I'm at the corner of 9th and Elm Street.

A lot happened here.

This is the corner where WLWT television did their magic.

Artists, musicians, writers, producers, directors, it all came together right here.

[static noise] If you're going to talk about prominent TV shows and personalities, you have to mention Cincinnati's Ruth Lyons.

She was in her day the queen of daytime television.

Sponsors would line up just to get on her show or even just get a mention.

That was unheard of then and unheard of now.

We'll talk about her in another episode, but right now, we're going to talk about the person who replaced Ruth Lyons when she retired.

People wondered if that new person could hold onto the energy, audience appeal, and prominence that she had.

Well, the singer from that show managed to do all three, and that person was Bob Braun.

We caught up with his son, Rob Braun, who shared some stories about his dad and some memories right here on The Golden Age of Local Television.

[music playing] We are continuing our discussion about Northern Kentucky television legends.

And I don't know how to do this, because you're a television legend and your dad was a television legend.

What should we talk about first here, Rob?

First of all, that's pretty generous, but I appreciate it.

It's very kind of you to say, but I don't feel like one of those.

Here with Rob Braun.

And Rob, let's talk first about a little bit about your career, then we'll talk about your dad and what it was like to be Sure the son of Bob Braun.

Yeah.

But You started out now in television in Knoxville, Tennessee, right?

I did.

I went around looking for a way to get into television, because at the time I had a carnival business.

I thought, if I don't try this, I'll wonder the rest of my life whether I can do it.

So, I started knocking on doors.

And my father was the reason people would talk to me, because they recognized the name.

I started in the Indianapolis, Columbus, Dayton, Louisville, and Cincinnati area.

Everybody wanted to make me a salesman because Dad was such a good salesman.

But I wanted to do live television, which is the era in which I grew up.

News was it.

That's what pushed me to do it.

At that point in time, local broadcasting had all the local shows that were starting to phase out, even your dad's show.

It was, but it was still on the air, and there were still a number of others on the air when I started.

Dad's show phased out in like ‘84, I think it was, if I'm not mistaken.

Phased out is a very fancy name for they fired him.

[laughs] It was the end of the era.

But I loved live television, and I was very comfortable doing it.

The World's Fair was coming to Knoxville, Tennessee.

They needed photographers and reporters, and I lied.

I told them I could shoot.

And so, I went in a couple of days early and had a shooter, a real shooter, teach me the basics, and they hired me.

I didn't make enough to even make the rent.

It was pretty tough, but we had a good run.

It's a great place to start.

Lots of live action at the World's Fair.

I ended up on the Today Show on a regular basis, and some really big opportunities for a young kid.

So, you end up back here in Cincinnati with KRC.

Yeah.

And when did you come to realize the important connection you had to Northern Kentucky?

I always felt it because I grew up in sort of both places.

Cincinnati is where I went to school, but my grandfather lived in Ludlow, so I spent a lot of time in Kentucky.

So, it just felt like, you know, Northern Kentucky people don't just love it across the river, and the people in Cincinnati don't even know Northern Kentucky exists a lot of times.

But I had a really nice crossover kind of relationship.

So, I went into the business realizing that Northern Kentucky people were important, but when I would go to editorial meetings or meetings with the general manager, they didn't even see Northern Kentucky.

There was never someone coming in with a Northern Kentucky idea for a story except for Johnny Lomax, and he lived over here in Villa Hills.

So, I was always fighting for the Northern Kentucky side of the river, and it was just a natural instinct, and I was struck by the fact that so many people in the editorial meeting had no interest in stories in Northern Kentucky.

But I believe that what made me different and put me over the top as a newsman was the folks of Northern Kentucky.

They recognized that I recognized them.

You know, I used to work for Senator, then Congressman, Jim Bunning for many years.

That's the first time we actually met was when you went to Nicaragua with Bunning to see what was going on in Nicaragua, report on it, and also deliver some medical supplies that he had gathered up for the local Catholic church down there.

And little did I know it was going to be the most terrifying moment of my life, though, going along with him, because we were in Nicaragua during the war, and the war came to us that day, and it was frightening.

But Jim Bunning is the reason that I made it through that harrowing experience.

We were under attack.

He was whisked away by the Secret Service, but he sent the Secret Service back out to get us, because the Secret Service doesn't necessarily like media people, but Jim Bunning liked us, and he saw to it that we were cared for.

That was a big day.

Well, you know, Jim didn't particularly care for media, but again, I think he chose you to go on that trip because you were a Northern Kentucky guy.

You were the person that was on the television that reported on Northern Kentucky.

I've always told people the only two people he liked talking to were you and Denny Jansen.

Yeah.

