Steve R.


No Guts - No Glory

(Steve R. was the ND in 1978 - His story) When I arrived in Huntsville in 1978, channel 48 was making a huge splash in the market with the first live capability - and five remote units to boot! We rushed delivery of our single live truck and between all the promotion and use of live you would have thought we had ten units - we soon owned that research dimension in viewers minds.

Early on, however, we took a huge risk when we decided to do our entire show live from the Alabama Space and Rocket Center - and took the entire anchor team to that remote location. Not sure who would have anchored as a studio back-up if the live shot had crashed. Cactus and I would have probably flipped a coin.

In any event, M.D. was a bit white-knuckled knowing the technology was new to us and we were way out on a limb. We'll, things went flawlessly, and, I think that is when I turned to M.D. and first uttered the words, "no guts, no glory". After a few more even riskier decisions that I don't care to detail, M.D. finally gave me a nickname that stuck - "No Guts, No Glory Steve". High praise from an innovator and fierce competitor like M.D. The real satisfaction was the fact that by November of '79 the station had regained it's #1 status in local news.

© 2003 Smith Broadcasting, Inc. [update 8-5-2003]