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TV Through the Looking Glass — By Ecumen Blogger Jim Klobuchar

The recent shuffling among some of television’s most famous anchors reminds us that this unavoidable news and entertainment service sometimes needs serious help.

I have no special wisdom to offer television in its travails, except to say:  It might have been worse.

For several years of my newspaper career in Minneapolis, I conducted a weekly public affairs television show and later a talk show on radio and an interview show on public broadcasting.

It was unpredictable and never dull.   One year the producer invited Howard Cosell, the learned and unfailingly wordy sports personality, to be my guest. Howard invariably wanted to be sure that if his reputation had not preceded him, he was going the spare the audience that void.   He decided to adopt an endearing attitude after my introduction and announced: ‘I’m absolutely thrilled to be back in these delightfully remote hamlets of Minneapolis and St. Paul.”

The years when I was part of the local TV mix were leaner times.  Programs were not heavily funded or staffed and didn’t derive the huge advertising revenue they do today, especially the massive bucks that professional sports harvests for them.

It was, by those measurements, literally primitive. The guest on one of my interviews was Vern Gagne, the former professional wrestler and promoter. He happened to be a good friend of mine despite my public suspicions that pro wrestling was a noisily staged production in which the hero, or at least the choice of the promoter, always won.

Gagne bitterly denied this as my TV guest. On camera he gave a demonstration of some of the popular holds in wrestling and puckishly gave me personal demonstration on live camera. One of them, which he called the “sleeper hold,” temporarily left the victim (me) unconscious. On live television.

They woke me up minutes later, just before the producer got through on a 911 call declaring: “Our star interrogator is down from a sleeper hold, and this is no drill.”

But that was well before my public affairs show when the big issue was whether the public should fund what would later become Metropolitan Stadium. The station issued an open invitation for its viewers to join the debate on my show in a public forum in the studio. We had a platform and space to handle the crowd, estimated at 18 or 20 folks, representing public opinion on the issue.

In the early evening of the taping a merciless rainstorm struck, and at the deadline for the taping there were only three people there, plus the technicians and the camera people, and the moderator — me. Hardly enough to call a quorum.

The producer said we couldn’t present three people as a reasonable cross section. “Only one way we can rescue this is to go around town when the downpour eases and find 15 people, at least, to make it creditable,” he said.

We found one or two volunteers among the early arrivals and drew straws to decide who went where to gather our quorum.  I drew Augie’s Bar on Hennepin in Minneapolis, which wasn’t that far away. I uncovered at least three or four volunteers, none of whom slurred words, a critical qualification.

Two of the women in the group dragged in volunteers from their sewing clubs.

One way or other, our group filled the allotted space. I called the debate to order, and they argued the question civilly. There were no open bottles, and they ultimately cast their preference.

Naturally, I’m sworn to silence on how the debate was argued. I can only tell you the viewer response was favorable, the stadium was built and Harmon Killebrew is in the Hall of Fame.

Don’t knock old time television.

by origineight