You were the only two local reporters that he loved getting to talk politics, and that was you guys.

Well, Jim was just a really local, local, local guy, right?

I mean, he just was a very basic Northern Kentucky guy, and that's me.

I just plug into that sort of individual.

So, we hit it off from the first time we ever talked, and I was honored that he took time to, you know, be a contact for me.

He would always take my calls, always.

I can remember when your dad would come to town.

In fact, your cousin, Tom Gaither, said everybody knew when the Braun family came to Ludlow.

Yeah, Dad was a little flashier than I am [laughs], but he would make a bit of a splash no matter where we went.

But I have to say that Dad's mentorship and Nick Clooney's mentorship is one of the reasons that I recognized how important what we would call the customer, and the viewer is the customer to us, is to your success in the business.

My dad, when we would go to dinner in a public place, people would come over and talk to him.

So, they would interrupt your dinner, and as kids, you know, we found that to be off-putting.

And my father's lesson to us was when somebody walks up to the table, you put your fork down and you look at them, and you interact with them until they leave.

And when that stops happening is when we have a problem.

He was just so in tune with the people who were his viewers, and I think I learned that from him, and Clooney was the same way.

It's very important to be fair, honest, and open as a newsman, and Clooney would drill that into everybody's head every day in the editorial meeting.

So, I was brought up in that environment.

But Dad had the extra splash of, you know, being an entertainer, and that was a fun way to live.

The last time I saw your father was in the planning session for the Barron's and Crawford Museum retrospective that we did on his career, and I remember him telling me, and I think it's probably in reference to your brother Doug, that he said, you know, Robbie and Doug had that I was kind of square, and he said, and then one night I brought home Jimmy Seals and Dash Crawford dinner, right in the middle of Seals and Crawford hysteria.

But that was kind of a regular thing around the Braun household, wasn't it?

It really was.

It was the norm for us to be around people like that.

Dad would take vacations and work and do, you know, little bit parts in different shows, and you know, I got to do some special things like play on The Andy Griffith Show lot and the Gomer Pyle lot, and all those kinds of shows, Dad would do little bit parts for the promotion for him and for them.

And so, I had access to those people and those environments.

And to us, it was just very normal.

We didn't really think it was that special.

It was very nice.

Everybody has the Bob Hope Show at their house.

Well, you just don't.

Right, I mean, it's just so normal that, you know, you don't think anything about it.

But you remember when the teacher would make you write what you did for your summer vacation.

I came back from something in L.A., and we would stay at Dick Clark's house, generally one night.

As a kid, I would stay over.

And I wrote what I did for my summer vacation, and it had these movie stars and Dick Clark's name in there, and, you know, I read it not knowing that what I was doing was so unusual.

It just didn't register.

And the teacher was infuriated because she thought I made it up.

She said, “You can't come here and make up these stories and have them presented as the truth,” and embarrassed me, and I'm, you know, it's just like I made this huge mess by simply telling the truth.

But from then on, when I would write my papers about what I did on my summer vacation, I made it up because the truth was just so outrageous.

But you're right.

We had lots and lots of fun people come to the house when I was a kid.

When I talked to Dick Murgatroyd a while back, I asked who his favorites were.

Who were your favorites that used to be on your dad's show?

I'd have to say that Bob Hope was the most favorite because he would call the house when he was coming to town because he had something where he wanted Dad to introduce him, you know, if he was in this region.

And so, he would call Dad and ask Dad if he would hook him up with this masseuse downtown, the same masseuse all the time, and he would stay at the Netherland.

So, he would just phone us, you know, and you pick up the phone and, “Dad, it's Bob Hope on the, you know.”[laughs] And that's what weird about it.

It was just, you know, a fact of life.

And then, Dad would send me to the airport to pick him up.

And Bob didn't travel in a big, you know, entourage.

It was just he and his wife sometime.

Most of the time, he was alone.

And I would pick him up.

I went to New York one time later in life, and there was this crowd around the Delta counter, and it was encircling this man.

And I walked over thinking, "What's going on?"

And it was Bob Hope in this circle of people who were just standing there watching him.

So, I made my way through the crowd and walked up to him, and he gave me the biggest hug and treated me like I was part of the family.

And it was just so much fun because everybody was treating him like he was something special, which he was, but they didn't realize that he was just a guy.

And he just was a nice man, unassuming in so many ways, but the biggest star on the face of the earth, really at the time.

Did you use to hang out on the set?

With Dad?

Oh, yeah.

Here's how I would judge the stars who would come in is is how they would treat me when my father wasn't around.

And the case was that it was always the biggest stars would be the nicest, and the newer stars or the B stars would be the nastiest.

So, Bob Hope was wonderful.

