Nielsen inaugurated its national peoplemeter service while I was away on vacation in London. I read about it in the international edition of USA Today. Of course, since TV research was the focus of my job I had been well aware of this change for many months.
This trip was my first abroad, a trip I won as grand prize winner of the United Way drawing the previous Christmas at my previous employer, ad agency Young & Rubicam. And although I had changed jobs since winning it Y&R graciously honored my prize. It was a weeklong trip for two, including business class travel on TWA and hotel accomodations in the tony Knightsbridge section of London (near Harrod's).
But enough about my good fortune. The peoplemeter was a big advance in how TV advertising was bought since it provided ratings for the people who were viewing shows rather than just their household. It also provided this information much more quickly. What made this change even more interesting was the fact that big, bad Nielsen briefly had a competitor in the U.S., a British company called AGB Research. AGB had introduced the peoplemeter to our shores earlier in the year.
The agency I worked at, the late NWAyer, purchased both services so our TV analyses compared the ratings of both (although Nielsen was what all national TV buys were made on). However, AGB went out of business in the spring of 1988 since it was unable to get enough companies to buy its service, especially once Nielsen developed similar technology. Alas, in the years to come this fate would befall other research companies that attempted to compete against the Nielsen Company.
Two pop culture references from that week in 1987 bring to mind Nielsen's new peoplemeter. The day before leaving for London I went with friends to see the movie Dirty Dancing, which had opened that weekend. And while in London Rick Astley's record Never Gonna Give You Up was a smash hit and I bought the single at the Tower Records store in Piccadilly. It became an equally big hit in the U.S. shortly after I returned.
It was the Saturday night of Labor Day weekend 1997 and I was out at my summer share in Fire Island Pines. As my housemates and I were finishing dinner we became playful - as a group of eight gay men can easily do after a marvelous dinner and a few glasses of wine. For whatever reason we were inspired to try on some campy hats, feather boas and wigs that just were on the "wig wall" (just having a gay old time - literally!). Eventually we got around to clearing the table and loading the dishwasher and then decided to go out to Sip'n Twirl, a dance bar in the harbor.
It was well past midnight when we finally got our asses in gear and left the house for the 10-minute walk to the club. We were making our way along the rickety boardwalk called Fire Island Boulevard when an acquaintenance of one of our housemates walked by and said rather dismissively, "Oh, I guess you're going down to join the rest of the queens sobbing over Diana". We didn't know what he was referring to (our house didn't have a TV) so he told us of the recent news bulletin reporting on Princess Diana's death in Paris in a high speed auto accident.
Stunned, we returned home instead of continuing to the bar. Since we didn't have a TV in the house it was actually somewhat of a relief because we weren't immersed in the news coverage that dominated the rest of the weekend.
The following Saturday was Diana's funeral. It aired beginning at around 4AM here in the U.S. Once again I was out at FIP, but this time I had an opportunity to watch it at the house of a fellow from Cherry Grove who I had just begun dating. However, I just wasn't in the mood to watch something so dispiriting. Instead I borrowed a tape from a friend at work who taped it on his VCR and I watched it in fits and starts over the course of the following week. A memory that sticks with me was seeing the hearse bearing Diana's casket with its windshield wipers slowly moving back & forth in order to clear flowers/bouquets being thrown at the vehicle by the millions lining the streets. (Mother Teresa died the week leading to Diana's funeral but her death was somewhat overlooked.)
The 2006 movie The Queen is about the British public's backlash when Queen Elizabeth failed to join her subjects in publicly mourning and commemorating Diana's death. (British actress Helen Mirren won an Oscar for her portrayal of the queen.)
Huh? That was my dumbfounded response when I turned on the 11:00 news the night of August 29, 2008 and heard more about Republican presidential nominee John McCain's choice for running mate. Earlier that day (the Friday of Labor Day weekend) I thought he had selected Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty.
