Mornings With Barney

by Dick Wolfsie

  It was time for action. The $10 million project to refurbish the old downtown Indianapolis Union Station as a festival marketplace was about six months from completion. I looked at the building and realized it would be a perfect place for a morning TV show, something Indy had not had in several years. Something I hadn’t had in a few years myself.

  Using a little New York chutzpah, I managed to convince both the local TV affiliate and the Union Station developer that the idea had merit. Incredibly, they agreed. I would be host and producer of this morning TV show.

  AM Indiana held its own for almost five years—quite a long run in the talk business. But it was a bad time to be in the talk business on a local station. After five years, the combined competition of Oprah and Phil Donahue, airing at the same time on different stations, buried us. I ended up with more awards than viewers. Out of work again. I was getting good at this—losing my job, that is.

  What was I doing wrong? Why did every TV position I ever had start with a bang and end with a whimper? I didn’t know it then, but my career breakthrough was six months away. This time it would begin with a whimper.

  So You Think This Is Funny?

  There were only two kinds of meetings I had ever had with a general manager: the kind where I got the job and the kind where I lost one. So it will come as no surprise that I was a bit nervous when I was called into General Manager Paul Karpowicz’s office. I didn’t bring Barney with me, although Paul was such a nice guy that I thought it would have been hard for him to look into the beagle’s deep brown eyes and tell him his career was over already. Of course, I had a fair amount of experience in this area, so I prepared for the worst.

  “Sit down, Dick.” Always a bad sign, I thought. “Did you think that was funny the way the dog urinated on the TV monitor?” he asked sternly.

  Paul’s question was an awfully good one. I did think it was funny . . . but did he? He didn’t ask me if I thought he thought it was funny. He asked me what I thought was funny. Now I was so flustered I opted for something against my better judgment: the truth.

  “Paul, I thought it was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.” I held my breath.

  “So did I, Wolfsie, so did I. The dog will be a great addition to the morning news.”

  “Even though he peed on a TV in front of all our viewers?”

  “If the ratings go up, he can take a dump in my office.”

  Two weeks later, that’s exactly what Barney did—right next to Paul’s prized ficus plant, after a station meeting.

  At that point, Barney and I were on Paul’s good list. But it hadn’t always been that way. When I was originally hired as the morning reporter, it was, I later discovered, not without some clear reservations on his part. My short list of potential news stories had included segments on how the corned beef was delivered each morning to Shapiro’s, the local eatery that had a reputation for being as close to New York (and heaven) as any delicatessen in Indiana. I also included a possible segment where I would sit in on a conversation with a small group of Jewish men, including several Holocaust survivors, who for thirty years had huddled at the deli every morning at 6 AM to kibbitz about the world while they gobbled lox and bagels. Oh, and it would be cool to show how they make bagels. Oy, what a mistake.

  When Karpowicz saw the list, he told news director Lee Giles that he was concerned that I was obsessed with Jewish things. He wondered if I would be able to expand my horizons and find other kinds of segments. He had a point. The Jewish population was not exactly a big demographic in Indiana. I submitted a new list that was more ecumenical, and I ultimately got the job. And, with Barney and a little luck, I would keep it.

  Months after that incident in Paul’s office, Barney had what you might call an encore performance. I did a Daybreak segment just outside the PR firm Caldwell Van Riper on Meridian Street in Indianapolis. We were highlighting a sports mural that had been painted on the side of their building, showcasing the Indiana Pacers.

  Right next door to Caldwell Van Riper is WRTV Channel 6, the ABC affiliate, one of Channel 8’s rival stations. Normally, I’d do everything possible to prevent their sign and logo from being seen on our program. But as the live shoot began, I noticed that Barney had roamed away from me and was sniffing along the grounds of the Channel 6 property.

  What I saw next required an immediate journalistic decision, a judgment call that put into play all of my experience as a broadcast professional. Should I tell Carl Finchum, my new photographer, to pan over to the Channel 6 lawn and get a shot of Barney? Sure. Why not? “Carl,” I said on camera, “show the viewers what Barney thinks of the competition.”

