{"id":50980,"date":"2016-01-26T13:00:55","date_gmt":"2016-01-26T19:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=50980"},"modified":"2016-01-26T14:07:18","modified_gmt":"2016-01-26T20:07:18","slug":"30-yo-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=50980","title":{"rendered":"Hard To Believe"},"content":{"rendered":"

…that this was already thirty years ago<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I remember I had been working at KSTP for about a month; I’d finagled my way into a couple extra hours a day working in the control room during a couple of syndicated talk shows before the Vogel show. \u00a0I was on the board during the “Michael Jackson” show – the talk host, not the singer or the beer expert – when network news alarms started going off in the studio, and ABC Radio’s anchor broke in to announce the explosion.<\/p>\n

And over the next minute or two, everyone in the building piled into the control room, and I – the lowliest person in the building – had to tell everyone to shut up and get out so I could concentrate on all hell breaking loose. \u00a0And, since the board operator is the bottom line in the control room, everyone – the general manager, the news director, everyone – promptly did.<\/p>\n

I spent a chunk of the rest of the day trying to track down an astronaut to comment on the air with Don Vogel – and i found one (a guy from my hometown, an old student of my dad’s who eventually did one or two Shuttle missions).<\/p>\n

And it was one of those days I figured that broadcast news was what I really liked doing.<\/p>\n

Without all the national tragedies, of course.<\/p>\n

I think we carried Reagan’s speech live.<\/p>\n