45. The Good, the Bad and the TV Anchor

[00:00:00] Elizabeth:  Sometimes they'll say, you know, "Stretch it" or "Consolidate".

And I remember sometimes feeling pressure about that because they'd say, "Oh, now we have 45 seconds to fill", and you think, "Oh gosh, now I have to be an improv performer" because now we're supposed to be really funny.

And we're supposed to talk about that last video about the ducks in the pond?  Can we talk about the game that the sports guys were just talking about?"  Sometimes you're thinking, "I didn't even know we were going to have to chat about this and..."

Early years

[00:01:09] Steve W: Elizabeth Pearson Garr was three weeks old when her parents moved from their hometown in Wisconsin to Palo Alto in California where her father took up the role of assistant professor at Stanford University.

They only expected to be there for a few years.

[00:01:26] Elizabeth: ...and instead I ended up living at Stanford my entire childhood because my father ended up getting tenure.

I was five years old and they used to say, "If we get tenure, you can get a dog". And all I ever wanted was a dog.

And he came home one day and said, "Guess what? I got tenure". And I said, "This is great news for me. It means we get a dog, and it means I get to live here till I'm 15", because I thought he had 10 years, not tenure.

So, that was a fantastic day for Elizabeth.

[00:02:01] Steve W: Any brothers and sisters?

[00:02:03] Elizabeth: I have an older sister, she's 16 months older and... we had just a lovely childhood. We kind of grew up on Stanford campus. We lived actually in Stanford dorms for several years.

My parents were resident fellows, we were the dorm families. So we had big brothers and sisters who were college students.

And it just felt like a really safe, wonderful atmosphere.

[00:02:29] Steve W: And as Stanford campus kids, what did you get up to?

[00:02:32] Elizabeth:  My sister and I were encouraged to get involved in a lot of different things. We played piano and we did sports and in high school I got really involved in journalism.

I was the editor of the newspaper and I was really into swimming, that was my favorite sport.

 One of the hard things for me growing up is just being in my sister's shadow.

She's... has a very big personality and she's good at everything she tries, everything she does. And so for a while I felt like I was just Sarah's little sister.

 So it took me a little time in high school to carve out my own niche, which I did with journalism. That was something she didn't do.

College - Stanford to Harvard

[00:03:10] Steve W: Choosing college was an exciting time for Elizabeth.

Her sister had gone to Harvard on the East Coast.

So staying on the West Coast and applying to Stanford was the obvious choice to get out from under her sister's shadow.

[00:03:25] Elizabeth: I got into Stanford and I thought, "Fantastic". And then other acceptances were coming in.

My sister was at Harvard and she had convinced me, she said, "Please just apply. Please just apply".

Well, I happened to get in there too and I started thinking I should stretch myself. I should do something that feels hard". Although that was the one thing I said I would never do, is go to school with my sister.

It turned out to be the most wonderful thing.

We were in a bigger atmosphere, it was just all a bonus to have my own experience, but to have her there as a support.

 I changed and I'm so happy that I did.

Cooking school

[00:04:06] Steve W: Elizabeth had enjoyed journalism at high school and majored in History and Literature at College.

Writing was always going to be in the mix.

For want of a better place to start, she'd always loved cooking and food.

[00:04:27] Elizabeth:  Maybe I'll become a food writer.

 Well, you can't just say you're a food writer. You need some expertise in this, you need some credentials. You need to go to cooking school.

I mean, who doesn't like having a... better cook around?

So, immediately after graduating from Harvard, I went to cooking school in San Francisco.

[00:04:49] Steve W: And after bolstering her expertise in cooking, Elizabeth started writing freelance.

Then having endured a nine-month spell in food PR, she decided that she needed to do something else.

And that something else took the form of a soon-to-launch food-related cable TV station.

TV Food Network

[00:05:17] Elizabeth: There was a new cable TV network starting called the Television Food Network. And at this point in the U.S. there had been no cable networks about food.

There had been individual TV shows on public television. Julia Child had been very famous, Jacques Pepin, there had been shows with food hosts, but there had not been an entire network before.

 And the man who started CNN, Reese Schonfeld, had this brainchild to start an entire network about food.

[00:05:49] Steve W: And how did you set about getting the job?

[00:05:53] Elizabeth: I found a name of an executive and I said, "I'm going to be in New York City next week, I'd love to work for you could I get an interview?"

 Now I had no plan to be in New York City the next week, I just made myself be in New York City in the next week.

And he wrote back, Joe Langham wrote back and said, Sure, I'd love to interview you".

 And so I got myself on a train and he said, "Sure, you're hired"!

[00:06:18] Steve W: And Elizabeth was one of the Television Food Network's first employees, working on the Food News and Views Show which was launching for Thanksgiving a few months later. Everything was manic.

[00:06:32] Elizabeth: We were writing scripts and... I was a writer and a producer and it was really something. Some of the early shows were how to boil water, you know, for the early cook and we... then we've started bringing in celebrity chefs.

 We had all these different segments and I got to go out and... interview people, do different stories in the field, as well as write for our new segment.

And I ran a whole segment called Cookbook Corner where we interviewed interesting cookbook authors and Julia Child came in once a week.

 So we got to work with her and she's just legendary.

And the anchor of our show was Donna Hanover Giuliani, who at the time was married to Rudolph Giuliani, the Mayor of New York City.

Approaching TV Anchor Diane Sawyer

[00:07:19] Steve W: So a great grounding at the TV Food Network, but Elizabeth was ambitious and things weren't moving fast enough. Thinking big, she wrote a letter to one of the doyennes of US media, the ABC news anchor, Diane Sawyer.

