Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Five 'Originals' Reminisce About CNN's Early Days
Source: Rocky MountainTelegram Wanna hear some memories from the early days? This article is packed with them. Below are just a handful of quotes from the article:
- JANE MAXWELL,Senior vice president of special events: An assassination attempt had put Vernon Jordan in an Indiana hospital. On June 1, President Carter was scheduled to visit the civil rights leader. Maxwell persuaded NBC's local affiliate to sell CNN its live coverage — then successfully battled the three broadcast networks (who would air the taped footage later during their nightly newscasts) for shared access to the only video line out of Fort Wayne."From that first hour on the air, we were a player," says Maxwell, 52.
- WILL KING,Director for International News Operations: "There truly were routine rumors, 'Oh did you hear? They don't have enough money to cover payroll this week,' " King, 53, says of the early on-air days. CNN never became insolvent, but some employees still rushed out at lunchtime to cash their paychecks. "There was sort of a quiet agreement among some of us that if worse comes to worst and they need some people to just stick it out and work without pay for a while, hey, we're raising our hands."
- WENDY WALKER WHITWORTH,CNN Executive Vice President and Senior Executive Producer of "Larry King Live" and "Nancy Grace": Whitworth, 52, laughs as she recalls unpacking the swivel chairs inside the new network's Washington bureau with reporter John Holliman. "They were some of Ted's old furniture from Atlanta. We were in a bureau with nothing in it but these two chairs, and we were just laughing and laughing."
- RICK DAVIS, Executive Vice President, News Standards and Practices: "I remember saying to somebody two weeks before we went on the air, 'We need to say to somebody that we should not be going on the air June 1, because we're not ready,' " says Davis, who quickly decided Ted Turner was right not to flinch. "Was it great television news in the first day and the first week? No, but we were on the air. We said we were going to be, and once we flipped the switch, we haven't stopped."
- ANDY PARSONS, Director, Technical Projects, CNN: Parsons had never traveled outside the United States when he found himself detouring from San Francisco and the 1984 Democratic National Convention where he was working for CNN operations to Beirut.
U.S. Marines were in Lebanon on a peacekeeping mission, and CNN wanted to cover the story. Enter Parsons, with a bulletproof vest and itinerary that had him flying to Paris, then on to Cyprus for a 12-hour boat ride to Beirut. As his car approached Beirut's violence-plagued west side, he thought, We're not in Kansas anymore.
"It was devastated," recalls Parsons, 49, who operated cameras and audio there. "There was not a light on. There was not a building that wasn't blown up."
# posted by ATN @ 12:02 PM 