  The camera panned . . . and . . . you guessed it: tens of thousands of loyal Channel 8 viewers watched as my lovable beagle squatted next to the Channel 6 sign and left a substantial reminder of his visit. Man, talk about product placement!

  “How’d you get him to do that?” people asked me the next day.

  “We’ve been practicing for weeks,” I said.

  And I think some people believed me.

  A Dog’s Life

  The meeting with Paul was definitely positive. He loved the dog and wanted him to remain part of the morning news block. More important, he wanted me to remain part of the morning news block. The downside was that he, like so many others, believed that when the dog did something funny, I had somehow orchestrated it. At the end of the meeting, he even said to me, “The peeing on the monitor was funny. But it won’t be funny the second time.” Was he serious? The dog had a mind of his own and minding me was not part of the game plan. I couldn’t say, “Okay, be funny.” I couldn’t even do that with myself.

  And there was another element: I was accustomed to being the center of attention. The emphasis was shifting. Was the tail wagging the hog? Was this my first tinge of Barney jealousy? Was I envious of a stray hound with absolutely no previous TV experience?

  I spent several days mulling this over. Finally I decided I was looking at this the wrong way. What other TV reporter had a dog as a sidekick? This human/canine team could be a meal ticket to success for both of us.

  What we needed, though, was a breakthrough moment, a segment that people would talk about around the water cooler. All the promotion you can buy, all the billboards, all the print ads pale in comparison to word of mouth. The next week a gift arrived from heaven in the form of a letter, a gift that kept on giving for the next eleven years, and it became the most repeated show, kicking off every highlight tape of Barney’s many years on TV.

  While most viewers were enjoying Barney’s mischief, one viewer was troubled by the shenanigans—or at least thought that I was. On air, I continually lamented the dog’s destructive behavior, playing the victim’s role, and pretending that his behavior was more than I could handle, which was certainly true at home. So distressed did I appear that Dr. Gary Sampson, a former research veterinarian with Eli Lilly, wrote me a sympathetic note claiming he could be of assistance. Sampson had retired from Lilly and had started a new career dealing exclusively with dog and cat behavior. I read the letter and immediately called him.

  “I can help Barney with that digging,” he told me over the phone.

  “Geez, Doc, the last thing Barney needs is help. I want someone to stop him.”

  Honestly, I didn’t want Dr. Sampson’s help. Barney’s uncontrollable behavior on TV was getting lots of street talk. Hmmm ... I asked Dr. Sampson to come on the show live and discuss how to remedy the situation. He was hesitant. His practice was primarily done over the phone, and the idea of live TV was frightening and unpredictable to him.

  I was good at convincing people to appear on TV (a friend used to say I could talk a dog off a meat truck) and besides, this was good PR for the doctor’s new career. So, two weeks later, bright and early, Dr. Sampson and I sat on my front step at 5 in the morning while he pontificated about the animal instinct to dig and chew and some of the possible remedies for besieged dog owners like myself. Barney was unimpressed. He sat
there and bayed during the early segments. Neighbors peeped out of doors and windows to see what was causing the disturbance. But as you will now see, it was a day that lived in infamy.

  Never in the history of live television has a dog taken a cue better than Barney. At the first mention of digging by Dr. Sampson, Barney was on a mission. His first target was my wife’s rosebush near the front stoop. The barrage of dirt was so great that both the doc and I spent most of the interview brushing off the remains of his excavation. Mud and topsoil came spewing from between Barney’s legs. Mary Ellen’s rosebush had been deflowered and uprooted. The front porch was a disaster area.

  Looking at the pile of dirt that had accumulated at his feet and peering at Barney as he continued to burrow, the good doctor observed: “There must be something down there that he wants.”

  Ya think?

