Keep Up the Good Work!

...said the man with the cigar

In the fall of 1981, the movie business was slow for my business partner, Fran Burst-Terranella, and me. We were waiting for contracts to come through – we had leads but no commitments. She was lucky that she was married and her husband, Tony, had a good government job. Not so for me. I was hanging out in my $200/month upstairs, no air-conditioning apartment in Inman Park supervising my two cats, Noelle and Avril. There was no money to pay bills and I was on my own. One of our friends suggested I check at CNN for part-time jobs.

That’s me with Fran and our movie gear

As it happened, CNN2 was getting ready to launch and the systems were being tested in an “as if” way. The station was in simulation mode practicing “as if” we were already on the air for the big moment which was to be New Year’s Eve 1981. I was hired as a re-typist. It was exactly like it sounds – there were no computers then, just a row of IBM Selectric typewriters with special ball fonts that typed in VERY LARGE CAPITAL LETTERS on six carbon copies. No typing mistakes allowed on the scripts. There were three or four of us assigned to this glorious job each shift. I guess they hired me because I could type fast and I was already acquainted with the television busines having graduated from UGA with a degree in Radio-TV-Film just eight years before.

I was on the 4-midnight shift having worked all day with Fran trying to bring in new business. The CNN2 job was to take the paper scripts from the previous half hour and “re-type” them with any changes made by the director, the editor, and the news anchors. Then we’d distribute the paper copies to all the parties for the next half-hour segment - two anchors, director, technical director, floor manager and editor. It was a constant flurry of typing, twice each hour. The editors had it even worse. They had to construct visuals for the words the anchors were reading and then re-edit each half hour for changes and better visuals. Then for new stories they had to edit 30-second to one minute accompaniement for the copy being read.

The only down time was toward the end of the hour when we could see if anything interesting had come in on the teletype machine and then write and type up a short news story in case the anchors needed filler at the end of the hour. It was a real coup to find a story, type it up and hear it read by an anchor!

CNN2 ran short format news with segments from A-E in the first half hour and then F-J in the second half hour. It was a much more rapid-fire news format than regular CNN which was operating from a much bigger control room and studio down the hall. We were the compact operation.

One night around 11pm when we were in a commercial break, the door to the studio burst open and in came Ted Turner smoking a big cigar. He was accompanied by a small bevy of very pretty young women following him like ducklings. Ted breezed his way through the room shaking hands with people and calling out “Keep up the good work, keep up the good work” all the while waving the cigar around and trailing foul-smelling smoke. Then out the back door of the studio he went and was gone.

I worked at CNN2 that autumn and into the winter and was there on New Year’s Eve 1981 when at midnight January 1, 1982, someone flipped a master switch in the control room and we went live seamlessly onto the airwaves with a new concept of news, up to the minute, 24 hours a day. Nothing changed about the way we operated. We were a well-run spaceship having practiced for months for that moment. CNN2 later became what we now know as CNN Headline News.

Me working at CNN2 1981

My CNN2 days ended early in 1982 when Fran and I got a big contract for a six-part educational video series for the Presbyterian Church which required travel across the US and Canada. I was sorry to leave CNN2 but the hours were grueling and the stress was enormous. Working behind the scenes was exciting and I learned a lot about TV news on a big scale. It also affirmed my college decision not to work in local television after a summer internship at a big station in Atlanta. It was clear that advertising ran the station and it was all about eyeballs and ratings. I still have my CNN2 badge.

One other small memory from CNN2. We had a break room and late into my shift I would go there for a short dinner break with my lunchbox. The days of microwaves were young and I did not have one at home. So I put something metal in the machine and it blew up! The inside was burnt to a crisp. Apparently I was not the first one to commit that sin in those days and it was replaced by the station. I am sure they had a room full of them for occasions such as that one. After that I stuck to cheese sandwiches. “Keep up the good work,” said Ted cheerfully and I did.