The Evening News

Theo Elliott laughed.”If she is, it's with good reason. I assume most of us here have read the book The Best Congress Money Can Buy. If not, it's must reading for people like ourselves . . . What's the author's name?”
"Philip Stem,” Margot said.

excitable Greek family, a trait he had inherited. His excitability, though, seemed to fit the job and despite it he never lost control. Thus it was Kazazis who received Rita Abrams’ satellite transmission from DFW-first Minh Van Canh’s pictures sent “quick and dirty,” then Harry Partridge’s audio track, concluding with his standup. The time was 6:48 … ten minutes of news remaining. A commercial break had just begun. The Evening News 33 Kazazis told the operator who had taken the feed in, “Slap it together fast. Use all of Partridge’s track. Put the best pictures over it. I trust you. Now move, move, move!” Through an aide, Kazazis had already let the Horseshoe know that the Dallas tape was coming in. Now, by phone, Chuck Insen, who was in the broadcast control room, demanded, “How is it?” Kazazis told the executive producer, “Fantastic! Beautiful! Exactly what you’d expect of Harry and Minh.” Knowing there wasn’t time to view the piece himself, and trusting Kazazis, Insen ordered, “We’ll go with it after this commercial. Stand by.” With less than a minute to go, the tape operator, perspiring in his air-conditioned work space, was continuing to edit, hurriedly combining pictures, commentary and natural sound. Insert’s command was repeated to the anchorman and a writer seated near him. A lead-in was already prepared and the writer passed the single sheet to Crawford Sloane who skimmed it, quickly changed a word or two, and nodded thanks. A moment later on the anchor’s Teleprompter, what were to have been the next segment’s opening words switched over to the DFWstory. In the broadcast studio as the commercial break neared its conclusion, the stage manager called, “Ten seconds . five … four … two …” At a hand signal Sloane began, his expression grave. “Earlier in this broadcast we reported a midair collision near Dallas between a Muskegon Airlines Airbus and a private plane. The private plane crashed There are no survivors. The Airbus, on fire, crash-landed at DallasFort Worth Airport a few minutes ago and there are heavy casualties. On the scene is CBA News correspondent Harry Partridge who has just filed this report. “ Only seconds before had the frantic editing in the One-inchtape Room been completed. Now, on monitors throughout the building and on millions of TV sets in the Eastern and Midwestern United States and across the Canadian border, a dramatic picture of an approaching, burning Airbus filled the 34 ARTHUR BAILEY screen and Partridge’s voice began, “Pilots in a long-ago war called it comin’ in on a wing and a prayer … “ The exclusive report and pictures had, as the final item, made the first-feed National Evening News. There would be a second feed of the National Evening News immediately after the first. There always was and it would be broadcastin the East by affiliate stations who did not take the first feed, widely in the Midwest, and most Western stations would record the second feed for broadcast later. The Partridge report from DFW would, of course, lead the second feed and while competing networks might, by now, have after-the-fact pictures for their second feeds,