WHILE WORKING AT WNEW, I was reasonably happy, but it did not have the kind of challenges that WTTG had, so I was not overly charged up. New York City can overpower you and you can easily feel worn down after a while. Many things at WNEW were now running smoothly. Metromedia continued to provide us with programming and we benefited greatly from their aggressive syndication buys. Our ratings were always very good and our news was now a shining star in our program line up. In New York, the sales game is highly competitive and filled with a lot of bright people who seem to know every little cubbyhole in the city and hundreds of ways to make a sale. Even though the job wasn’t as challenging as I would have liked, I was happy that we developed a competitive, solid, and successful sales team and we had the revenue to prove it.
In 1969, I became very interested in Muscular Dystrophy, and I wanted to become a part of this special group of people who were trying to find a cure for this debilitating disease. I went over to meet with Jerry Lewis and then met with Bob Ross, who was the MDA Executive Vice-President. They asked me to join their board, and I felt really good about it. I gave them facilities for free at the station and added television stations across the country to carry the telethon. I am proud to say that I have been on the MDA Board since then, having been President for ten years, Chairman of the Board for two years, and now Chairman of the Executive Committee. MDA is a fabulous organization that has been doing great work for so many people.
We also came up with a unique question to ask parents every night at ten o’clock. It was quite simply the following: “It’s ten o’clock. Do you know where your children are?” As simple a question as this is, it got a lot of parents taking note of where their children were. It was so successful, that I even used it years later when I was at WCVB in Boston.
By the end of the second year, I felt really good about our success at WNEW. However, something was missing in my professional life, and I was not exactly sure what it was. I was making very good money, running a television station in the number one market in the country, my family was well taken care of, and I had a limousine driver to take me around. Not bad for a kid from Altoona, PA, I used to say to myself.
There was one thing, however, that I could always count on: my old friend Al Krivin. He would continue to bother me on a regular basis no matter what I did. He was always coming in to the station complaining about something. His complaints were constant. He was always unhappy with anything I did, and certainly would never acknowledge any of my successes. It seemed the more positive press I was getting, the more steamed up Al Krivin would get.