Five Years After Hell On Earth - 9/11

That Tuesday morning actually started for me 6 months earlier.

Back in March on a routine dental visit of teeth cleaning, the little yellow card that marked my next appointment was handed to me. It read "9:30 AM Sept 11, 2001." The moment I saw it a strange feeling came over me. I had no idea why, but it just didn't hit me right. The feeling lasted about 2 seconds and the reminder card went into my wallet so I wouldn't forget it and out the door I went. I didn't think about it again. I can't tell you anything else about that March day. I can't even tell you what day it was, but that 60 seconds is seared in my brain forever.

Fast forward to September. It was not a normal day in many ways. My wife, who also works in the newsroom as an assignment editor on the day shift was filling in for the night side assignment editor and was asleep. As I was waiting to leave for my 9:30 dental appointment I was surfing the net and I just happen to have FOX News Channel on, sampling "FOX and Friends", since I normally watch our morning news while getting ready to go to work. It was as clear and warm of a day here in the Piedmont as it was in New York City.

Out of the corner of my eye and half listening, I hear E.D. Hill say reports were coming in that a small aircraft had hit the World Trade Center. Being somewhat of an aviation enthusiast, my ears perked up and I started to pay attention to the television. The time, 8:48 AM, two minutes after the hit. I had planned to leave to go to the dentist at 9:15 since the dentist office is only about 4 miles from home.

I am looking at the pictures that are now on the screen and not believing a small aircraft could cause that much damage. The thought did cross my mind that it could be terrorism but I dismissed it as unrealistic as several "experts" via telephone began to say it MIGHT be terrorism. About 8:55 Jon Scott takes over the coverage from the F&F team. 9:03 the second aircraft slams into the south tower. As I am seeing it, instantly I grasp what is going on and say out loud to no one, "We are at war!" Several long seconds later, Scott says on air, "It has happened again! Another plane has hit the tower! This can't be a coincidence. This has to be a terror attack!"

I don't know why, but I instantly thought of my wife's 4 year old niece and 11 year old nephew and how they would never know a world at relative peace again in their lifetime. Sadness fell over me. Then the broadcaster in me took control. I knew what had to be done and it had to start now.

I then went to the bedroom and woke my wife. I said "Two planes have struck the World Trade Center in New York. They suspect terrorism. I think you need to call the station and see if they need you to come in early." I go back to the TV and see I need to leave in a few minutes. I begin planning on what I needed to do for work and how I can make my appointment and get to the station as fast as I can. Since this is not a local story, yet, I figure I have a few minutes to work in the dentist. Being the transmitter guy, I am usually not the first person they call.

At 9:30 I walk into the dentist office and ask if they have heard what happened in New York City. They hadn't. I asked if they could rush me through since I suspect I would need to get on to work. 20 minutes later I was out the door. The quickest I have ever been through a dentist's office! By 9:50 I am on the road headed for the station. Just about every radio station on the dial has someone else’s coverage. I hear CBS, NBC, ABC AND FOX TV audio on MANY stations. I call my wife and she tells me the south tower has collapsed. I can't even comprehend it.

I hang up and the cell phone immediately rings. It is my boss wanting to know where am I. I tell him I am on the way to the station via the dentist and should be there in 15 minutes. He waives me off and tells me to go to the transmitter and stay there. I arrived there in record time.

I go into the office and turn on the monitor and see we have picked up the FOX feed that is carrying FOX News Channel. Jon Scott and Shepard Smith are now co-anchoring. In mid sentence of Shep Smith saying how if the north tower comes down, the death toll will be unbelievable, the north tower collapses. Cut to a helicopter shot of the dust cloud that rises up from lower Manhattan. I can't believe what I have just witnessed on our air. Then the report of a 5th highjack plane inbound to Washington hits air, later proved to be unfounded. My head starts to spin.

