The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 227

Charles Osgood Continued from Page 5 'popularizing the news, but it was a production technique, and if it's used properly, it can involve people in the story you're telling them." After "Newsbreak," Charles Osgood stops briefly in the studio control room for a critique. It went well, Dale Minor tells him. "I only wish we had said more about the shots being fired at people who were looking out their windows during the kidnaping," Minor adds. "We mentioned it," says Charles Osgood. "I think most people will understand." He leaves the control room and stops to chat with another newsman who mentions a couple of story ideas for "Newsbreak." He uses few suggestions.

Most of his pieces for the program are done on the spur cf the moment. He usually leaves his West Side Manhattan apartment shortly after 4 A.M. By 5, he's in his sador to India Kenneth Keating. Keating liked to feed the waterfowl on an embassy pond and when he left his post in New Delhi, his staff put up a bronze plaque commemorating his acts of "compassion and devotion" to the birds. When it was suggested the plaque might set a precedent, resulting in a proliferation of plaques cluttering up the walls of the embassy, one of Keating's staff ordered the inscription sanded off the plaque.

Viewing the bureaucratic half-measure, Charles Osgood sadly concluded: "There are many kinds of waterfowl, but the silliest goose of all does not live on the pond." His poetry draws a great deal of response from listeners. It veers erratically, Time magazine said, between Ogden Nash and Edgar Guest. Charles Osgood concedes its frequently haphazard, but, he says, "If you're writing jects. To do it, he went to Brooklyn and interviewed elementary school children about books they had read on such subjects as divorce, abortion and drugs. The other is about a 41 -year-old Catholic priest who plays hockey for Fairleigh Dickinson University.

He does 8 or 10 pieces a year for television and one of the most successful and best-remembered is one he did in Lansdale, a few months ago. He had gone there to find out why a class of school children had been told to collect a million bottle caps. The reason, it turned out, was to give the children a feel for large numbers. But, as his interviews with the kids proved, few of them still had any idea of what a million of anything meant. Despite that, the collection went on.

"But the first thing I ever tried on the air," he says, "was when I was with ABC. Actually, I didn't use a script at all. I had a tape of Roy Wilkins testifying on the Equal Accommodations Act and against it I played Peter, Paul Mary's recording of Bob Dylan's 'Blowing in the It ended with Wilkins saying, in effect, 'When will we know we're going to be treated the same as other In the background, Peter, Paul Mary were singing, 'The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind At home, Charles Osgood is greeted by his wife, Jean and the couple's two English sheepdogs, Everett and Cecilia. He has a quick drink, walks the dogs in the park and then takes a short nap. An hour later, he's up and getting ready to go back to his office.

It's Friday and he tries to tape the Saturday "News-break" show ahead of time. "I rarely do anything heavy for it," he says. "I try to keep it light because I have a different audience or at least one with more time to appreciate something a little more in the whimsical side." Untypically, he has an idea for the show. He dreamed about it the night before. The idea is to contrast the devaluation cf currency with the devaluation of words.

What his thinking off, he l)olieves, was the Nixon administration's apparent attempt to redefine the meaning of "recession." "I'd always heard," he says, "that 'recession' meant two bad quarters in a row, but now it seems the President's economic advisers are talking about three bad quarters." On the back of an envelope Charles Osgood has already scrawled several thoughts. By the time he's ready to tape an hour later, he's turned his thoughts into a long, four-minute poem. He makes a few minor changes and additions in the announcer's booth and then glances up just in time to catch the engineer's signal. Charles Osgood reporting on the CBS radio network. Good morning.

it possibly true that those days are now dead When we what we meant and meant what we A buck wa.s a dollar, a penny one cent And words had a value, ice knew wfiat tliey meant. nation's first pav-television station. WHCT in Hartford, Conn. "From the lxginning," he says, "the whole thing was a disaster, a comedy of errors. It was like Rube Goldberg designed the it was that complicated.

