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News Staff > Andy Fisher > Archive
A few minutes here between breathtaking business shows, time to recall that I may be the only person whom WNEW tried twice to fire -- and missed:
The first time was shortly after I was first hired in 1962!
I was supposed to work Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 6 to 9 in the morning -- hours on the clock unfamiliar to most college students. Two mornings in a row, I overslept. Understandably, morning news editor Jack Pluntze requested that News Director Lee Hanna fire me. "He just doesn't show up," he explained.
Accordingly, Lee Hanna ordered Assistant News Director Dick Merson to fire me, but, unaware of any of this, Director of Special Projects Nat Asch, in charge of the college kids working during the newspaper strike, was moving his chess pieces around the board and asked if I could work afternoons instead of mornings. "Sure," I told him. "That would be much better."
I walked into the newsroom at 3PM the following Monday afternoon. Newswriter Jerry Graham nearly fell out of his chair laughing. "You know," he said to me when he finally caught his breath, "you were fired this morning." I turned to go. "No," he said, "don't leave. They fired your replacement."
Sure enough, Nat had hired Roy Fleischmann for the morning shift, and when Roy walked into the newsroom, the first words he heard were, "YOU'RE FIRED! GET OUT!" Merson had followed orders to "fire the morning kid." Roy walked out the door, shaking his head and saying, "I thought they liked me.." He was later hired as a traffic reporter, and I wonder if he ever understood what had happened.
The second time was some years later, when Harvey Glascock had become general manager. His forceful memos rattled the staff, and I had written a parody of one and attached it to the newsroom wall. It lasted past my college graduation, when I moved to an on-air job at Metromedia station WIP in Philadelphia. I had been gone for several weeks when Mr. Glascock happened to spot the parody memo. "I want the man who wrote that FIRED!" he roared to Jerry Graham, who had by then become news director.
"Mr. Glascock," replied Jerry solemnly, "the man who wrote that will not be working here tomorrow.."
It really happened.
Andrew
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