Admittedly, cable was in its infancy, but I would assume the Bucs had to give approval for their cable announcers.
As such, how would Prince have been "hated" by the Pirates?
Point well taken. There are two things, the public face and the inside story. If somebody asked me how I liked working with Bogut, I would have said "Great. Great guy." The truth is that he was a tough SOB, and it wasn't fun. Now, 25 years later in hindsight I would say (and did) "He was a great professional" which is true, but unless prompted I would probably not say "But I would not work with him again." You see?
Like any large business there were factions within the Pirate organization. Since I have no personal knowledge of how the Prince/cable decision was made, I'll only speculate that it was something like "Nobody's watching, maybe he'll add a few viewers and so we'll make money, it's OK with me as long as I don't have to deal with him." As I say, pure speculation. I can only tell you that we faced (ahem!) "resistance" to the idea.
Question two- You mention he'd pissed off Iron City. And I know when Prince was fired bars quit serving Iron City in 1975.
However, I can tell you I would listen to KDKA in spring of 1985 and I would hear Bob Prince doing Iron City beer ads. While it's true they did not sponsor the Bucs, they did sponsor "John Cigna and The K Team" (side note- when "The A Team" was taken off NBC, did you ever think the name of your morning show was dated?).
Do you know anything about that "burned bridge" being repaired?
We accepted ads from anybody, especially in 1985 as the Pittsburgh economy was crumbling. Heck, we took Myron Cope ads. Money is money. If Iron City wanted to use Bob Prince as a spokesman, OK with me. (I don't know if Hartmann would have made the same decision, but he was gone by then.)
As for the "A-Team", that was Cigna's idea. When I talked to him about taking over the morning show, he had 3 "demands." One was that Honsberger move from the night to the morning with him. The second was, of course, salary. and the third was that we position the show as a "team" effort, since Bogut had been more of a "star" with a newsguy and traffic girl. To that end he wanted to call it "The K-Team", which I thought just awful (as did my corporate overlords), but to make the deal I said yes, intending to give it slight lip service and deep-six it after a few months.
Then it caught on. People LIKED it. It read well on a bumper sticker. The newspaper used the phrase even as they dissed the show. Heck, I'm no dummy. "THE K-TEAM" it is!
Third- Did Greg Brown play any role in bringing Prince back?
No. He may have been in the meeting with Steve [I forget his last name/marketing guy] or not, I really don't remember. There were a few people around the table, but it was me, Chris, and Steve who did the talking.
Did Lanny, who always was grateful for Prince helping him get a start in broadcasting and arranged for Frattare to call an inning of play-by-play for the Pirates in '74 or '75 when Lanny was calling Charleston Charlies games, help Prince return at all?
I have read that the idea came from him, or that it came from his championing of Prince for the HOF, or whatever. That I am aware Lanny had NO part of it, except not to be an ass when we came to him and said "This is what we want to do." He welcomed it immediately, for which we were eternally grateful. Had it been Milo there would have been a month of tantrums.
Four- Why did Cross not last longer?
He plays well on the radio. Inside the station he was also my assistant - and played "bad cop" to my "good cop." As a result he was not well liked internally, nor by the corporate boys, who heard through the HR department that he had a drinking problem. (True, at the time.)
Five- What took you so long to go all talk? Even by 1990, KDKA was a split-format with music during the day.
The corporate guys were convinced that playing music kept our demos younger (true, actually), and since they weren't programmers we could never convince them that going all talk was a better option. That didn't change until after I left - and after the NY suits were all replaced in a wave of retirements and reassignments. I pitched the idea more than once. The response was to tell us to replace our tape machines with CD players "so the music will sound better." True story. I tried explaining that it didn't matter, because it was AM, and the radio speaker was probably about 2 inches across, but that's the mindset I was battling at the time.
Six- No, okay, I think I'll stop. But thank you so much for posting and, by the way, we all love a guy who uses the word "verklempt."
