September 24, 2006
Packers Win, Now 1-2
Green Bay 31, Detroit 24
By Larry Lage, AP Sports Writer
September 24, 2006
Detroit (AP) — Brett Favre joined elite company with the 400th touchdown pass of his career, then added two more scores to lead the Green Bay Packers to their first win of the season, 31-24 over the Detroit Lions on Sunday.
With his first TD pass of the game — a 75-yarder to rookie Greg Jennings — Favre joined Hall of Famer Dan Marino as the only quarterbacks to reach 400 touchdown passes. Marino has 420.
While the Lions (0-3) remained winless under new coach Rod Marinelli, they had their chances in the fourth quarter.
After Jon Kitna threw behind a wide-open Mike Furrey on a third down, Jason Hanson kicked a 40-yard field goal to cut the lead to seven points. The Lions got the ball back at their 31 with 3:36 to go, but gained just 8 yards before Kitna was sacked on fourth down.
Then, the Packers' Ahman Green fumbled at the 32 with 54 seconds left. The Lions got to midfield and Kitna heaved a pass into a crowded end zone that fell incomplete.
September 12, 2006
Packers Select Robinson
The Packers started the season with a loss and it doesn't look like a promising year. But perhaps the signing of Koren Robinson will improve their fortunes. It is most likely Robinson's last chance to get his act together off the field and continue his football career. Here's hoping that the Packers' willingness to give Robinson another chance will be the impetus he needs to turn his life around.From the press release:
Packers Agree To Terms With WR Koren Robinson
Adding depth to their receiving corps and kicking game, the Green Bay Packers Monday agreed to terms with veteran Koren Robinson.
Robinson, a 6-foot-1, 205-pound wide receiver out of North Carolina State, has worked professionally with several individuals currently in the Packers organization, including Thompson.
The sixth-year veteran earned Pro Bowl recognition for the Vikings last season, when he led the NFC and ranked fifth in the league in kickoff returns (26.0 avg., 47 returns, 1,221 yards). In a 24-21 road triumph against the Giants (Nov. 13), he returned a kickoff 86 yards for a touchdown.
Originally selected by Seattle in the first round (ninth overall) of the 2001 NFL draft, Robinson played his first four years with the Seahawks before signing as a free agent with Minnesota on the eve of the 2005 season. In 71 NFL games, including 57 starts, he has 235 receptions for 3,514 yards (15.0 avg.) and 13 touchdowns. Robinson also has 21 career carries for 114 yards (5.4 avg.) and one TD.
September 04, 2006
An Anchor Tale
From today's New York Times:
By Bob Greene
Published: September 4, 2006
Good luck and all that to Katie Couric tomorrow night, but hers is hardly the most intriguing or nail-biting story about the long history and potent mystique of The CBS Evening News anchor chair.
Not even close.
If you want a truly delirious story about drama in the CBS newsroom, consider this: The CBS Evening News with Arnold Zenker.
It happened. And it’s probably safe to say that nothing like it will ever happen again.
Even though network newscasts no longer dominate the nation’s attention the way they once did, the anchor desks are still treated with near-majesty. Anchors are sent around the country on “listening tours”; the networks formulate intricate plans of succession. Nothing is left to chance.
Once upon a time, though — it was the spring of 1967 ...
The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists was threatening a strike, but the networks evidently didn’t take the union’s threat seriously. Then, the strike was called. The news broadcasters — including Walter Cronkite and his CBS News substitutes — walked out.
Who did CBS have waiting in the wings?
No one.
Whom did they tell to sit in Mr. Cronkite’s chair?
Arnold Zenker.
Mr. Zenker was a network programming middle manager who had come up through business affairs. He was a pleasant-enough looking fellow of 28, with an earnest suit of clothing and thick-framed glasses.
The bosses at CBS looked around their offices at what was available to them, which apparently wasn’t much, and, with deadline approaching, they asked Mr. Zenker if he would mind delivering the news to the nation.
Mr. Zenker said that if they wanted him to, he would. (Before that day, he had never in his life appeared on television.) And for 13 evenings, as the union remained on strike, Arnold Zenker was Walter Cronkite.
“I still have no idea why they selected me,” Mr. Zenker, now 68, told me recently. CBS gave him four hours’ notice that first day, and virtually no instructions. “No one even offered to buy me a blue shirt,” he said. On some days he would ride the bus to work. Around 4:30 p.m., someone would hand him a script, and he would read it aloud for practice. He would address the nation, and then go home.
Millions of people were watching Mr. Zenker, but there was one person who was not: Mr. Zenker himself. “I never saw myself,” he said. There were no home video recorders, and no one at the network offered to show Mr. Zenker tapes. He could have asked to take a look, but he didn’t. “It would have seemed like I was interested in keeping the job,’’ he said, “and the job was Walter Cronkite’s.”
He began to receive fan mail. It wasn’t as if he had no competition; at NBC, David Brinkley had gone on strike, but Chet Huntley had crossed the picket line, so that network was producing a professionally delivered broadcast.
When The CBS Evening News concluded each night, as Mr. Zenker recalls it, no one in the studio offered to go out with him for a drink or dinner. “No one really said anything,” he told me. “Not even ‘nice show.’ I think they thought that, by their standards, I was a freak. I was there by pure accident. I’d just say, ‘Good night, fellas,’ and go home.”