I got to run the curtain for Lucille Ball, who was on the show, and she was so nice to me.

We had the nicest conversation as she was waiting to go on, and Dad was on a break, and I was just back there, and we were just shooting the breeze, and it was just refreshing to see her be so normal.

And I got to, you know, open the curtain.

She walks out, and it was just a big splash, and it was fun to be there.

So, the bigger the star, the nicer they are.

When you were at that early stage, how do you think that influenced your later career, hanging out with all those folks, hanging out in Northern Kentucky, and working for Grandpa down at the shop in Ludlow?

How did that influence your worldview as you went forward and your view as a broadcaster?

I think it was that people are all the same at their core.

They want a nice life.

They want to be treated with respect.

They want you to care about what they're saying.

They want you to hear them.

Those are the sort of lessons I think I learned through Dad and Clooney and working for Pop, delivering groceries from his little mom-and-pop grocery store on Elm Street.

With the big picture of your dad behind the butcher cabinet.

Yeah.

The butcher [laughs], where he would butcher the meat, there was a huge picture of your dad sitting behind that.

Yeah.

It was just that everybody is to be treated with respect.

And that's the way I conducted myself as a newsman.

And, you know, a lot of people have stories they want to tell.

And it was one of the toughest things you do as a newsman is to go to the home of someone who's maybe just lost a child in some horrific accident or something like that.

And half of the people would condemn you for coming, and half of the people would be so glad you were there because they wanted to tell their story about their child to the world, and you were the mouthpiece for that.

And so, that was the moment when I realized that I had an important role to play to allow these people the opportunity to tell their story.

And so, storytelling, which is a better way to say what I did rather than news, and it worked.

What were probably the problems that ended up eventually with Sinclair taking over the station and wanting to control the broadcast?

Well, once they started to tell me what to say rather than to go collect the news for the day, that was the end of it for me.

I didn't enjoy it anymore, and I couldn't do things that were agenda politics for a corporation.

I was representing the people who watched me, and I wasn't going to violate that in order to just stay on TV.

It wasn't worth it.

You know, that's interesting.

You talk about that because you got into broadcasting about the time that the 24-hour news cycle started.

Yes.

And what are the changes you've seen since then?

Because I think we've gone to a place, Rob, where we used to watch the news to form our opinions.

Now we have an opinion, and we watch the news to verify what it is we think.

Right.

And we often tune in to the opinion that we like and therefore eliminate the other side of the argument, which is not a good idea either.

Horrible idea.

You have to listen to all the arguments in order to form your own, which is what I tell people still today.

How did you keep your bias out of it then?

All this is growing.

I mean, that's kind of intricate.

All this is growing.

The 24-hour news cycle.

Everything is going to editorial-based news.

How did you stay, Rob Braun, through all that?

That was what Clooney set up for us, that we were to be the unbiased bit of news every day.

And so, I thought it was my job to take the bias out of the scripts.

So, there were 350 pages in the early show, and I went through every page and tried to eliminate whatever bias would be there.

Now, we're all humans, so there is bias inherent in what we're doing.

So, you can't eliminate all of it.

But I would try to eliminate as much as I could and represent both sides in all arguments and give people equal time to do so.

That's what I thought my job was.

And I think it was just because that's the way I was taught.

That's what Clooney told me, my father told me, and it's a matter of fairness.

But we're talking about a long period of time here, but I mean, it ended up over here, where you suggest, and that is that that's not the way it's conducted today.

It is done in a manner that is to deliver an opinion.

And I can't do opinion.

That's not news to me.

So, that's when it was time to go.

But when we started out, no one would watch us.

When they paired me with Hedrick, we were fourth behind the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

[laughs] I mean, [laughs] it was horrible.

So, we would do things to try to get attention.

And Hedrick and I, it was a great pairing.

We were great friends, and we had the Q102 radio upstairs.

So, Hedrick went up there and asked him for tickets to these concerts that were coming up.

And we would run.

This is in the middle of the news.

We would run an opportunity to win a ticket to go to hear whoever at some venue in Cincinnati.

And Hedrick would go out to a telephone booth, when we had them, and he would call back and he would say, “Here's the number, Rob.” And so, I would get on the air and say we have tickets to so and so, Seals and Crofts, and Hedrick is at a telephone booth, and the first person to call the telephone booth gets the tickets.

[laughs] [laughs] And so, we were really doing a radio promotion on television, but it worked for them, we figured maybe somebody will watch.

And they started watching, looking for these tickets.

And so, the phone in the phone booth would ring, and Hedrick would do it, would take the call, and then we would do a live, and he would say, you know, “Bill Smith from Northern Kentucky won tickets to whatever, because he called me on this telephone booth."

