Over many years I have gained experience appearing on radio and television. For almost a decade I was the on-air legal analyst at KYW-TV which, back in the 1980s and early 1990s, was the NBC affiliate in Philadelphia. As an on-air newsroom lawyer, I was sort of a pioneer. This was before the O.J. Simpson murder case changed the television landscape with the addition of wall-to-wall lawyers (mostly law professors who had never tried a case) authoritatively pontificating on each and every detail of the trial.

To hear them tell it, every day’s courtroom development in the O.J. case – no matter how small or inconsequential – was a “major setback”, a “turning point”,  “devastating”, a “huge victory”, “dramatic”, “decisive” or whatever. But to us trial lawyers, the O.J. case was mostly boring save for those dumbfounding moments when the woeful prosecutors (Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden) would pull some boneheaded stunt that left me and my prosecutor pals shaking our heads in disbelief. Nobody, we thought, could be that stupid. So, to that extent, the trial could be captivating. Sort of like watching a slow-motion car crash. 

But all that is a subject for another time. The point I’m trying to make here has to do with my media experience.

The people at KYW-TV were extraordinarily kind and patient with me as I slowly – and I do mean slowly – learned how to stare into the camera and talk. It’s harder than it looks. After a while they had me either appear on the set with the station anchors or from my perch upstairs in the newsroom where producers and reporters could be seen bustling about in the background. The anchors would ask questions, and I would talk.

Before air time I would huddle with the anchors to go over the questions that they were going to ask. That allowed me a few minutes to organize my thoughts and compress my answers into the few minutes allotted. The basic rule of television news is to keep moving so the viewers stay engaged and don’t change the channel.

The anchors at KYW-TV were at the top of the media food chain. Back then, Philadelphia was either the fourth or fifth largest media market in the country. Promotion from there was to New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or one of the networks. So the anchor talent at KYW-TV was first rate, and it was fun appearing with them on air. 

Now there was one anchor – who shall remain nameless – who was one of the nicest guys ever and who had a vibrant and engaging on-camera presence. He went on to host a nationwide celebrity-oriented show. But almost every time I appeared with him, he would deviate from our prep session and ask some off-the-wall question that had nothing to do with the topic at hand. The first few times it happened, I did my involuntary impression of Jackie Gleason’s “Chef of da’ Future” live television ad on The Honeymooners.

To understand what I’m talking about, click on this picture:

But after a while, I figured out how to deal with it.