I was basking in the afterglow of Barack Obama's acceptance speech from the night before at the Democratic convention when I saw a New York Times News Alert in my e-mail at my office. Quickly skimming it I was under the impression McCain had chosen Pawlenty - it made sense since I'd read on a number of occasions that he was a leading candidate. I suppose my brain stopped processing once it saw the first two letters of the last name - the same as Palin's. I had read about Palin a number of weeks earlier in an article in The New Republic, but it wasn't in regard to her being in consideration for the VP slot, just that she was a rising star in the Republican Party.
McCain's head-scratching choice certainly injected a jolt into the 2008 campaign. And it became a ratings bonanza for Saturday Night Live when Tina Fey impersonated her to great acclaim in sketches during the show's September and October telecasts. The book Game Change offers a riveting account of the thinking behind the decision to select Palin and its ramifications it had on the presidential campaign (spoiler alert: Obama was elected president).
My parents and I had spent August 28, 1968 in the town of Slippery Rock, PA (50 miles north of Pittsburgh) to visit my brother Darrell who was at band camp. Back home that Wednesday evening the TV was tuned to the Democratic National Convention, forever remembered for that night's fierce confrontation outside the convention hall between anti-war demonstrators and the Chicago police and the Illinois national guard.
I remember seeing the TV coverage as I walked in an out of the living room throughout the evening. (Pictured is a young Dan Rather being roughed up on the convention floor.) I was also adjusting to my first pair of glasses which I had gotten a few days earlier in preparation for the beginning of 6th Grade. (I was able to clearly see the baton-wielding police from a distance without squinting.)
Throughout the turmoil of the late 1960's my parents did a good job of not transmitting their worries to me or my older siblings. How they reacted to what they saw on TV tonight was no exception. (I'm sure they had growing concerns over the Vietnam War since my brother was in high school and in a few years would become eligible for the draft.) Sure, I was aware that "stuff" was going on but never felt alarm or realized how serious it was. It was just background noise and it wasn't until I was in college that I realized how serious the clashes were at the convention (inside and outside) and how strained the nation was over the war as well as other social issues.
If you're interested in gaining a more in-depth knowledge of the combustible elements that made for such a tumultuous convention you may want to consider reading David Farber's paperback Chicago '68.
Although I sporadically watched the first season of CBS's Survivor I was familiar with its contestants from "water cooler" conversations with colleagues at work, from what I read in Entertainment Weekly as well as a few amusing websites that dissected each episode ("TV Without Pity" was one of them). The final four contestants were even featured on the cover of Newsweek. My contribution to the building excitement was coordinating a "guess the final rating" contest in my office at ad agency Foote, Cone & Belding.
I didn't watch the final episode because I had tickets that evening for The Music Man on Broadway. However, after the performance my date and I read who the $1 million winner was on the electronic ticker in Times Square - gay nudist Richard Hatch had prevailed over Kelly Wigglesworth. In a classic moment from that episode, here is contestant Sue Hawk's "Snake & Rat" speech in which she coldly explains her vote for Hatch:
The telecast delivered a huge audience, especially for summertime, with nearly 60 million watching some portion of it (28.6 household rating/45 share). This gigantic audience brought back memories of the final episode of The Fugitive which also aired in August (8/29) in 1967. It had a 45.9 HH rating, which was the highest rating for a TV series until the "Who Shot J.R.?" episode of Dallas in November 1980. I remember it being on but it was my brother and sister who were giving the episode their undivided attention. Although I was in the living room as well, as a 10-year old it was more or less background noise.
(If you have a yen to relive and own Season 1 of Survivor, click here.)
Previous posts I've written about Hurricanes Agnes and Gloria have generated some of this blog's highest readership. And although I have memories of other hurricanes they aren't rich enough to turn them into full-blown posts. Instead, I've written a few sentences about ten of them and put them all in this one post.
Alicia (Aug. 18, 1983) - This category 3 hurricane struck Galveston and Houston the day before I left for vacation in Provincetown. I was supposed to go with my boyfriend Rick but we had hit a rough patch (just a few months after moving in together) so I went there alone. I overslept by two hours and barely made my flight (on the now defunct People's Express).