[laughs] And so, Cincinnati Bell came by and shortly thereafter, complaining to our management that we were wrecking their computers at 9:00 or 10:00 when we would do this at night, and it would crash their computer because of thousands of people trying to win these tickets.

So, stupid little things like that started to catch on for us, and we would take the show on the road when the news director told us to never take the show on the road.

I mean, he just reamed me and said, “Do not take the show on the road.” Well, of course, on the weekend we took the show on the road.

[laughs] And we got a lot of attention, and he yelled at us when we came back on Monday when he would come back in, and then he would look at the numbers, and I would say, “Well, did anybody watch us?” He goes, “Well, yeah, quite a lot of people watched you on the weekend when you were doing what you weren't supposed to be doing, you know.” And it just kind of caught on.

But your dad took the show on the road.

Exactly.

It's not like it was a new idea.

It was something I learned as a child.

But it was servicing people.

We were going on the road to get people involved in what we were doing, and that just worked for us.

Hedrick and I had a good thing going.

Hedrick was the best weatherman I've ever worked with in my entire life.

He was right a lot.

And people started to tune in, and one thing led to another, and man, it was just a rocket ride from there.

We did really well.

Again, I go back to you.

You were Northern Kentucky's broadcaster.

You were our anchor.

I mean, there were all kinds of folks.

You know, a lot of people came through during that timeframe.

Sean Cotty, Atkins, Jerry, Norma, all those folks.

But you were it.

You were the guy.

I was very fortunate in that regard, and I really believe that what threw me over the top in every ratings book were the people in Northern Kentucky who watched us, and that was nice.

It felt good.

It felt good to be right, too, telling those people in the editorial meetings, “You need to listen to what's going on in Northern Kentucky.” I mean, they weren't even covering Northern Kentucky football on Friday night.

I mean, it was ridiculous.

You see now these AI responses where it says, you know, “What's Rob Braun doing now?” I saw that today.

I clicked it.

Oh, you did?

And it did.

It actually said, “He spends his time walking around his vegetable patch.” I don't know where that came from.

I know you used to be on the vegetable side.

You had, actually, a working cattle farm out in Pendleton County, right?

Yeah.

We've had the farm for 25 years, and we would commute on the weekends.

We'd stay there three nights a week and then come back to the city for the remainder because I was doing news, and it was impossible to do it any other way.

The commute from Pendleton County was a little tough to do the news.

My wife owned a business, and it was in Woodlawn.

So, for her, it was an hour and 20 minutes minimum.

So, that's just too far.

So, we did that forever.

But when I left Channel 12, we moved to the farm full time.

And the farm was always my refuge.

It was like my therapist.

There's something about being on a tractor a mile from the house, no other human being in sight, raising cattle or cutting hay.

It puts you closer to God.

It just is unbelievable how it feels and the good feelings that it generates for everything in my life.

I just love it.

My son and I work together, flipping houses.

We own some apartments and things together, and I'm actually having the time of my life.

I'm happier now than I've ever been in my entire life.

Something I read, though, in doing the research, your dad got you started in that.

He had a horse farm?

He did.

[laughs] Okay, what do you throw?

I can get you on most Bob Braun facts, most trivia, but this is this woman I'm looking at.

I never knew.

He got you to run a horse farm when you were a teenager, right?

I was.

He was like Pop, my grandfather, in that he just thought you could do whatever he told you to do.

And he decided he was going to buy this horse farm on, it was in Green Hills, actually, and it abutted Mount Airy Forest.

And so I couldn't even drive when he bought it, I remember, but he would drive me there and drop me off, and I'd spend my days there running it.

We had 40 head of horses that were renters on the property, and I just ran it.

Dad came home one day and said, “I want you to do this.” I mean, that was the extent of it.

And we had to put in a waterline one day, and he said, "Well, how are you going to put in the waterline?” I said, "Well, we got to dig a 36-inch-deep trench from the road,” which was 1,000 feet, which is a lot.

And I said, “I need a backhoe, but I don't know how to do that.” He goes, “Well, can't you run them?” Dad was a lot like that.

And he'd just kind of bark it out, and you had to figure it out.

And so, I come back a couple of days later and go, “Yeah, I found one I can run.” I said, “But how am I going to get over to the farm, because I can't drive it on the road?” He goes, “Why can't you?” I didn't really think about that.

[laughs] [laughs] He said, “Just drive it over to the farm.” So, I did.

I drove it over to the farm.

I ran the backhoe.

I learned.

I mean, that's the way he treated me my whole life.

You can do it.

His line was, “Somebody's doing it.

Why can't it be you?” That's what he said for everything.

And it threw open the door to all possibilities in your life, that, “Well, why can't you do it?” Why can't you get on Air Force One and interview the president?

