The Miami Herald from Miami, Florida • 185

A This Is Your Television Pullout for the Week review November 17 1963 NBC to Follow Beauty Trail A typical session of Miami Press Confere nce The great Miami lms strike in the winter of 1962 is nmler discussion The guests left to right are Metro Commissioners Boh Ilaverfiehl and Joe Boyd and Business Agent Walter Bierwagon of the bus driver's union Bayer and newsmen John McDermott and Jack Kasse-Litz are doing the questioning The Man Who Pesters Politicians Bill Bayer maestro of oldest TV panel show calls it nerve-wracking work hut he loves it 1 I XlIAT does it take to turn out a truly competitive contestant for the annual beauty classic the Miss America Pageant? Show of the Week will take viewers at 10 tonight on Ch 7 and 5 for a look-see on how done In a show titled America Behind the cameras will focus on Jeanne Richey AmackeY who was Miss Texas in this competition It will be a candid studx- of how she prepared for the event and tha multitude of experiences ghe went through in the process As cariraturist Tom flights of fancy show here Miss Amacker had a hectic year of grooming herself for the pageant collecting a wardrobe polishing her talent posing for pictures and rehearsing the important business of putting a best limb forward for the moments of judging Although the show will concern itself mainly with the experiences of the 21-year-old Texas beauty attention will also be given to those of some of the other 52 aspirants to the 1963 Miss America crown 1 I IK day Bill Bayer enters the pearly por-M tals and there Is a consensus among those who know him well that never make it St Peter the keeper of the gate can expect one thing he nailed down as a guest on the first celestial panel show Bayer can put together simply inconceivable that a mere passing to the shades can put a stop to the moderator of Channel Miami Press Conference and his preoccupation in life the hunting and trapping of controversial guests show is exasperating and nerve said the tall rangy and blond Bitjcr the other day making an old man out of me But 1 love every damned moment of The Sunday night Bayer show been called variously by his own name the Spot" and by its present title to say nothing of a few unprintable titles goes into its 10th year this month During the decade it has been on view successively on three different TV stations since its inception on the now defunct WITV (Ch 17) This evening at 10:30 New York's Gov Nelson Rockefeller will appear on the show The governor is also appearing to annoyance on what he considers that upstart rival Channel 7's Miami Forum earlier in the evening But this Is Rockefeller's second visit in three years with the Bayer menage Guests have a way of coming back No respecter of anybody's station in life Bayer personally or on the telephone has such a relentless persuasive line of patter his target is half-nelsoned Into giving in Teamster boss Jimmy Iloffa another of the Bayer trophies was once asked by The Herald's John McDermott who with The Jack Kassewitz are the show's veteran quizzers how he got hooked into Bppearing replied the harassed Hoffa got so tired of seeing that face He caught me at the airport at the hotel I go anywhere but what be there with his are you going change one time your hands off me!" snarled one as the other gripped his arm Sometimes Bayer recalls tension has been broken by an unexpected crack from a guest that dissolves everybody in laughter During a heated exchange between Attorney William Pruitt and Rev Theodore Gibson the local IAACP leader the latter broke up the show with: the government spending billions of dollars to put a man on the moon and all we want to do is put a boy on a And there was the time John McLeod the nim-ble-tongued ex-Metro commissioner was debating fellow Commissioner Chuck Hall Bayer tried to interject a question McLeod turned on Bayer in a flash: interrupting me while interrupting snapped McLeod throning a thumb at Hall Thus far there have not been any actual physical combats on the show But says Bayer awful lot of people have left the studio without saying goodby to each Although he is no longer engaged full time in television the 40-year-old Bayer is long experienced in news coverage He got into the business back in his campus days at the University of Indiana (he's a Hoosier by bin as a sports writer for the United Press He went on to work for that wire service in then put in time with the Chicago Sun the New ork Daily News the Honolulu Advertiser and a chain of central Indiana weeklies In 1949 he came to Miami briefly as a reporter for The Herald moved on to the public relations activity of Pan American World Airways then made his TV debut as news director of WITV in 1953 When that station closed he became news director of WPST-TV the now' defunct operator of Channel 10 in 1956 Bayer dropped out of new'scastlng when Channel 10 was taken over by WLBW-TV In 1961 retaining only his panel show His full tlm w'ork at present is with an advertising agency to be on my Lit I had to give in to get rid of him" In another of his demonstrations of unmitigated gall he dragged four governors into NW 11th Ave studio for a taping session one midnight last spring is the fastest talking man ever run into" murmured one of the sleepy politicos The list of high wattage victims is impressive Billy Graham US Attorney General Robert Kennedy Sen Hubert Humphrey ex-Teamster boss Dave Beck US Supreme Court Justices William Brennan Tom Clark and Potter Stewart countless ambassadors and other political figures have found it easier to yield to than resist TV's juggernaut think what I'm proudest of about the show through the years" said Bayer that it has become traditional to tie on it Anybody running for office feels he has to make it with us to make it A gubernatorial candidate once told Bayer there were three things to be done first in running lor office "You get your platform and your he said you file then appear on your This doesn't mean of course the political debutante has a sweet time of it Any regular viewer of Miami Press Conference knows that it can be as close to a human dart board as anything like it on the air If the visitor get the works from Bayer and his fellow needlers McDermott and Kassewitz he may be badly pinioned by a rival visitor Tempers have flared spectacularly from time to time through the years Bill Hendrix once the Ku Klux Klan Dragon of Florida who was delivered to the show by a covey of besheeted underlings a few years back almost started an on-the-air fight Infuriated by the questioning of The Miami Milt Sosin who preceded Kassewitz as A panelist Hendrix half-rose from his seat threatened to punch the newsman in the nose Two Metro commission candidates almost clashed before the camera during a heated ex Text: JACK ANDERSON Herald TV Editor TV 12 Th Miami Harald SUNDAY MAGAZINE Sunday Nov 17.