When the strike ended, Mr. Zenker was reassigned to his old administrative duties. He sensed that his presence in the CBS hallways made people uneasy. One day, in the men’s room, a colleague said: “Arnold, you’ve got a great future behind you.” He knew he had to leave.
Because of his brief Cronkite-chair fame, he had received some offers from local newscasts. He went on the air in Boston and Baltimore, but found he was not in love with broadcasting. Eventually he started a company to teach public speaking to executives.
Katie Couric has had months to prepare for her initial broadcast, and no one knows for certain what her first words will be. But for sublime grandeur, they are unlikely to match the first words the regular occupant of the CBS anchor chair intoned the evening that the 1967 strike ended. He looked toward the camera and, in that familiar, perfectly modulated cadence, said to America:
“Good evening. This is Walter Cronkite, sitting in for Arnold Zenker.”
By Bob Greene
Published: September 4, 2006
Good luck and all that to Katie Couric tomorrow night, but hers is hardly the most intriguing or nail-biting story about the long history and potent mystique of The CBS Evening News anchor chair.
Not even close.
If you want a truly delirious story about drama in the CBS newsroom, consider this: The CBS Evening News with Arnold Zenker.
It happened. And it’s probably safe to say that nothing like it will ever happen again.
Even though network newscasts no longer dominate the nation’s attention the way they once did, the anchor desks are still treated with near-majesty. Anchors are sent around the country on “listening tours”; the networks formulate intricate plans of succession. Nothing is left to chance.
Once upon a time, though — it was the spring of 1967 ...
The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists was threatening a strike, but the networks evidently didn’t take the union’s threat seriously. Then, the strike was called. The news broadcasters — including Walter Cronkite and his CBS News substitutes — walked out.
Who did CBS have waiting in the wings?
No one.
Whom did they tell to sit in Mr. Cronkite’s chair?
Arnold Zenker.
Mr. Zenker was a network programming middle manager who had come up through business affairs. He was a pleasant-enough looking fellow of 28, with an earnest suit of clothing and thick-framed glasses.
The bosses at CBS looked around their offices at what was available to them, which apparently wasn’t much, and, with deadline approaching, they asked Mr. Zenker if he would mind delivering the news to the nation.
Mr. Zenker said that if they wanted him to, he would. (Before that day, he had never in his life appeared on television.) And for 13 evenings, as the union remained on strike, Arnold Zenker was Walter Cronkite.
“I still have no idea why they selected me,” Mr. Zenker, now 68, told me recently. CBS gave him four hours’ notice that first day, and virtually no instructions. “No one even offered to buy me a blue shirt,” he said. On some days he would ride the bus to work. Around 4:30 p.m., someone would hand him a script, and he would read it aloud for practice. He would address the nation, and then go home.
Millions of people were watching Mr. Zenker, but there was one person who was not: Mr. Zenker himself. “I never saw myself,” he said. There were no home video recorders, and no one at the network offered to show Mr. Zenker tapes. He could have asked to take a look, but he didn’t. “It would have seemed like I was interested in keeping the job,’’ he said, “and the job was Walter Cronkite’s.”
He began to receive fan mail. It wasn’t as if he had no competition; at NBC, David Brinkley had gone on strike, but Chet Huntley had crossed the picket line, so that network was producing a professionally delivered broadcast.
When The CBS Evening News concluded each night, as Mr. Zenker recalls it, no one in the studio offered to go out with him for a drink or dinner. “No one really said anything,” he told me. “Not even ‘nice show.’ I think they thought that, by their standards, I was a freak. I was there by pure accident. I’d just say, ‘Good night, fellas,’ and go home.”
When the strike ended, Mr. Zenker was reassigned to his old administrative duties. He sensed that his presence in the CBS hallways made people uneasy. One day, in the men’s room, a colleague said: “Arnold, you’ve got a great future behind you.” He knew he had to leave.
Because of his brief Cronkite-chair fame, he had received some offers from local newscasts. He went on the air in Boston and Baltimore, but found he was not in love with broadcasting. Eventually he started a company to teach public speaking to executives.
Katie Couric has had months to prepare for her initial broadcast, and no one knows for certain what her first words will be. But for sublime grandeur, they are unlikely to match the first words the regular occupant of the CBS anchor chair intoned the evening that the 1967 strike ended. He looked toward the camera and, in that familiar, perfectly modulated cadence, said to America:
“Good evening. This is Walter Cronkite, sitting in for Arnold Zenker.”
September 03, 2006
End of a TV Era
Tuesday evening will mark the end of a particular tv watching era for me. For 50 years, I've watched the CBS Evening News, with Douglas Edwards, Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and Bob Schieffer. I'm not sure how it started but possibly because we listened to WCCO radio and then WCCO TV, the local CBS affiliate. I'll still watch WCCO, but will not watch Katie Couric. She has neither the experience nor gravitas for such a position. And despite the hype, she is not the first woman to solo anchor the evening news — the conveniently forgotten Elizabeth Vargas of ABC was the first.
I'll be watching the ABC Evening News with Charles Gibson. A change in habits every 50 years or so is good and I'm looking forward to becoming familiar with the ABC news correspondents. Another bonus is that I can now watch segments of interest to me on the Today show without cringing.
I'll be watching the ABC Evening News with Charles Gibson. A change in habits every 50 years or so is good and I'm looking forward to becoming familiar with the ABC news correspondents. Another bonus is that I can now watch segments of interest to me on the Today show without cringing.