G-g-g-groin Injury

It’s another catch-up-on-Friday Questions Day. I’m trying to answer as many as I can so I’m squeezing in extra Q-Days.

Joe starts us off:

I admire your whole body of work, but there's one scene of yours that's one of the funniest in TV history. When you were broadcasting baseball, were you ever tempted to do a Sam Malone rap talking about a player had a groin injury?

Tempted? I actually did it once on a Mariners broadcast.  (Maybe that's why I'm not still there.)  The episode Joe is referring to is “Eye on Sports” where Sam becomes a local sportscaster and feels he needs a shtick to go along with reading the scores.

From B Smith:

When shooting outdoors scenes for MASH out at the Malibu Ranch, you were presumably shooting as many bits and pieces for various episodes as you could to take advantage of light, climate etc. But since various episodes were directed by various directors, did you send a number of them simultaneously with you so they could shoot their episode parts? Or did you just go for one episode at a time, and if finishing early shot generic footage that could be edited in anywhere, or even knocked off early?

We would shoot one episode at a time. We tried to have 8 1/3 pages of exteriors to justify a day at the ranch. If an episode had much less we held it back until the fall and just filmed the whole show on the stage – even the exterior scenes.

That way only one director was required.

However, after every three episodes we planned a day of pick-ups on the stage. This was for tiny scenes that never got filmed, scenes we wanted redone, or new scenes we felt needed to be added. In that case, we did invite the different directors to come and do their scenes. But if they were unavailable, either Gene Reynolds or Burt Metcalfe filled in and directed the scenes.

Here’s a first – a reader question and another reader answered. The question is from -30- and the answer is from Andy Rose. I couldn’t have said it any better myself.

How were the syndicated weekly Top 40 radio shows--Watermark, Casey Kasem, Dick Clark--produced? Were they completely scripted in advance? Was there any improv or spontaneity? Were they recorded in real time or were the voiceovers done separately and then put together with the records by an editor? I can't imagine Dick Clark hitting talkovers perfectly for 3 hours or, for that matter, taking half a day to record a show every week.

Re: the countdown shows... The narration was scripted and recorded all at one time, although Kasem sometimes asked his engineer to play the end of a record for him to make sure his segue matched the tone of the song.

In the pre-computer days, the reel with the host's lines had to be mixed with the music, jingles, and commercials in real time on a multitrack. Then the master was put on vinyl, and the show was mailed to each station on 33 1/3 records. Later on, they started shipping CDs instead. Now, they are distributed as computer files via FTP.

I’ll be honest. I didn’t know all that. Thanks, Andy.

And finally, Greg Thompson has a question after listening to my baseball-themed podcast episode.

How were you able to simultaneously do baseball play-by-play AND be on a TV writing staff? During their seasons, both are full-time jobs with a lot of evening work. And how did you work it out with your writing partner?

By the way, I listened to your early-'90s snippet of play-by-play on your podcast and thought you were great. Wish you were doing the Angels right now.

Me too. That was great fun.  I could do the groin injury rap for Halo fans. 

But to answer your question...

When I was doing baseball fulltime I would write scripts on the road and send them in. The TV production season started late summer and went until March. Fortunately, I was on mostly bad teams so never had to worry about those pesky playoffs. I was back in LA to continue my TV career during the baseball offseason.

However, for my three years with the Padres I was just doing weekends for them. So that was easy. I’d either drive down to San Diego on Saturday morning, or grab a Friday night flight to wherever they were on the road. The entire week I’d be wearing my "TV" hat. 

There were a couple of times though when the Padres needed me last minute during the week. On several occasions I worked until 4:00 at Paramount. Drove to Burbank airport, hopped a flight to San Diego, got a cab to the ballpark, did the game, went to the hotel, got an early morning flight back to Burbank the next day and was back in the office at 9. That was a little nuts. But for the most part it all worked out fine.

David was supportive. I think it helps that he was a big sports fan too. We always structured our partnership so that there was room if either of us wanted to explore other things.

What’s your Friday Question? I may even get to it on a Friday.