  Dr. Sampson was absolutely right. Actually, I was going to make a similar, albeit layman’s assessment of the situation. The dirt kept coming. Barney didn’t even let up during the first commercial break. This was always the thing that distinguished him from other television talent. He was no media phony. He was the same on the air and off.

  During the break, I mentioned to the doctor that we should probably move from discussing the digging problem to Barney’s chewing problem. The vet agreed that was a good idea.

  We never did do that segment. As we chatted, Barney chewed through the audio cord from the camera, and so we were off the air. The segment ended. Dave Barras, the anchor back at the station, said we had technical difficulties. Technically, we did. His name was Barney. If YouTube had existed then, we’d have been the number-one download.

  Dr. Sampson’s career did not suffer from his TV interaction with Barney. In fact, he is today a leading expert on dog and cat behavior. Dr. Sampson seldom meets with the dogs in person; he simply helps the owners correct their ways, consulting over the phone. It is rare for Dr. Sampson to make a house call. Gee, I wonder if he had a bad experience at someone’s house.

  Dr. Sampson and I lost touch for quite a while, although he apparently followed Barney’s career on TV for years. The last thing I wanted was a well-behaved dog and the last thing Dr. Sampson needed was an unmotivated owner. We each had our roles to play. That was contrary to Dr. Sampson’s mission, but he understood the situation.

  Barney generated a lot of talk at the station and more than a few people stopped me in the grocery store and asked if my new dog had found a full-time job. Now that Barney was appearing almost every day, he was greasing the viewers’ early morning routine of getting up and going to work. But I still had no sense if the public had fully come to see us as a team.

  Then one evening, the family attended an Indianapolis Indians game at Bush Stadium, the Triple A ballpark downtown. I was trying to encourage Brett to have a little interest in local sports and a night at the ballpark was fun even if you weren’t a big baseball fan.

  At one point in the game, I retreated to the john and picked up a beer on the way back. As I edged my way through my aisle, I suddenly heard a group of guys who clearly had already downed a few Bud Lights themselves begin a chant: BAR-NEY ... BAR-NEY . . . BAR-NEY! Then they bellowed each letter in the name.

  They almost spelled it correctly. These were serious fans.

  My wife heard the chant and was impressed. “Wow, it’s too bad no one can spell Wolfsie,” she said. But I knew we had arrived. It’s amazing the lessons baseball can teach you.

  Photo Ops

  In my first ten years of television, prior to meeting Barney, I’m guessing that I signed maybe 100 photos of myself for fans. Most of these after a subtle suggestion: “Say, would you like a photo of me? Please?” But when Barney became my partner, I signed thousands.

  Most on-air reporters have what is called an eight-by-ten glossy, usually a black-and-white head shot that they use to grant requests from viewers for pictures and autographs. Unless you’re a hot female meteorologist, most of us never use up the five hundred photos we are initially given (they are cheaper by the forty dozen). The poor quality of a mass-produced likeness initially made you look ten years older. But it would ultimately make you look ten years younger because the station wouldn’t replace them until you gave away the first five hundred. Which was never. I had about 475 left when I first teamed with up Barney. Then no one wanted a photo of just me, so I trashed them.

  Barney’s first photos were courtesy of Ed Bowers of Tower Studio. Ed was an icon in central Indiana and had been taking high school graduation pictures for at least three decades. There was a pretty good chance that if you went to public school in Indianapolis, Ed had taken your yearbook picture. And if you were under thirty there was a better chance he took your mother and father’s pictures, as well.

  He was also an early-morning TV fan and had been watching Barney emerge as a rising star. Ed wanted to do a full studio shoot with Barney—dozens of poses, different angles, sexy lighting, the works.

  Ed was no dummy. Even with all the chemicals you inhaled developing photos in those days, he was clearheaded enough to know he wanted the photo shoot on TV as part of the morning news.

  “But, Ed,” I pleaded, “it will be chaos. Barney won’t sit still; the result will be total pandemonium.”

  “I know,” he said. “And people will talk about it forever.”

