I just walked by the Paley Center for Media at 52nd and 5th and got a little nostalgic.
Journey with me back to 1991, and the Paley Center is called The Museum of Television and Radio. I’ve somehow fallen into a friend group with three ladies of the MOTR — Diane Rosenberg (who I know from NU), Betsy Jozus and Tracy. In addition to ski shares and tennis ladders, we had a lot of fun together, including hard-to-get tickets to some pretty cool MOTR events.
The particular nostalgic event that washed over me today was an on-stage interview with Howard Cosell. To me he was the ‘voice’ of sports. We went through his broadcast history, and of course spent the bulk of the time on his relationship with Muhammad Ali. And then it opened for questions. There was the usual “what was he like” and “what was the most exciting” type questions…
…and then a sweaty, overweight man in his 60s stood and took the mic. A hush fell over the room. Any dude in NYC in the early 90s immediately recognized Al Goldstein from his late night soft core porn news segment on Time Warner Public Access called Midnight Blue. My buddy Chuck once defined as “too drunk” the state in which you got home on a Friday night and were too inebriated to turn to “Channel J” to see Midnight Blue. Well, Al dug right in with “Have you ever had sex with anyone you interviewed?”.
The hush got even hushier. No one wanted this. An then Howard Cosell said “Good sir, I know who you are and the nature of your public access TV show. I will not dignify your attempt to get attention with any type of answer.”
The integrity of MOTR was sustained!