Gilbert (Sept. 14-16, 1988) - Hurricane Gilbert was the most intense hurricane to ever enter the Gulf and it devastated Jamaica and Cancun but spared Texas (after earlier dire predictions). It coincided with my first time on jury duty. I was picked for a burglary case (that occurred on the Upper Eastside) and we ended up being sequestered for one night. Fortunately, I shared the motel room (near the Lincoln Tunnel) with a friend of my roommate. During the same week my boss resigned. (By the way, we, the jury, found the defendant guilty.)
Hugo (Sept. 22, 1989) - I stayed up into the wee hours on a Thursday night watching coverage on The Weather Channel as Hugo made landfall in Charleston, SC. It was the strongest hurricane (category 4) to strike the Southeast in 35 years. The NYC area was under a tropical storm watch with 5-10" of rain predicted, but after Hugo made landfall he changed course and we weren't impacted (which was a relief since four inches of rain had fallen a few days earlier). A cousin in Charlotte, NC got married that weekend and had to contend with no power and downed trees after Hugo roared through. Also on this day Irving Berlin died at the age of 101 (he wasn't a hurricane casualty).
Bob (Aug. 19, 1991) - Like Hurricane Gloria six years earlier, Bob stayed to our east, but we still got a good deal of rain which was mostly over by noon on that Monday. My roommate Todd was on vacation out in Montauk and went without power for a few days. And my friend Tom was vacationing in Provincetown and had to contend with some inconveniences as well. He recalls a number of drag queens walking around town with signs that said "I got blown by Bob". I was relieved the storm was a quick mover because I had tickets for the Broadway show Grand Hotel that evening. (Yes, that's The Weather Channel's one and only Jim Cantore - when he still had hair!)
Andrew (Aug. 24, 1992) - It may be hard to believe, but nothing memorable was going on in my life at the time. Ironically, the National Hurricane Center in Miami was largely destroyed by Andrew as was the ad agency that had the Burger King account. It was amazing how few were killed by this incredibly powerful storm (at one point there were rumors that hundreds of migrant farm workers had died).
Opal (Oct. 4, 1995) - As Opal approached the Florida panhandle it strengthened just before landfall and became the second most damaging hurricane to strike Florida (after Andrew). However, this story was almost completely lost to the coverage of the not-gulty verdict in the OJ Simpson trial the day before. And the pope arrived for his second visit to the New York area.
Edouard (Aug. 31 - Sept 1, 1996) - For a brief time Edouard caused concern in NYC and on Long Island. It was Labor Day weekend and I was out at Fire Island (it was my first summer in the Pines) when word spread on Saturday that Edouard might strike and evacuations might begin that night. Fortunately, the storm took a turn to the northeast and no evacuations were needed. One other memory from that weekend - while cleaning the table after Sunday dinner a housemate's guest asked me if anyone had ever mentioned that I looked like "Smithers" from The Simpsons.
Floyd (Sept. 16, 1999) - Powerful Floyd's approach resulted in the evacuation of 2.6 million residents between Florida and North Carolina. After striking North Carolina earlier in the a.m. he quickly moved towards NYC. Downgraded to a tropical storm by the time it reached us, Floyd was still a huge rainmaker - 5 inches fell, the greatest one-day total in more than 20 years (even greater amounts flooded Philadelphia and Newark). For a while many subway lines were shut down for much of the afternoon because of track flooding and some downed trees. My office at ad agency Foote, Cone & Belding closed at 1:00 (Macy's too) but I stayed until 5:45. When I got home I intended to go to the gym but it was so windy and rainy that I turned back after walking one block.
Katrina (Aug. 29, 2005) - I was visiting my mother in Pittsburgh for the weekend when Katrina made its initial landfall in south Florida and then struck Louisiana and Mississippi on the day I returned to NYC (Sunday). At one point on Sunday it was a category 5 with winds of 175 mph - incredible. At first some meteorologists on TWC talked of how New Orleans had "dodged a bullet" when Katrina veered east and instead struck the Mississippi Gulf Coast head-on.