If I tried to tell someone how it worked, they'd know right away it couldn't possibly work. I used to think it was designed so that no matter how much money a person spent, he was not going to get a picture." The upshot was the station lost money and Charles Osgood lost his job. "I thought," he says, "that I was pretty knowledgeable about pay-television, and I suppose I was. At the time, I wanted to stay in the field so I went around trying to sell myself as a broadcast executive. Obviously, though, since there was only one pay-television station in existence-mine my services were not exactly in demand.

I wasn't what you'd call a 'hot It is 8.15 A.M. at the CBS studio in New York. "Newsbreak" is beginning-to take shape. Charles Osgood listens to a tape of a San Francisco police lieutenant describing Patty Hearst's kidnaping. "It all happended very fast the lieutenant says.

Charles Osgood motions for the technical man to stop the tape. "Why don't we start with that?" he asks Dale Minor. Minor looks uncertain. Charles Osgood explains. "Listen," he says, "what we'll do is lead with the lieutenant saying 'It all happened We'll use it as a tease.

Then we'll go through the whole thing in sequence. Ill say, 'It was like a commando raid Back to the cop telling what happened. Then cut in with the cop in the patrol car. Me again: 'Miss Hearst's next door neighbor looked out the window and saw Cut to the girl describing the kidnapers hauling the Hearst girl out to the car. Shots fired.

Back and forth, cutting in and out, and wind it up with Hearst's plea: 'Don't hurt Charles Osgood pauses to draw a breath. "What do you think? Dale Minor nods. "We've got to hurry," he says. "Then let's go," says Charles Osgood. Ten years ago things didn't look half so rosy to Charles Osgood.

"At the time," he recalls, "I went from being the youngest manager of a television station in the U.S. to being the oldest radio cub reporter." A friend who was producing a new ABC radio series, "Flair Reports," in New York, gave him a job as a newscaster. The program was something new ABC was trying-a fast-paced review of contemporary events, not just a newscast. "What made it different is we used a lot of sound effects, background stuff. In other words, we wouldn't say something like, 'President Johnson left Washington today for the Philippines aboard Air Force We'd try to re-create the whole thing, complete with the sound of jet engines: 'As the big blue and white Air Force One jet lifted off the ground today at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington Something like that.

I admit I enjoyed doing it. People sometimes accuse us of "Fm certainly not pushing any particular philosophy or point of view" says Osgood of the material he chooses to use. '7 go with what 1 have to work with." a four-minute poem and you have about a half-hour in which to do it, you accept whatever the muse lays on you." For a piece about a shortage of 8-cent stamps in Colorado, he wrote: You may wonder why As indeed did There be no 8-cent stamps in certain places Well, Vm told by those who know That it happens to be so Though it brings a blush of red into their jaces. And, following a program that dealt with the various problems plaguing the American economy, he concluded: Xotfiinrr could be finer Than a crisis that is minor In the morning. Charles Osgood's day normally ends after he finishes the 11 A.M.

newscast. This day, however, he has to see films of a couple of television stories done for the CBS television network. The films arc in a small room down the hall from the newsroom. One film Is about children's books with adult sub CBS office scouring papers and wire service reports for story ideas. "I rarely know what I'm going to do before I get in the office in the morning," he says.

"Once I'm here, though, I look for the story I'm in the best position to tell. I'm certainly not pushing any particulai philosophy or point of view. I go with what I have to work with." What he works with are news stories to which he often adds his own highly developed sense of the incongruous. He once asked anthropologist Margaret Mead to pretend she was a Martian and tell him what she would notice if she landed in America today. tiling I'd notice," Dr.

Mead 'said, "is that people were running around rather frantically very often, trying to find something to On another occasion, he commented on the beef shortage: "You all know what that meaas. Prices will go up more. Prices always go up some more. For consumers, it seems, it's heads, they lose-taiLs, they also lose." Made to order for the Osgood touch was the story involving U.S. Ambas.