Chapter 8/TV-11 News, purposely outrageous

Mr. Loyd:

How can you ever know, how much happiness you spread in this troubled world, if no one ever tells you? I watch the 11:30 news daily and feel like I'm having company when I see and listen to all of you. I was thrilled when you replaced the boy's bicycle.

Best wishes and I hope you live to a ripe old age and never have any troubles that you and the Lord can't handle.

anonymous

It was fun working for TV-11 in Green Bay because the station was purposely outrageous. As TV-11 historian and former sports anchor Bob Schulze says:

We knew the audience had to have some compelling reason to watch a new newscast when they already were comfortable with what they were viewing on TV-2 and 5. We wanted to make viewers uncomfortable if they failed to tune in. The answer was a newscast so "off the wall" in its approach that it would be the topic of conversation the next day around the water cooler at work. If you hadn't watched, you didn't know what they were talking about. You were out of the loop. You weren't with it.

Being with it started with Stanley Siegel.In the video below made for the 25th anniversary of TV-11 news, you'll see updates on Stanley, anchorman Ray Wheeler, weatherman Bob Thomas, sportscaster Bob Schulze, and Action Man Glen Loyd.





Stanley was the son of a rich southern California banking family. He was ahead of his time, if that time ever came. Try to imagine the skits on Saturday Night Live (a late-night network comedy show that would debut later on NBC) done as semi-serious news.

We tried for comic, timely openings to the newscasts that bordered on the absurd.

In one of the most memorable, we came out of a World War II network movie to three of us [including co-anchor Ray Wheeler] on set in Nazi uniforms. "If the Germans had won the war," Stanley intoned, "this is how your news might look." My contribution that night: "Der ver two hafs to die Packer-Raider game today. Die furst haf vas very interesting. Die udder haf vas yucky."

On another Monday night, the first season for ABC's Monday Night Football and the first of those games in Green Bay, we parodied the television game show I've Got a Secret. The three of us were in silhouette as we did our best to imitate ABC's controversial and colorful sportscaster. When we got to the fourth person on the set, the lights came up. It was him.

"Good evening everyone. I am Howard Cosell, and this is TV-11 News."

Nothing was too outrageous for Stan. How about eating dog food to check out the diet of man's best friend? Or driving a Volkswagen into a lake to see if it really did float the way they showed in the television commercials? Arm wrestling George Wallace, the notorious racist governor of Alabama and a presidential candidate? Challenging Senator Bill Proxmire, a physical fitness freak, to see who could do the most push-ups? Rolling out competitive toilet tissues the length of Lambeau Field to see which really gave you more for your money? Going through the garbage of Green Bay's most famous and finding a bunch of booze bottles in the trash of a competing anchor? Stanley applying massive quantities of Nair to his hairy legs to see what women had to put up with as part of their beauty ritual? Trying to chip his way out of a block of ice to verify the strength of a Bic pen? Having a train at the Railroad Museum crash into a piece of American Touristor luggage to see how tough it was? Or submerging himself in a bathtub full of Jello so he could envision what it would be like to be a maraschino cherry?

Here is Stanley Siegal talking about being fired from WLUK-TV:




It wasn't a surprise a year-and-a-half into our run that he was gone. In November of 1972, he hooked on with a station in Nashville where he was soon notorious enough to earn a guest spot on the syndicated Hee-Haw show. His next stop was his own talk show in New York City. His very personal, live-on-the-air sessions with his shrink were enough to briefly put him ahead of Phil Donahue, the biggest name in the country at the time.

Stanley invited me on his New York talk show in the late 1970's. Waiting in the Green Room, I chatted with famous heart surgeon Michael E. Debakey and Joe Torre, manager of the New York Yankees. When it was my turn, Stanley asked me to describe his firing at TV-11 the day after the Jello in the bathtub news feature.

Stan and I were pals, and I had helped him with the stunt. When he was fired, Kaaps, his favorite restaurant in Green Bay, wouldn't take his check anymore. I invited him to my house for dinner. When my two little children had gone to bed and my wife was cleaning up in the kitchen, Stan began to cry. He told me I was fortunate to have a family. He said that because he was so ambitious that he would probably never have one of his own.

After a very successful run on ABC-TV and CBS in New York, Stanley continued on in cable TV and now produces his travel show called "On the go with Stanley Seigel" in Los Angeles. His lives in a hotel near Beverly Hills.

Another famous personality working for TV-11 News was Bob Thomas, our chief meteorologist, says historian Schulze. He was looking to get out of the business when he came to Green Bay in 1971. He had a successful career at WMAQ-TV in Chicago, one of the premier stations in the country, but wanted to be someplace that would give him more time for and access to his passion for sailing. Our proximity to Door County was just right. Bob and his wife, Alice (also a meteorologist), had a master plan to hone their skills during the latter years of his broadcast career so they could retire early and sail around the world.

After their round-the-world journey, they finally retired far from water to the deserts of northern Arizona. [Bob and Alice are now back in Wisconsin.]

TV-11 became the most popular news show in Northeast Wisconsin in just four years. And because of the headlines I was creating in Green Bay, some of the larger TV markets began to notice me.