  Then he shot me a cheesy grin, the kind he was so adept at getting from high school seniors. Ed knew the value of good PR.

  The morning of the show I was not surprised to see the thought and preparation Ed put into the photo shoot. Ed had lugged in scenery and a small crew of assistants. He brought dog food and treats and a high-pitched whistle to get Barney’s attention. He even had a long ladder so he could shoot from above. Why? I had no idea. But I was impressed. At the time, quite frankly, I cared less about the quality of the photos than the fact that this was going to be a great show. I really couldn’t lose. Barney would probably dart around the studio, unwilling to sit for even a second, leaving poor Ed actually missing his decades of interaction with adolescents. If that’s possible.

  The other possibility was that Barney would simply bask in the glow of the moment, lapping up every second of the spotlight, loving being the center of attention. He would be the perfect model. It would be one extreme or the other. There never was a middle ground. Not with Barney. And it never mattered. It was funny either way.

  Barney opted for chaos. Every prop, every play toy, every wastebasket, every treat became a diversion. The few times we managed to get him settled, Ed decided it was a good time to shoot from the ladder, which required about thirty more seconds of waiting time while Ed, who was no spring chicken, managed to slowly—very slowly—hobble his way up the creaky steps. When he finally reached the top, he carefully twisted himself around and then seemed genuinely surprised—and mildly miffed—that Barney had not remained in the spot Ed had assigned to him. Much of this dance was seen on TV. The whole thing seemed choreographed like a Laurel and Hardy routine.

  In the final on-air segment, Ed pulled out the heavy hardware. Not a new camera or fancy lens, but an artificial smoke-producing machine, the kind you might use in a movie to create a creepy scene or a steamy, sexy one. “This will make for some very artsy shots,” said Ed, beaming.

  With Barney finally sitting in a big, comfy recliner, relaxed at last, Ed cranked up the machine and smoke spewed out of the device and into his studio. It also made an odd screeching sound. Ed wasn’t real hip on how to use the contraption. Apparently, he didn’t get a lot of calls for smoke when he photographed the high school football players.

  Never, never had I witnessed my dog, or any dog for that matter, so terrified. His ears virtually shot straight up on the top of his head, his eyes widened like Frisbees, his hair stood on end.

  It was funny television, yes, but it was a classic example of that fine line I would sometimes cross where viewers were no longer amused with Barney’s antics but concerned about how he was being handled or mishandle
d. I knew as I watched this fiasco unfold that the station would get dozens of calls with concerns that I had allowed Barney to be harmed. Everyone was beginning to feel they had a vested interest in Barney. “No one is going to mistreat my dog” was the collective feeling.

  I spent most of the afternoon later that day on the phone, allaying people’s fears. The next morning I opened up the show with Barney at my side, assuring the viewers their favorite news hound was okay and that I swore I would never let something like that happen again. But throughout the years, I was amazed how carefully people scrutinized my interactions with Barney. If I picked him up, I had to be sure to lower him slowly to the ground. If it appeared I “dropped” him (which a certain camera angle might suggest) the station would get calls. If I yelled at him, people chastised me. This was all evidence he was the viewers’ dog.

  With all the mayhem, we did get a photo that became a classic. The one prop I had brought with me to Tower Studio was Barney’s obedience school diploma. The fact that Ed had done so many high school graduations prompted the idea, and I figured that Barney was just as undeserving of a diploma as some eighteen-year-olds, so ...why not?

  Ed put Barney in a chair behind his desk and I propped his paws up on the flat surface, inserting the folded diploma under his paws. Barney seemed content to remain in that position. Ed inched toward the ladder. “I’ll break your arm if you climb that ladder,” I said. “Just shoot the damn picture.”

  That photo of Barney was such a favorite that over the years I printed 5,000 of them. I must have signed 4,999 because I have only one left. The only reason I updated the photo was that when Barney began to mature, I thought he deserved a picture that reflected his years of experience. In addition, I decided finally to be in the picture with him. I was, after all, part of the team.