maly, too: Morning TV At Its Worst

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Morning TV At Its Worst

By RON MALY

It took a while--two or three hours, I think--but people in the makeup room at CBS-TV finally managed to get Charlie Rose's eyes opened this morning with the use of a crowbar and some medical tools usually used only in the most complicated types of surgery.

Old Charlie is one of the hosts for the early news program at CBS, and he always looks like he's just come in from spending 6 weeks at the nearest bar.

Of course, I need to remember that Charlie isn't a kid anymore.

He's 72, but certainly

Charlie Rose

doesn't look his age.

He looks more like 92.

I don't think his eyes have been fully open since 1963.

Why CBS has him as its morning wake-up guy is beyond me.

I've watched that program three or four times in the last year, and Charlie never looks like he's awake.

I think one of the interns at the network has been assigned to check Charlie every 15 minutes or so to make sure he still has a pulse.

That sounds like a good job for Lolo Jones when she finally gets the TV gig she's looking for.

Actually, maybe somebody at CBS wanted Edward R. Murrow for the morning show, then found out he was unavailable.

Murrow died 49 years ago at the age of 57, probably from smoking too many cigarettes on the TV set.

Rumor has it he smoked 3 packages of Camels a day.

The morning news shows like to give us cheerleader, viewer-friendly stuff.

If I heard it once, I heard it 74 times today that the Russians lost their hockey game at the Winter Olympics.

And a chattery reporter told us, "It may cost you more for your barbecue this summer."

I guess she meant the price of beef is-what else?--soaring higher.

The last thing I'm going to worry about on Feb. 20 is what beef is going to cost in June or July.

Hey, I'm not interested.

I don't eat beef and won't be buying any.

Anyway, the only reason I turned on that early-morning show was to find out what was being said about the blizzard that's coming our way.

I've heard so many horror stories already about the upcoming storm that I'm fully expecting all of Iowa to either be buried under 137 feet of snow or blown into Illinois.

The weather girl on CBS mentioned Iowa when she talked about the blizzard, and about how the entire midwest

Edward R. Murrow

might disappear forever today.

I think Charlie Rose grunted once when she said that.

Those morning network shows always switch to their local affiliates every few minutes so viewers can get a report on how the weather is going to be for--using a favorite TV word--our "commute."

I keep hoping the contract of Kurtis Gertz, one of the 20 or 27 TV weather-people employed at KCCI, has expired, but unfortunately he was on the tube again this morning.

Kurtis said our state would, indeed, have blizzard-like conditions today.

He added that things could get really bad this afternoon and tonight.

Hell, it was just a few days ago that Kurtis was telling KCCI's viewers that only rain would be falling today.

I should've known better than to believe anything he said.

Maybe Gertz will be the KCCI announcer standing alongside I-235 when the 6 p.m. news is on, and it's snowing.

Hopefully, the driver of a semitrailer headed for Laramie, Wyo., will feel sorry for him, pick him up and take him away.

JOLTIN' JOE GOT IT STARTED

When Ron Maly was a kid in Cedar Rapids, he wanted to enter an essay contest, and he did. He wrote about Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees being his favorite baseball player. For finishing second in the contest, Ron won a Louisville Slugger baseball bat autographed by DiMaggio. Ron later wanted to be the first person in his family to attend college, and he was. He earned a degree in political science from the University of Iowa, and did what all political science majors do. He became a sportswriter. He had, after all, covered high school football, basketball and baseball games for the Cedar Rapids Gazette while he worked parttime during his university days. Ron wanted to sit in the press box and write about an Iowa-Minnesota football game, and he did. It happened while he was the sports editor at the Albert Lea [Minn.] Tribune, and the game was at Memorial Stadium in Minneapolis. Ron wanted to cover a World Series, and he did. Also when he was working for the Albert Lea newspaper. Ron wanted to cover Rose Bowls, Sugar Bowls, Orange Bowls, Cotton Bowls, Holiday Bowls, a Freedom Bowl, a Sun Bowl, a Super Bowl and NCAA basketball tournaments, and he did those things after he moved to Des Moines. Ron was a four-time sportswriter of the Year in the state of Iowa [the years were 1977, 1978, 1994 and 1996]. In 2006, he was named a charter member of the University of Iowa's media Wall of Fame in the Kinnick Stadium press box. A photo of the plaque that's displayed in the press box is displayed above this story. Following Ron's retirement from the newspaper business, a publisher asked him if he wanted to write a book about the rich football tradition at the University of Iowa, and he did. The hardback version of "Tales from the Iowa Sidelines" was a best-seller, and so was the revised, softback version. Now he's been asked by his publisher to update the book for a second time. He's in the process of doing that at the present time. Ron considers being asked to update a best-selling book for the second time to be the supreme compliment, considering the Hawkeyes won just four games in the 2012 season. When Ron isn't working on books, he's busy traveling and spending time with his family. Indeed, he attends the athletic, theatrical and musical [both vocal and instrumental] events in which his six grandchildren participate. He also writes about anything that interests him for his many websites. Every chance he gets, Ron proudly wears his America Needs Farmers T-shirt.