However, after the storm moved on the levees surrounding the city broke - and the rest is history. The number of deaths was shocking (more than 1,800), especially since stronger hurricanes such as Andrew and Hugo caused fewer than 100 fatalities. It took months before the final tally was determined. It was also, by far, the most damaging natural disaster in U.S. history ($75 billion+).
Ike (Sept. 13, 2008) - I watched TWC's coverage during the wee hours of Saturday morning as it struck Galveston and Houston (25 years after Alicia). One of its reporters, Mike Bettes, got knocked around by the high winds even though he was in a somewhat protected hotel entranceway. Later that night I watched SNL's 1st episode of the new season and it opened with Tina Fey's portrayal of Sarah Palin. Two days later the financial markets were rocked by Lehman Bros. filing Chapter 11, followed on the same day by word that Merrill Lynch had been purchased by Bank of America to avoid Lehman's fate.
When the Soviet Union put an end to Czechoslovakia's "experiment" with democracy ("The Prague Spring") it hit close to home because my maternal grandmother was from Slovakia, the eastern region of Czechoslovakia. She came to the U.S. in August of 1920 shortly after the independent nation of Czechoslovakia was created out of the dismantled Austro-Hungarian empire. By coincidence the day the Soviet army rolled into Prague occurred the day before her 69th birthday on August 22.
I heard this dispiriting news during the afternoon as I was lazily lying on the living room floor reading the comics in the Pittsburgh Press and waiting for my dad to come home from work (around 4:30). A TV news bulletin came on reporting what was happening in Czechoslovakia. Although I was just 11 at the time I knew that restricting one's freedom wasn't a good thing (e.g., like not being allowed to watch TV or go outside to play) so I understood the seriousness of the situation there. Mom called grandma to tell her the news. It was yet another week of turmoil that was par for the course in turbulent 1968. And the Democratic convention in Chicago, which would be held next week, would be the icing on the cake.
The acclaimed novel, Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, uses the Prague Spring as the backdrop for the intertwined and tempestuous relationships of two couples. It was published in 1984 and was later made into a movie in 1988 starring Daniel Day Lewis & Juliette Binoche.
(By the way, grandma lived to see Czechoslovakia divided into two independent nations in 1993 when she was 93.)
The reason I was aware of Woodstock was because of Hurricane Camille. I had become interested in meteorology a year earlier while doing a 5th Grade science project so I was eagerly following reports about the hurricane. As I watched Sunday's evening news with rapt attention (no 24/7 coverage on The Weather Channel back then!) I was made aware of an outdoor music event on a farm south of Woodstock, NY. Camille was generating considerable interest because of how ferocious it had become as it approached Mississippi's Gulf Coast. Indeed, when it made landfall late tonight it was one of the most intense hurricanes to ever strike the U.S. (Interestingly, veteran WNBC-NY news anchor Chuck Scarborough was a young local anchor in Biloxi, MS in 1969.)
Camille's approach was very exciting for me, but Woodstock not so much. I was a bit too young (12 years old) to be enamored with "hippie rock" nor had I yet to develop any musical preferences (that would have to wait until Captain & Tenille came on the scene). Woodstock was more of an event for my sister & brother who were 18 and 16 at the time. My recollection was seeing aereal photos of the traffic jam leading out of the festival and naked concert goers covered in mud. For me Woodstock was just another news story that evening - along with the Tate/Labianca (aka Manson) murders in L.A. that occurred the previous week. Camille was the main event (as it probably was for much of the nation at the time).
August 14, 2003 was a sunny and hot Thursday. In the middle of the afternoon I noticed that my laptop wasn’t working so I mentioned it to my administrative assistant, Terri, who came to my office to take a look. She was under my desk fiddling around with the cables but to no avail. Shortly thereafter word came that the power was out. Most of us weren’t aware of it since the company I worked for at the time (media agency Carat USA) was high up on the 36th floor (at 34th St. & Park Ave.) so our offices were bathed in sunshine, thus there was no need to have the lights on. I immediately looked out my window to see if anything looked amiss (a knee-jerk reaction ever since 9/11) and noticed smoke pouring out of the big Con Edison plant nearby, but it turned out there was no connection.