Why can't you walk into the White House and do your business?

I mean, that's where I think I got the nerve to do what I did, as he always said, “Somebody's doing it.

Why can't it be you?” What's your dad's legacy?

If you boiled it all down, I think it's work ethic.

And that comes from my grandfather.

And Pop always said to Dad, “It's your job to kick the ball further down the court.” My father said to me, “It's your job to kick the ball further down the court.” And hopefully that's what we all did.

But it really was because we all worked hard.

It was just something you did.

There was never an excuse.

I don't even think -- I can't remember.

Murg probably will.

I can only remember a couple of occasions in my life when my father didn't go to work.

And usually, it involved the hospital.

But there was never an excuse of, I can't go to work today because I don't feel good, or I've got to stay home and watch the kids.

It was nothing like that.

That's what you did.

You went to work.

So, I think that's his legacy.

What has your dad meant to Northern Kentucky?

I think Dad did in Northern Kentucky what I tried to do, and that is to not forget them.

Those were his roots, and he meant it, and it was very positive reinforcement.

One of the things in producing this show that we've been doing is we've been working a lot with Dick Murgatroyd.

Yeah.

What are your memories of Murg back when you would come in and run around the set and everything else?

Tell us a Murg story of you two.

My best memory of Murg is standing next to a manure wagon, and I had his hand like this.

My father was on stage singing, and I'm standing next to Murg.

Because for me, Murg was my second dad.

In order to see my father, I had to go on the road with him.

We had to go travel.

He went to L.A. all the time to do things, to New York to do things all the time, and he would bring the family so we could have family time.

And we were on the road, and I think I've seen the backstage of every building from here to Chicago or maybe down to Charlotte, and I'm holding on to Murg.

And the older I got, Murg became my confidant for my teenage troubled years.

He was my second dad.

He taught me so much about life, and usually it was, “It'll be alright.” He was always smoothing it over.

You'll be fine.

Always a calming force.

Oh man.

Yeah.

And, you know, his talents, I think, you are █ When you went into the business, did you call him and say, "How am I doing?"

Yeah.

[laughs] Sometimes he would say, “What are you doing?” [laughs] But yeah.

I know he had those conversations with your dad when he permed his hair out in California.

So, did he have that type of conversation with you?

So, yeah, my father.

So, when you're a newsman, you think you don't have to wear makeup, you don't need a tie, you're just doing the good work.

And so, I would send my father tapes and ask him to critique them.

And it went on for like 60 days, and I'd never heard anything from Dad about these tapes I kept sending.

And I called him, and I said, “Well, are you getting my tapes?” He goes, “I'm not really sure.” And I said, “Did you look at my tapes?” He goes, “I think I looked at them, but I didn't see anything on them.” I go, “What are you talking about?

You didn't see anything on them?” He goes, “Because you didn't wear any makeup, and you didn't have a tie on.

That's disrespectful for the audience.” And I mean, on and on and on and on.

He goes, “Not wearing makeup on television is like a plumber showing up without any tools.

What are you thinking?” So, he's just screaming at me.

So, I call Murg to appeal to Murg, like, you know, “Come on, that's ridiculous.

He's being like this.” And Murg's going, “Yeah, pretty much.

He's pretty much right."

[laughs] "So, you probably ought to put your makeup on.” [laughs] The laughter you hear right now, folks, is Murg sitting off camera actually laughing and giving that advice.

And when the crew laughs, you know you hit a good one.

[laughs] You and your brother and your sister spent a lot of time down there.

If you heard somebody was coming, did you want to go to the show?

You know, I wasn't that attentive.

I usually would go to spend time with Dad or Murg.

And then, I would just find out who was on.

And there was always someone significant there, it seemed like.

I'm sure there were many times when it was not the case, but I feel like I met everybody who was anybody.

And Dad's position was always that, you know, [laughs] you go to somebody's house and they've got dogs, and the dog's jumping on you, and there's dog hair.

And their position is, you know, if you don't like the dogs and you don't like me, so you can leave.

[laughs] So, Dad's position was, “That's my kid.

He's in my office.

He'll be in your space.

If you don't like my kid, you can leave.” [laughs] It was very similar to that.

So, that's how I came to judge these folks is that how they treated me when Dad wasn't in the space.

Did any of those connections ever come up while you started reporting years later?

Well, my first big interview was Bob Hope.

He came to Knoxville, Tennessee.

I had finished the World's Fair work, and everybody wanted to talk to him.

And so, I just called him, and he said, "Sure, come on over."

I went over to the Coliseum, and he came in his limousine.

And I got in the limousine and did an interview with Bob before he even walked into the Coliseum.

