bought by the old United Paramount Network. The barebones ATM set became covered in posters for UPN programming and very often the entire show was devoted to promoting said programming. More often the show was pre-empted for sports, then dwindled to once a month broadcast, and then took one last gasp in January of 1999. Sadly, a couple of weeks later ATM’s longtime producer Cliff Allen died of a heart attack.
So when, via that “newfangled thing” called Tune-In Radio, I listen while commuting in darkness to “Mornings with Dana and Mugs,” somewhere in the back of my mind, hearing to Dana Hersey trade banter between traffic reports and Jimmy Buffett, I can still recall those vintage Saturday mornings and Sunday evenings eagerly awaiting a new Ask the Manager and wondering what they’d be up to this week.
Miss it.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
More ATM and photos here.
The memories began in the attic, but they continue to accumulate. I've taken them out to air.
A Song in My Heart
So this year's Hallmark Keepsake Ornament Dream Book did pop up a few days ago, and in the wonderful way of memory, a page was turned, and a memory showed up, this time in a plastic reproduction like the one above right.
Let's cue that calendar photo montage and go back, back, to fifty years ago on the clock, when Star Trek and Mission: Impossible were shiny coins in the vault of television, and a bunch of fifth graders tumbled through the glass-paneled classroom door in one morning to find something new.
I'm not sure what the deal was. As I understood as well as a ten-year-old can, the Hammond Organ people were, as a magnanimous gesture all about getting more music in the classrooms (read in adult terms: tax writeoff), giving one of their home organs to a fifth grade in each school. I can't remember if we knew it was coming, but one morning there it was in the corner of Mrs. Grady's classroom, near the teacher's closet where she kept her coat and her supplies, a shiny brown piece of furniture with white and black keys and multicolor tabs and slides (the latter called that we learned were called "stops"), plus pedals below, with a bench, and sheet music, and even a set of headphones so a child could practice and not disturb his/her classmates.
Naturally we didn't get to step right up to the beast right away. At next music class we were supplied with paper keyboards, so we could learn where middle-C was, and how to make the common C, G, and D chords with our left hand. When Jane Trahey talked about playing "silent piano" at New Trends High School in The Trouble with Angels——a.k.a. Life With Mother Superior——I knew exactly what she was talking about. Unlike Trahey, however, we eventually graduated from the paper keyboard to the real thing.
First came the "baby" songs, with limited notes that trained the fingers in their positions and simple chords—C to G, and back again—and everyone's ears echoed the monotonous "Merrily We Roll Along" until we could play it in our sleep, and then we each graduated to more complicated pieces.
It was a happy hour if you were released from your studies to practice on the organ. You sat squarely on the bench, your feet dangling down to press the long grey pedals that supplied the bass, your left hand in a tilted claw over lower C (or G, or F), and the fingers of your right hand dancing in (hopefully) graceful motions to make the melody. With the headphones on, you were in your own little musical world—which could turn embarrassing when the teacher padded over to you, regretfully to touch your shoulder and remind you not to sing aloud as you practiced. Our lessons didn't touch at all on the stops, but when I had those private practice sessions I learned that if you manipulated them it changed the "voice" of the organ, and eventually I memorized a setting that made the organ sound almost like a harpsichord.
In the late spring a recital was planned from the ranks of the virtuosos, and would be presented not only to other students, but to the parents.
I was a shy doe back then, one who hated being conspicuous. I feared speaking in front of the class, even when I knew backwards-and-forwards the subject I was speaking about (the history recitation that Laura Ingalls Wilder has to do in Little Town on the Prairie would have made me mute with terror). My voice would tremble, I would stammer, my knees would knock, and my heart would have put Trini Lopez's hammer to shame. When we did the sixth grade Christmas play, Mrs. Shaw was sympathetic and kept me behind the scenes, choosing the actual story we were to perform and prompting at rehearsals. But Mrs. Grady was made of sterner stuff and wanted all children to learn to be comfortable making oral presentations.
Mother claims that I did not know I was going to have to perform in the organ recital, and that my voice showed real surprise when I had to step in front of that "huge" auditorium audience—at least I had a list I could look at and clutch in damp fingers—and announce the performers. If I was indeed surprised, I was doing the best avoidance of reality ever, because Mrs. Grady even had the organ wheeled into her office to listen to our recital practice sessions without bothering the other students, and before the recital I was in there practically daily. I was struggling with "My Wild Irish Rose," which had a wicked D-major (or D-minor, I forget) chord somewhere in the third or fourth verse. This was not a child-size organ, but one built for an adult, and I could hardly stretch and twitch my hand into the extended claw that was required to perform the maneuver. She had me play it until I hummed it constantly, and when I hear that song in my head, to this day I hear it in the jerky cadences I gave it sitting up on the wooden stage, half blinded by spotlights, trembling with every movement.
Mom and Dad toyed with buying me an organ, but the price was prohibitive and there was no space in our tiny Cape Cod for another piece of furniture, unless it was one of those tinny "table organs" that sounded like the organ grinder's monkey was trapped inside it. Plus, I really preferred reading, writing and drawing to the thought of weekly lessons and practicing an hour every night. I think I might have disappointed my godmother, who was a keen pianist and whose lovely music wafted out of the open windows of summer evenings.
So the musical portion of my education finished, but on this spring morning the Hallmark catalog brought it all back for one more encore.
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