The Hawkeyes' Rich Football Tradition, Revisited

I mentioned a while back that I was in the process of updating my Tales from the Iowa Sidelines book. Updating it for the second time. The original hardback edition of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines [pictured at the right] was published in 2003, during the 10-3 season, when coach Kirk Ferentz and his Iowa football team had a 10-3 record that included a 37-17 victory over 15th-ranked Florida in the Outback Bowl and after the Hawkeyes went 11-2 in 2002. That book was a best-seller, so the publishers came to me again in 2005, a season that finished with a breathtaking 30-25 victory over No. 11 Louisiana State in the Capital One Bowl on New Year's Day, 2005. Because buyers had cleaned out the the shelves in the bookstores, the publishers wanted to know if I'd do an updated version of the book. I agreed, The revised, soft-cover edition [pictured at the left] was published in 2005. Warren Holloway, who teamed with quarterback Drew Tate on a miraculous 56-yard touchdown pass to win the Capital One Bowl, was featured on the cover. That book, too, turned into a best-seller, So I had reason to feel very good about my years as a published author. It's not every day that a the original version is a best-seller, and so is the updated version. Then, imagine my surprise when I received an e-mail from a senior editor at the publishing company last fall, wanting wanted to know if I was interested in doing a second updated version of the book. It came at a time when things weren't going well for the Hawkeyes in the 2012 season. They lost their last six games and finished with a 4-8 record. Frankly, the thought of doing a revised edition of the book during a 4-8 season seemed to be a stretch. "Maybe producing a revised edition in a year or two would be a better idea," I told the publishers. "We'd like to do it now," I was told. "Let me think about it," I said. After a few days of thought, I accepted the idea. I talked myself into the idea that this was the supreme compliment--being asked to do a second book update during a 4-8 season showed strong confidence by the publishers in me and in the Hawkeyes' football program. So I got back into the business of interviewing players and coaches again, going to postgame press conferences, weekly press conferences and a scrimmage in West Des Moines. After a press conference in Iowa City, I did a one-on-one interview with coach Kirk Ferentz, and mentioned to him that I was in the process of doing a revised edition of my two best-selling books. I congratulated him on the excellent things he had done for Iowa's football program--all of which contributed to the success of my books. "I think Coach Fry had more to do with it," he told me, bringing up the name of Hayden Fry, his one-time boss at Iowa and a man who brought Iowa's football program back from the dead in the 20th century. That's modest Kirk Ferentz for you. Even though the 2012 season wasn't something Hawkeye coaches, players and fans will recall with any special feeling, Ferentz has a 14-year record of 100-74 at Iowa that includes two 11-victory seasons [2002 smd 2009], two 10-victory seasons [2003 and 2004], plus he's been the Big Ten coach of year in 2002, 2004 and 2009, and national coach of the year in 2002. Indeed, Ferentz has done some wonderful things at Iowa City, and I fully expect his success to continue. I've concluded my writing for the second update of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines, and the senior editor has furnished me with an early look at the book. Not only are the Kirk Ferentz years included in the updated version, but so is the stuff I previously wrote about Howard Jones, Dr. Eddie Anderson, Heisman Trophy winner Nile Kinnick and the 1939 Hawkeye Ironmen, Ronald Reagan, Ozzie Simmons, Ossie Solem, Randy Duncan, Alex Karras and lots of other legends from Iowa's rich football history. I expect the book to be in stores soon. I hope you like it.