And, you know, just wonderful.

Dick Clark was the same way.

He'd come to town.

In fact, Dick Clark was so into self-promotion because he realized what he needed to be successful.

When I was a newsman, Dick would call me and say, “Hey, I got this thing going on in Cincinnati.

Can I come over?” So, yes, it was a married existence from my past to my current job as a newsman.

And it was just wonderful.

But it was never, you know, as people thought, you know, everybody puts their pants on the same way, right?

I mean, they're just, when the lights go out, these folks love coming to my house because my mother was a great cook.

You know, and they got to eat a home-cooked meal and talk about something other than, you know, the next show.

Sometimes they would just sit and watch TV with Dad, you know, just do normal family stuff.

And we always, as children, got to eat with them.

We didn't have to eat in another room because the movie star was here.

You know, we played just like we played every other day.

Except [laughs] when you would go outside, you know, after dinner and your friends were out in the street.

I remember playing, I don't know, it was football or kickball or whatever we were playing in the street.

And out the front door of the house comes Batman and, [laughs] - Adam West.

Yeah.

that sent the kids a little crazy.

[laughs] So, you know, I was never the normal kid.

I was always the kid that was doing, you know, weird stuff.

But it was a great way to grow up.

I had asked you a couple weeks back if you had a picture of your dad and Reagan.

And your comment, your email back to me -- -- by the way, you thought I was Shiloh's other Rick.

But you had said to me something to the effect that it was just our lives.

Yeah.

To the extent that dad had a room where he had a lot of famous pictures up with people that, and some at the office, but once dad was gone, it wasn't as charming, you know.

So, Mom took those pictures down, and that was the comment, you know.

That was great, but it was just our life, you know.

It wasn't like something that needed to be celebrated anymore.

Dad liked it from the television side.

But I feel fortunate to have had the experiences, but it was just our life, you know.

You didn't go to bed at night thinking how special you are because the guy in the other room had appeared on television, because your dad appeared on television.

So, it wasn't that special.

It was just what he did.

It's like, you know, if your dad's a plumber and he brings over another plumber.

Do you know what I mean?

That's it.

You liked the guy because he was nice to you, not necessarily because you saw him on TV.

That was how we judged people.

I always thought it was wonderful that your dad started out on radio doing WSAI baseball Little League scores.

And he ended up, before he passed away, back on the radio doing oldies music.

And I think he went out the way he came in on the radio.

I have the last microphone he ever worked.

I have it at my house.

The guys from SAI.

Let me sort of sneak that out the back door.

It was nice.

That's wonderful.

Yeah.

I have some things like that that I cherish more than a picture with somebody famous.

Do you know what I mean?

I cherish that and a few other little mementos I have from Dad.

[music playing] Robbie, thank you.

I appreciate you giving us some time today.

Happy to be here.

This is a pleasure.

It's always fun to talk about your dad.

[music playing] Everybody wants to be in front of the camera and be a star.

I'm living proof of that.

But you know what?

You know who makes it all worthwhile and makes it look good?

It's those behind-the-scenes tech people.

We talked to a few of those guys, and their contributions made to The Golden Age of Local Television.

My basic background was in audio and audio production.

When we talk about live programming, what would be interesting is that there was a place over in northern Kentucky, the Beverly Hills, and they had a lot of class, with big acts, come in.

And they would come over, and we would do The Bob Braun Show, basically.

That's what I did.

I was a helper there.

And we'd have a group come in and come into the studio for an hour rehearsal before it went on the air.

And all you got was an hour.

And I remember it was so difficult because you're so nervous going, “Can I make a mistake?

Can I make a mistake?” But everything was live.

You couldn't make a mistake.

But if you did make a mistake, you had to slap it off.

There was a big glass window where the producer and the director would sit.

And I can remember that, especially on the Dixon show, where the producer would look.

If you made a mistake, he'd look back in the window.

That was a lot of fun.

The Paul Dixon show was funny, humorous, I should say.

But one of the things that I brought from my radio days was I used, you probably heard this, cartridge drop-ins.

And so, I had this big stack of carts that I used to use when I did my radio show.

And I started dropping these carts in on Dixon.

And I'll never forget that we had a guy that was from Mike Patterson who came in with a moon rock.

And we were showing people this moon rock.

And so, he goes, “This is a moon rock.” And I had a cart, and I went, "Oh, really?"

And I kept doing it.

The audience was going nuts because this was so funny.

And Paul didn't kind of know what to do about it.

So finally, the producer was just going nuts.

“Stop, stop, stop, stop.” But then, when the show was over, I talked.

“Come down to the studio.

We were like a family.” And I came down, and Paul said, “Whatever you did, let's do it again.

