J.A. Presents

In my senior year of high school, I joined a Junior Achievement television company sponsored by WLW-C in Columbus.  Instead of making and selling the usual Junior Achievement products (“Would you like to buy a jar opener?”), we were responsible for creating a weekly TV show (actually two) and selling commercial spots to pay for them.  WLW-C assigned three or four of their staff (Mike, Bob, Lou) to mentor us, but, in general, we had a free hand to do pretty much what we wanted.  So we kept testing the limits until our next-to-last  show of the year was pulled off the air by the in-house censors.

I had actually been talked into getting involved by my best friend, Joe.  He, Anita, and I represented Brookhaven High School, Barb, Dan, and Ed came from Whetstone, Sue from Worthington, Cheryl from West, Dave from Upper Arlington, and Keith from New Albany.  Each of us had to wear several hats according to our interests.  Mine was writing, but I also wound up doing some of the art work, set construction, booth announcing, and appeared on camera.  Basically, we produced a 15-minute show every Saturday morning on a topic of our choosing and a 5-minute show each Wednesday (which consisted of an interview with a local band).  We called ourselves J.A. Presents.

The golden age of live television had started to wane, but WLW-C still broadcast a morning show with host Spook Beckman every weekday morning.  Beckman had been around town for more than a decade and was particularly adept at building a fan base of middle-aged women (who became card-carrying members of his “All-Pooped-Out Club”).  During his tenure, Beckman was king and we were repeatedly warned not to touch anything on his set.  Otherwise, we were free to “borrow” whatever furniture, props, etc., we could find at the station.

For our Wednesday morning show, we would audition bands.  Mike, an assistant director at the station, took a particular interest in this.  I remember once we were auditioning a band called, I believe, The Beau Jestes, and Mike had them do the same song over and over and over again – just because he could.  What I didn’t realize at the time was that Mike also managed several local bands so this may have been his way of gaining more clients.  One of the bands we featured was The Toads, and some twenty years later I interviewed a couple of the members when I began researching local music.

Even then, my obsession with music was well developed.  As a result, I wrote and hosted one Saturday show called “The History of Folk Music.”  It was the only show we did which was, essentially, a solo production – just me, the camera, and a series of cutaways to record albums I had brought in.  The only one that wasn’t mine was a Joan Baez album that belonged to Barb (who wasn’t happy when they stripped away the shrink wrap and sprayed the cover with something to dull the finish so it wouldn’t reflect the studio lights).

I am not a performer, but I can read a script reasonably well.  So dressed in a suit and with the hot studio lights beaming down on me, I addressed the camera and stole glances at my typewritten script whenever I could.  After a few minutes, however, my hands began to sweat and the pages of the script stuck to them.  I couldn’t simply turn them over, so I began letting the drop to the floor out of the view of the camera.  I could also see out of the corner of my eye that the director (generally Mike) had gotten the visuals (i.e. the record album covers) out of synch with my script.  Consequently, I might have been talking about Joan Baez, but the viewers were seeing Judy Collins or Ian & Sylvia.  Nevertheless, the powers-that-be at WLW-C chose this program as our best and kept a tape of it around for at least a year or so.  Everything else we did was taped over.

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