After congregating on the floor we broke into two camps - those who were unnerved and left immediately (memories of 9/11 still fresh in their minds) and those who hung around thinking the power might come on in a short while - I was in the second group. After 15 minutes or so even those of us who waited decided to leave. I didn’t expect it would be a big deal but soon learned otherwise as it took half-an-hour to walk down since all of the floors below were emptying out as well. And was the air ever stuffy! A further hindrance was a lack of working emergency lights in the stairwell, so we used light cast from each of our cell phones to guide us. Slowly making our way down the stairwell made me appreciate how challenging it was for those in the Twin Towers on 9/11 who had to evacuate from much higher floors.
Eventually I made it to the lobby and walked downtown with my boss, Joanne, who lived in Chelsea. I was among the lucky ones since my walk home was only two miles or so (from East 34th St. to West 4th St). When I arrived at my apartment building I found my friend Nina waiting at my doorstep since she couldn’t get home to Long Island. (She walked up from the the Financial District where her office was.) After freshening up a bit we walked to the pier/park at the end of Christopher St. and on the way we bumped into my friend Tom who lived in the apartment building next to mine. We hung out at the pier with a throng of other "powerless" Village residents for an hour or so until it got dark and then the police instructed us to leave (normally the pier remained open until 1AM). Surprisingly, looking across the Hudson we could see that lights were on in Jersey City and Hoboken.
Walking back to my apartment was a challenge because there were no street or store lights yet the lights from cars on the streets were blindingly bright, much more so than when the power was on. Along the way we bought slices of pizza from a pizzeria that was serving in the dark from its takeout window. After finishing our meal back at my place there wasn’t anything else to do but talk and it became uncomfortably warm (eating hot pizza didn't help). This discomfort was more of a challenge for me than on 9/11 because, although there was a lot more mental anguish on that day, I didn't experience the physical discomfort I did on this night. (It was a relief to wash dishes in cold water!) Also, I was feeling vulnerable because my cell phone had run out of juice and I was running low on money - but the ATM's weren't working. And despite Mayor Bloomberg's earlier assurances that power would be restored by 11PM it was not to be.
The next day Nina found a bus to take her back to Long Island shortly before noon (the trip took five hours). Meanwhile l went over to my friend Tom's apartment to savor his great cross ventilation. I was dozing on the living room floor when the power finally returned at about 2PM. I shouted "Hallelujah!" and immediately dashed out to get cash from the ATM. However, each neighborhood had a different schedule and some didn't get their power back until close to midnight.
I don't know why Mickey Mantle's death sticks with me. Perhaps it was because he hit his 500th home run on my 10th birthday. Or because he was the embodiment of the classic All-American boy from the nation's heartland. Whatever the reason was, I heard the news of his death on Sunday afternoon shortly after I returned from a weeklong vacation in Provincetown. He was only 63.
Mantle died from cancer a few months after receiving a liver transplant. In his last years he had gone public about his struggles with alcoholism and how it likely diminished what could have been an even more glorious career. (Not surprisingly, the bases are loaded with books written about MM. One is Mickey Mantle: America's Prodigal Son; another that was published last October is The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle & the End of America's Childhood.)
As it turned out the summer of '95 (made memorable by the Macarena craze sweeping the nation) would be my last time in Provincetown, a wonderful place at the tip of Cape Cod I'd vacationed at on numerous occasions between 1980-95. The following summer I began spending summer weekends at Fire Island, a barrier island off the south shore of Long Island. (The community I stayed in is the Pines.)
Mantle, who played during much of the Yankee dynasty of 1949-1964, died just as the Yankees were re-emerging as a powerhouse - and their dominance continues today. And although Mickey still holds the record for most games played as a Yankee, Derek Jeter should surpass him some time next season. FYI, five of Mantle's Hall of Fame counterparts are still with us: Yogi Berra (87 years old); Whitey Ford (83); Ernie Banks (81); Willie Mays (81) and Hank Aaron (78).
Here is a video clip from the daytime Joan Rivers Show that aired just a year or so before Mickey's death. In it he candidly discusses his struggle with alcohol.