Let's do it again.” And I did the same thing with -- we introduced this new sponsor.

And it happened to be Wendy's.

And Wendy's was down the street.

And so, Paul would sit down with Bonnie Lou and Colleen.

And they would sit there and eat this food.

We brought the food up to them.

I had the two-and-a-half-minute belch cart.

And I kept playing this belch cart.

People went nuts.

They were falling off their chairs with humor.

Same thing, Paul said, "Whatever you did, do it again," because he was kind of superstitious.

But that show was a family show.

And all of the people that did that show, when he died suddenly, I remember being, I had just gotten, just been assigned to that show permanently, the guy that previously retired.

And I was so excited because it was just a great thing.

We had a live band, and we'd come in in the morning and do that show.

And when he died, everybody thought, “Well, we can carry on.

But we couldn't carry on without him.” Not without him.

Yeah, not without him.

He was the guy who glued it all together.

And people today still ask me about the Dixon Show.

And of course, I have a couple of knee ticklers and the Paul Dixon walk that show.

But you felt the freedom to be able to drop those in without having to check with anybody first on a live show.

Yeah.

And that kind of came out from the producer, or it came down from Paul, or where did that feeling of freedom come from?

I just did it.

[laughs] Oh, okay.

[laughs] [laughs] I was union.

No.

I did a couple of things.

And I knew that he liked that.

And he responded to the audience.

And back in those days, when I started to say he was using a cardioid mic, or not a cardioid, he was using an Omni mic.

And so, we couldn't really get all the -- he wanted to hear all this feedback from people, you know, and the audience and everything.

But he was genuinely convinced when he heard the audience go crazy.

That was magic.

That was what he liked.

And so, I don't think I really went too crazy with it.

But I do remember a couple of times when I got this, “Stop, stop” [laughs] from the producer.

In Steve Woolman, I could probably tell you the same thing.

How about on the Bob Braun show?

Never on the Braun show did I try to pull one of those.

[laughs] And I've got to tell you a little story about that.

I would do the Dixon show in the morning.

And that would be assigned to Bob's camera.

And Bob would come over to me, and he'd say, “Are you ever going to come down here?"

And of course, I was in a seniority situation.

I couldn't bump the guy.

The guy was my roommate on the road sometimes.

So, I said, “I'll try.

I'll try.” But when I did his show, You know it was really great.

And can I do a prop here?

Yeah.

The audience at that time was starting to change.

They were starting to skew a little bit younger and a little bit older, too.

But when the show was canceled, he called us all to his office.

And he said, “Well, I'm going to clean out my locker.

If there's anything you want, let me know.” So, I told him, I said, “Bob, I like fire helmets.” And I said, “I'd really like to have the fire helmet.” And Bob said, “Well, I'd like to keep this one.” But he said, “If I ever get rid of it, you will have it.” And after he died, probably three or four years, maybe three years after he died, I was gone from Channel 5.

His wife called and said, “I've got something for Alan to give to Alan,” and she brought me this.

It just broke me up because that's how much he meant.

And it was really interesting.

Nobody else ever does that.

I mean, he didn't give it to his son.

When I go, it has to go to his son, for sure.

But I was just impressed that we were a family-type of group.

And that's the whole way we grew up.

And a lot of technology can't replace -- technology can't replace that.

Right.

What you did on the Dixon show was it pretty much the same thing you did on the Bob Braun show?

Yeah, but on the Braun show is what I was trying to say earlier, that we had these groups coming over, like The Happenings and other big groups.

And they were like three-part harmony.

And I remember I had to do this on this board with -- didn't have the right microphones.

It wasn't quite perfect, but you did a damn good job.

You tried to make it as good as you could.

And I remember Ella Fitzgerald, for Pete's sakes, came in one day.

And you did it.

You went in there.

Nope, nope, you had an hour, maybe.

And that was, you know, 10 to 30.

Because the band couldn't really get going because Dixon was still going.

You didn't want to have that sound working.

Wait, so the Braun show was rehearsing while the Dixon show was doing live?

The Dixon show went from 9:00 to 10:30.

The Braun show went on at noon.

But we tried to do a rehearsal.

You had to give half an hour to clean the studio out.

So, they would basically, we'd have maybe 10.30 to 11.30, so an hour to do this.

And the happenings may be singing.

We may have one of the other people singing.

We may have two other additional singers.

That's crazy.

It was.

Well, you didn't have time to think about how great it was until it was over.

Was there any particular cast member that was easy to work with, or any particular people that were easier or understoodmore than others?

Well, most of them were easy.

I went to school with Rob Reiter, so we were friends in college.

All the people were pretty nice.

I don't think I had any problem.

