"Take a Greyhound Bus...and leave the driving to us!"

Everything was live, exclaims Jerry.  Thats what made it so exciting.  You tried to do it as well as you could because there was no room for errorsno rewinding a videotape machine and doing another take. Viewers saw it just like you did it, right then and there.  Once in a while, we did goof but we got real good at smoothing things over so our audience seldom detected the blunder. 

Trying to crack up announcers was a big sport in the early years of Channel 13. Jerry says staffers would walk by the announcers booth during breaks and tap on the glass, make faceseven walk in on them and grab materials they were reading from.

We were a big, happy family, Jerry remembers. Everybody loved their jobs and while the station was run very professionally management recognized that television was an entertainment mediumand if the announcers did goofy things sometimes, well, that was entertaining to viewers. Of course, there were some pretty strict rules.  If we missed a station break because we were somewhere else in the building, that was a termination offense.  If we accidentally forgot a commercial, there was always a make-good and everybody knew about it.  I was lucky though, while I was still at the University of Tampa, I could bring books and study in the booth or even while hosting the morning or late movie while it was playing.  Even doing that, I never missed a commercial or announcement.