Technically, I use it incorrectly, but so what? It's a great word which has instant meaning even to those who don't know what it means
As such, how would Prince have been "hated" by the Pirates?
Point well taken. There are two things, the public face and the inside story. If somebody asked me how I liked working with Bogut, I would have said "Great. Great guy." The truth is that he was a tough SOB, and it wasn't fun. Now, 25 years later in hindsight I would say (and did) "He was a great professional" which is true, but unless prompted I would probably not say "But I would not work with him again." You see?
Like any large business there were factions within the Pirate organization. Since I have no personal knowledge of how the Prince/cable decision was made, I'll only speculate that it was something like "Nobody's watching, maybe he'll add a few viewers and so we'll make money, it's OK with me as long as I don't have to deal with him." As I say, pure speculation. I can only tell you that we faced (ahem!) "resistance" to the idea.
Question two- You mention he'd pissed off Iron City. And I know when Prince was fired bars quit serving Iron City in 1975.
However, I can tell you I would listen to KDKA in spring of 1985 and I would hear Bob Prince doing Iron City beer ads. While it's true they did not sponsor the Bucs, they did sponsor "John Cigna and The K Team" (side note- when "The A Team" was taken off NBC, did you ever think the name of your morning show was dated?).
Do you know anything about that "burned bridge" being repaired?
We accepted ads from anybody, especially in 1985 as the Pittsburgh economy was crumbling. Heck, we took Myron Cope ads. Money is money. If Iron City wanted to use Bob Prince as a spokesman, OK with me. (I don't know if Hartmann would have made the same decision, but he was gone by then.)
As for the "A-Team", that was Cigna's idea. When I talked to him about taking over the morning show, he had 3 "demands." One was that Honsberger move from the night to the morning with him. The second was, of course, salary. and the third was that we position the show as a "team" effort, since Bogut had been more of a "star" with a newsguy and traffic girl. To that end he wanted to call it "The K-Team", which I thought just awful (as did my corporate overlords), but to make the deal I said yes, intending to give it slight lip service and deep-six it after a few months.
Then it caught on. People LIKED it. It read well on a bumper sticker. The newspaper used the phrase even as they dissed the show. Heck, I'm no dummy. "THE K-TEAM" it is!
Third- Did Greg Brown play any role in bringing Prince back?
No. He may have been in the meeting with Steve [I forget his last name/marketing guy] or not, I really don't remember. There were a few people around the table, but it was me, Chris, and Steve who did the talking.
Did Lanny, who always was grateful for Prince helping him get a start in broadcasting and arranged for Frattare to call an inning of play-by-play for the Pirates in '74 or '75 when Lanny was calling Charleston Charlies games, help Prince return at all?
I have read that the idea came from him, or that it came from his championing of Prince for the HOF, or whatever. That I am aware Lanny had NO part of it, except not to be an ass when we came to him and said "This is what we want to do." He welcomed it immediately, for which we were eternally grateful. Had it been Milo there would have been a month of tantrums.
Four- Why did Cross not last longer?
He plays well on the radio. Inside the station he was also my assistant - and played "bad cop" to my "good cop." As a result he was not well liked internally, nor by the corporate boys, who heard through the HR department that he had a drinking problem. (True, at the time.)
Five- What took you so long to go all talk? Even by 1990, KDKA was a split-format with music during the day.
The corporate guys were convinced that playing music kept our demos younger (true, actually), and since they weren't programmers we could never convince them that going all talk was a better option. That didn't change until after I left - and after the NY suits were all replaced in a wave of retirements and reassignments. I pitched the idea more than once. The response was to tell us to replace our tape machines with CD players "so the music will sound better." True story. I tried explaining that it didn't matter, because it was AM, and the radio speaker was probably about 2 inches across, but that's the mindset I was battling at the time.
Six- No, okay, I think I'll stop. But thank you so much for posting and, by the way, we all love a guy who uses the word "verklempt."
Technically, I use it incorrectly, but so what? It's a great word which has instant meaning even to those who don't know what it means