I stay glued to the TV the rest of the day and then when I go home that night until I go to bed at 3 AM when the adrenaline rush of the day wears off. For the next 6 days, I stay glued to the TV as every station in the country goes wall to wall coverage.

I can't tell you what I saw that whole time, but I was there and saw it all.

SNL - Too many years later

Staying up all night was a favorite thing of mine in my youth and Saturday nights were no different. Back in those days, my parents owned a house at the beach and we would go every weekend.

I can remember watching a little known news show at 11:30 pm on Saturday nights called "NBC News Weekend" with even less know reporters Lloyd Dobbins and Linda Ellerbee. It was the first attempt at a hip late show on network TV. It lasted about 6 months but was a forerunner to the 1983-4 "NBC News Overnight" with the same Lloyd Dobbins (later Bill Schechner) and Linda Ellerbee. It too failed within a year or so but set the stage for all of the overnight news programs you see on network TV today. Somewhere I have on beta tape a couple of "NBC News Overnight's" with Schechner and Ellerbee. This is where Ellerbee got the "Lucky Duck" idea from. She received a little yellow duck (same one you see at the end of her production companies programs) from a viewer and she liked it so much she put it on the anchor desk and started calling it "Lucky Duck." After the show ended and she left NBC News, she started a production company called "Lucky Duck Productions." She also stole her trademark line, "And so it goes" from Lloyd Dobbins. Dobbins used it to close the show on "NBC News Weekend" and "Overnight." When he left "Overnight" Ellerbee started using it and has ever since. I met Dobbins in the early 90's at the NC state AP News Convention after he retired from NBC News and had moved to Raleigh. He jokingly said he was still mad at Ellerbee for stealing his line, but at least unlike him, it was still working.

After the "Weekend" experiment failed, Tom Snyder got a shot at late night Saturday with a version of "The Tomorrow Show." It failed also but "The Tomorrow Show" moved to five nights a week after "The Tonight Show" and later went to CBS as the "The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder" after "The Late Show with David Letterman" and still continues after moving from a news/feature show to a purely comedy show with Craig Kilborn and now with Craig Ferguson.

On that last "The Tomorrow Show" on Saturday nights, Tom Snyder introduced a group of people that would become show biz icons. On that August night the world was introduced to the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players" better known as Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Chevy Chase, Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman, and Garrett Morris. I do think Belushi was stoned out of his mind that night. He did some things that got Snyder hot under the collar, but it was a forebearer of what was to come. The next Saturday night at 11:30 pm we saw the first prat fall of Chevy Chase and an institution was born.

I watched that show every Saturday night for the next 5 years. In the 1980 season when Lorne Michaels left, most people, including me, left also. It was a few years later I came back during the later Eddie Murphy, Joe Piscopo years and then last watched regularly in the 1985-6 "superstar" season of Jim Belushi, Mary Gross, Gary Kroeger, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and the well known Billy Crystal; Martin Short, Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer and Rich Hall. After that season, when the cast was purged, I bailed for good.

I would catch an occasional show if there was a guest host I liked but would only watch those parts they were in. In recent times I watched the first post 9/11 opening with NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani and NY Governor George Pataki. After the monologue I bailed again and had not watched SNL since. Until this past Saturday night. It was a repeat of the Christmas show with Jack Black as the guest host.

With the new TV season about to start, there was nothing on and for the first time in a long time, I wasn't fast asleep at 11:30 on a Saturday night. So the wife and I watched SNL. Either I have gotten too old to get modern comedy or this show stunk. None of the skits were funny. Weekend Update with Tina Fey was so lame, I have seen amateur parodies funnier. Even the wife commented how unfunny it was.

With NBC producing two shows this season about a fictitious late night comedy/sketch show ("30 Rock" created and produced by SNL alum Tina Fey) and "Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip" by "West Wing" creator Aaron Sorkin) either one or both could be funnier than the show they are based on.

Sometimes it isn't such a good idea to keep reinventing yourself. After 30 years it might just be time to retire SNL. One could say it had a good run.