Permit me to follow-up with a clearer explanation of my duties as they related to the character generator. When our station first acquired a CG, I was the one who programmed it. I was the fastest typist in the building and I knew how to assemble graphics to look their best on air. I was also very detail oriented and CG mistakes were rare. I entered all the CG data for my show. In the control room, I frequently operated the CG myself because some of the directors I worked with were reluctant to assume responsibility for the unorthodox method I used.

Essentially, I introduced the Action News format at my station, having been inspired by WPVI-6 Action News in Philadelphia, an ABC affiliate that assembled the greatest news team and best news program of all time. I watched PVI on a daily basis, learned their production technique and attempted to implement their fast paced, "lead with local" big city philosophy in my own newscasts. It included a style of using the CG that had not been attempted at my station before. To give the newscast a faster pace, I employed the Channel 6 technique in which the CG is cut in and out instead of faded in and out. In those early years, packages were not pre-produced with the graphics already inserted. It was done live on air. Using my Action News method, a package began with the first CG already punched up on the screen, typically "Joe Blow, Newscenter - reporting." The graphic remained on the screen a much shorter amount of time than before, changing within 2 seconds to a locator caption "(City/County)." The locator caption then cut out within 2 seconds. In other words, two different captions were efficiently displayed and dropped within the first 4 seconds of the package. Voice overs were handled the same way. CG's were cut in and out and sometimes advanced in a series live on air rather than faded out, advanced, checked on the preview monitor and then faded in. Two of the directors who worked with me feared a screw-up using my blind method of inserting graphics. Seeing as how there were no job descriptions or union rules to follow, I often jumped out of my chair and operated the CG during the news blocks, allowing the director/switcher to take over during the weather and sports segments.

I was fortunate enough to land an interview and audition at Philly 6 and meet the big boys who had become my idols in the new business. One of them died tragically in a skydiving mishap only a few months later. There has never been and will never be a newscast like that of WPVI during the 1970s and early 80s.

The way we put in CGs, full screens and over the shoulder graphics has changed a lot since I started 4 years ago. Producers have always been in control of creating the supers, but that process has evolved twice in my career. When I first started we had to send requests to production for all full screen graphics and over the shoulder graphics detailing what we wanted. Now there is a program embedded in the program I use to create my rundowns and scripts that lets me see the graphics as I build them.