What a time!

It’s been a rough couple of weeks as our lives have been turned upside down by a virus pandemic. I’ve been busy creating church service streams, new online bulletins, and streaming services to parishioners over the last week and it gave little time to be in touch with you! But I have a moment to breathe and thought I would check in. (I’m also waiting for a new computer to arrive as this laptop has quite a number of issues – including age!)

It’s been interesting to watch the news stations at this time, although after an hour of the constant COVID-19 stories, I’m a little tired of it! Still though, the show must go on – and several reporters are even working from home.

Downtown at KDKA-TV (2) last week, Ken Rice was managing the entire 4:00-7:00 p.m. news block by himself in the studio. (Haven’t watched this week to see who is doing the marathon.) Weather guru Ray Petelin was keeping his distance in the weather center. And all the others were elsewhere. Stacy Smith has been handling his reports from home and the aforementioned Petelin has also moved operations to his house. At noon on Tuesday, David Highfield anchored the Noon news from the Gateway Center pathways just outside the station. In an Instagram post, Highfield said it was “a test to make sure we can provide information to you in every scenario.”

Over at WTAE-TV (4) and WPXI-TV (11) the full crew appears to be there but distanced throughout the studio. It seems that is what many stations across the country are doing, sometimes going as far as to have anchors in two separate studios.

Many radio stations have sent the majority of their crews home. Marty Griffin did a tour of the Entercom stations Tuesday showing a skeleton crew at KDKA-AM (1020), KDKA-FM (93.7), WBZZ-FM (100.7) and WDSY-FM (107.9).

No doubt, we are in very strange times and I wish you all the best throughout this time. Stay well!

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Meanwhile, last week we learned of the death of a former KDKA Radio employee – Harry O’Toole. O’Toole was 89 years old and had been an entertainer beginning at a young age.

In 1948 he went into the Army and left in 1954. He remained in the reserves for 32 years after that. But in 1975 he began a job as a temp secretary at KDKA where he became public service director, a producer of Pirate baseball broadcasts and even did school closings for Jack Bogut.

In a Facebook post the other day Bogut said O’Toole was hired to replace the secretary and receptionist for the programming and news departments where he had to overcome some obstacles – the fact that in those days most secretaries were female, and that he was replacing an extremely efficient and productive predecessor. It soon became apparent that O’Toole was proficient in shorthand without a mistake and organized the files so that anything could be found in seconds.

“Then came his wacky sense of humor, most of the time displayed without a smile, that kept us shaking our heads and laughing. His view of the world was consistently crusty, incisive, and funny. I heard someone refer to him as “The KDKA Curmudgeon. But not to his face,” Bogut said.

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Lastly, Eddy Crow left his listeners with a cryptic message on Tuesday. We were alerted by a fan, but have no word as to why. The post on his several Facebook pages, “CROWTOPIA on hiatus TFN”. Perhaps a temporary budget cut? We’ll await word…