I always wanted to work in television. 

 

 

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with TV. One time, I spent an entire afternoon laying out the television listings portion of our local paper on the ground to look for patterns in the channel schedules. If my rich uncle brought a camcorder over to record Thanksgiving dinner, I’d be right beside him the entire meal, learning how everything worked and shoving my face in front of the camera. 

 

 

As I got older, I learned about TV newsrooms from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. When I saw the WTRF 7 News crew at the Christmas parade, I learned television production involves a lot of people and equipment. Television seemed really hard, but also really cool.

I wanted in.

 

 

I experimented with video production through high school, then studied both Theater and Broadcasting in college. After college, I moved to Philadelphia, hoping to break into TV or newspapers. I wanted to be Clark Kent, but unlike the comics, Perry White doesn’t just give you a job when you show up on the bus from Kansas. Nobody would hire me. Due to this and other reasons I won’t get into, I packed my bags and moved to Los Angeles to help my friend with his budding music career while pursuing my own dreams.

 

 

I actually found work in television, among other mediums. I helped shoot a Day of the Dead festival documentary for a PBS station. I was a personal assistant to a senior executive at NBC/Universal. I held a part-time job with The History Channel, archiving and organizing their footage. I even worked for a literary agency, writing coverage for screenplays. Trivia: One of the worst screenplays I read (and rejected) became an equally terrible movie starring Tom Cruise. Things really seemed to be picking up, before they weren’t.

I’ll skip a ton of boring details, but two years after I moved to Los Angeles I found myself back on the east coast, in Pittsburgh, with mounting responsibilities and no job prospects. I applied at WTAE, my ABC station growing up. I applied to Mr. Roger’s home station WQED too. Nobody wanted to hire me. 

 

 

Soon, I moved to Cleveland and hit more roadblocks. After a stressful two months, I finally got hired by a company that makes ATV exhaust pipes to work on their website and create videos. The work was never that rewarding, and I moved on to freelancing as a DBA for five years. Not a lot of television, but a ton of crazy adventures, lessons, and magic I’ll write more about someday.

 

 

 

Two moves and three years later, I found myself in Atlanta, working full time as a video training producer at AT&T. Yes, I applied to several TV stations and production companies when we moved there, but this was right before Hollywood invaded so there wasn’t much demand. The positions were filled, or I wasn’t good enough, or some combination of the two.

 

 

 

When we moved to Orlando four years ago, I sent out a wave of resumes to TV stations. To my utter shock, somebody from Hearst Television responded. She e-mailed me with a questionnaire and an interview request. I rushed the questionnaire back to her as quickly as possible… I probably should have proofread it more… And prepared for the interview. I stressed a lot about my beard, but got some good advice.

 

 

When I arrived at the WESH 2 building and walked into my soon-to-be boss’s office, Kevin stood up, shook my hand, and said: “Scooby-Doo, right?” I’d included a clip in my reel from my podcast/YouTube show Universe Box, where I’d done a Scooby-Doo impression. It was a weirdness filter: If somebody could watch me be the silliest version of myself and still wanted to hire me, I pretty much had to take the job, right? 

 

 

Eventually, I had a phone interview with Suzanne, a bigger big wig than the big wigs I’d already interviewed with. I was nervous leading up to that call, afraid I’d say the wrong thing and knock myself out of the running. As the call got closer, I decided to flip my mindset. What if, instead of being nervous and careful and professional, I just opened up and had a conversation? What if I just kept it real, and let the chips fall where they may?

Spoilers: It worked, and I joined Hearst Television in September of 2015. I finally had a full-time gig in television. My department was a couple of steps removed from Lou Grant’s newsroom or WTRF’s live production team, but it was right in my wheelhouse. I was writing blogs, recording podcasts, learning more about the business. It was all so exciting!

 

 

 

 

Four years on, and I’ve done a lot of work I’m really proud of. I’d go into detail, but I don’t think the details are that important to this story. Suffice it to say, it’s been a whole “thing.” I’ve enjoyed so many great professional relationships— Some I’d call friendships—during my time with Hearst Television. People always made me feel welcome and valued, especially as I started out the door last week. It’s always nice when the version of yourself you hope you’re presenting is reflected back at you in the form of heartfelt goodbyes delivered via phone call, personal visit, or Microsoft Outlook. I’m honestly sad about leaving this job… Probably the best job I’ve ever had.

 

 

But, I have other dreams, other ideas, and other things I want to accomplish, and there are only so many hours in the day. If I try to accomplish everything, I might never do anything, and wouldn’t that be horrible?

 

 

So, short story long, today was my last day working for Hearst Television. It’s been a heck of a ride, but it’s time to move on. I ended it on Halloween because it’s a day when we celebrate what is gone. November 1st, All Saint’s Day, is a day we celebrate the ghosts of our past and their influence on our present and future. I figure if you don’t build symbolism into your life, who else is going to?

So, what are these other dreams? I’ll have more news in the next week or two, but I want to build a place online for people like me to get together and “put on a show.” I want to create content that inspires and empowers those people. I want to build platforms for those people to showcase and sell their work online. I want to collaborate with everybody, because we can do anything, together.

 

 

More on all that soon. Today, I just want to say thank you to Hearst Television for four great years. Tomorrow, I start writing the next chapter.