I had more of a problem sometimes with the band, because the band would say, “Well, that didn't mix that well.

The mix wasn't very good,” and you're going like, "Ah."

Any favorite guests on either show?

We didn't really have that many guests on the Dixon show.

I'm trying to think of the guy.

When Bob went on vacation, we hired -- I didn't hire, but they hired somebody to come in and do it.

It usually was a name.

And the guy was named Jim Stafford.

Spiders and Snakes.

Well, imagine our audience is probably -- median age of the audience is probably, I'd say, mid-50s.

And so, when Jim Stafford came out, nobody really knew who he was.

But the horrible part was, he brought Gallagher with him.

Gallagher was his road guy.

The watermelon guy?

Yes.

And Gallagher, in front of these people, put all these watermelons out and started smashing watermelons.

[laughs] Boom.

Now, I will say, Dixon had one funny bit that I can remember.

And that's when we had some farm animals come in.

And a goat backed into a woman in the front row and exploded.

And that was funny, but not so.

[laughs] I can't imagine being a cameraman on that, on a direct to say, “All right, let's cut away.” Let's actually.

[laughs] And Braun had the mini Mustang, a little horse about that big.

And the mini Mustang apparently hadn't had any bladder training.

And he had a problem in the elevator.

[laughs] And the setup people, I'll never forget it.

You know what a grass mat is.

They wiped up the urine with a grass mat, and the grass mats were stored in a box with a lid on it.

And they didn't use them all the time.

And that was a treat.

I'm sure it was.

I'm sure it was.

You may mention that you guys did a lot of creative things on the engineering side.

Can you tell us some of the things that you did or how that affected how the program went?

Phil Donahue's show at the penitentiary.

And so, we had to do special things there.

And one of the things about Channel 5 was that we had a crew on the road, and we still kept the studio stuff going.

So, at one time, we had the Dixon show in the morning.

We had the Braun show or the Ruth Lyons show at noon.

Then they did a special, like a movie show, Vivian de la Chiesa, which was before I got there.

And then, we did a newscast.

And then, we did two newscasts.

So, when we did the interesting part of that is we had the skills to go out and get it like four hours before the event and pull cameras and audio and do this.

And that's where our skill was in terms of the crew.

Then we'd come back, and we were all on overtime, of course.

And we'd come back, and go into our regular studio positions.

Now you also were involved with doing live stuff, obviously, with sports, baseball, the Bengals, and with the Reds.

We were one of two crews that NBC allowed to do their telecasts because they were a different union.

And we were able to -- we did, I mean, I did coast-to-coast games with -- we had Tony Kubek and Curt Gowdy and all that.

And we would do those telecasts.

And we also went on the road.

We worked -- oh, I remember doing a show for ABC with Howard Cosell in a boxing match.

And the strangest thing we did was we built a complete television studio on the Mississippi Queen when we did Donahue.

I should have asked you this earlier, but live commercials.

[laughs] Yeah, we did live commercials.

I laughed because one of the shows that we did the most live commercials for, we did an all-night movie.

And the sponsor was a beer sponsor.

Bob Shreve is who I got.

Bob Shreve's Playhouse or something like that?

Well, that was it.

They changed the name when they went to Channel 12.

And in fact, ironically, one of the guys that worked with us went to Channel 12 and took a lot of my prop stuff with him.

But that was live commercials.

And everybody thought that he was drinking the beer.

And everybody thought that he was drinking the beer.

And he would hold up the beer glass and, you know, never touch a drop.

But during the Dixon Show and the Braun Show, all were live commercials.

I don't think we ever had any weird things that happened at those, except, like I said, the belch card.

But, no, that was just commonplace.

And the thing about Bob was he was such a natural salesman, you know.

But all of his people, like Rob and Gwen and all the people that worked on that show, they could just do what he did.

And they sold those commercials.

It was like they were part of the family.

And that's what it's all about.

But, again, the control room, the crew were a cohesive unit.

And I remember we did a show called Midwestern Hayride.

And every night after the news was over, we did a show, another show in the big studio where Dixon was.

So, they had to strike Dixon pretty much every other day to do these shows.

And we would completely fill the studio with all this dancing.

And it was also syndicated.

My experiences and my friendships with the people at Channel 5 are enduring.

And it was a family.

And our accomplishments were many.

And it was one of the best times of my life.

Man who took over from a legend and some say became a legend himself, Mr. Bob Braun.

We hope you enjoyed some of the memories his son, TV anchor Rob Braun shared with us.

We also hope you enjoyed sharing some of the behind-the-scenes things shared by Mr. Alan Sakala We have a lot more conversations with many of the key players.

And you can see it right here on The Golden Age of Local Television.

See you then.

[music playing]