[00:07:37] Elizabeth:  It was an actual letter. And one day I got home to my apartment after a long day of work and on my answering machine, an old fashioned answering machine, there was a message from a woman who said she was Diane Sawyer's assistant and she had gotten my letter and she would love to meet with me.

Could she make a date for me to come in? So I think I made it for 9 one morning.

And of course it was this snowy, icy morning with terrible weather.

And I... walked there and I remember I was carrying my shoes for work in a bag. And by the time I got there, the bag was breaking or something and my nose was running.

And Diane Sawyer was so kind. She immediately said, "Oh, let me get you a new bag and would you like a tissue?"

And she was wonderfully maternal, but not in a patronizing way or anything.

And I remember her saying, "I wanted to meet with you because I saw myself in you, and I wanted to just reach out and give you the advice that if you want to get in this industry, you need to get out of New York".

"You need to go work in local news and just put in the time and don't give up.

You just need to put your boots on the ground and just keep going."

[00:08:52] Steve W: Well, Elizabeth did keep going.

While she was pondering her next move, The TV Food Network cancelled Food News and Views.

 And that was her opportunity to move on, via a short stint in Los Angeles, to take on a combined anchor and reporting job for the NBC affiliate KULR-8 in Billings, Montana.

TV Anchor for KULR-8 Billings Montana

[00:09:14] Elizabeth:  I did a little recruiting slash scouting trip, I remember, in February.

 And this first guy that I met was a guy named Jonathan Marcus, who became my best friend there.

And he had a big smile on his face and he was from Pennsylvania, had gone to school in Michigan, and he looked at me and he said, "You wanna do this?" And I said, "I think I do". And he goes, "You can do it! You can do this with us!"

So, I went back to L.A., packed up my bags and moved to Montana.

TV Anchor - Day 1

[00:09:46] Steve W: And pretty quickly, it was Elizabeth's first day as TV anchor at KULR-8.

 And she was about to experience TV's version of being thrown in at the deep end.

She'd arrived to find that the noon anchor was off sick.

[00:10:08] Elizabeth:  And they said, "Elizabeth, you're doing the noon news", and I said, "I've never anchored in my life before".

And they said, "You can figure it out".

So they threw me on the noon news and said, "Here's the teleprompter, here are your stories... go!

 And little did I know that the teleprompter in that station was run by your foot, almost like a gas pedal.

And so I am pedalling down reading the teleprompter, going through the stories.

And, In TV news parlance, there's something called a 'package'. So that's when the video will come.

If you're throwing to a package, maybe I'll be saying something about a big political story.

You know, "The president went here... the president had this conference", and then it'll just be that pre-taped story about it.

So that story goes on and all of a sudden what I'm seeing is a completely black screen, and there's no words.

There's nothing on my screen.

[00:11:17] Steve W: Now, do you remember Elizabeth's new best friend Jonathan? Well, luckily he was watching from the wings.

[00:11:25] Elizabeth: And I'm making gestures to him.

I've lost the prompter and this package, pre-taped package, is going on and the seconds are counting down and he's making some motion back to me.

Next thing I know he's running behind the desk, jumping under the desk.

And I don't know what happened until we got to the commercial break.

But what I learned is Jonathan was madly pumping that crazy foot pedal because what had to happen is I should have kept pumping it.

 And he just saved me. I was sweating, my heart was beating so fast and he, nicely with his hand, was underneath that desk pumping the pedal for me.

[00:12:07] Steve W: And things didn't get any better.

[00:12:10] Elizabeth: ...a guest didn't show up,  we had a substitute weatherman. I mean, I don't know how many things can go wrong for one poor substitute news anchor on her very first day anchoring.

 But, as Jonathan would remind me later, nobody's really watching.

[00:12:39] Steve W: So tell me about a typical day in the life of a TV anchor.

A day in the life of a TV anchor

[00:12:43] Elizabeth: It was interesting for us in Billings because we weren't just anchors. We were also producers.

The staff was so small that we did everything.

So, as the weekend person, I produced the entire newscast and then anchored it. For example, there was a 5.30 and 10 o'clock on the weekend.

 So I would get in, let's say, 2 o'clock p.m. And I would start going through the stories and figuring out what we were using for national news, what my reporter would go out and report for the local news and I would put the rundown together.

So I had one hat on initially and then as the show was getting closer, then I'd have to sort of switch into anchor mode, write the scripts, rewrite the scripts that were being sent to me.

[00:13:33] Steve W: And that's just the start.

[00:13:35] Elizabeth: Oh, now I have to, sort of, go do my makeup and my hair because I'm going to go on to... air.

 I would have to, you know, go take care of that, go put on a better top, 'cause that's what would be seen, and make sure I went through my whole script, make sure all the right tapes were where they were.

So we're really kind of one-man banding it. I mean, we had cameraman, we had someone in the back running the tapes and all of that, but it was a pretty lean crew.

 It's a little bit like acting, I would imagine. It is quite performative.

H-A-V-E-R not Haver

[00:14:08] Steve W: And as someone from out of town, when you're performing, it's very important to pronounce your names correctly.

 I remember they told us early on, "You have to pronounce all of the... cities right".

[00:14:23] Elizabeth: There was a city called H A V R E and, " Make sure you say 'Haver', and not like 'Haver', 'Harvey', 'Harver'.

 Our viewers, this is their town, this is their area. You'll come in as such an outsider if you start pronouncing everything incorrectly.

So, you know, really make this your place."

Montana speed limit

[00:14:46] Steve W: Billings Montana was a far cry from the likes of Washington, D.C., New York and Los Angeles.

It's about the size of Elizabeth's home town of Palo Alto in the San Francisco Bay Area, but it was in the middle of nowhere, miles from the nearest cities of Minneapolis, Denver and Seattle.

[00:15:08] Elizabeth: And Billings is like however many people were there, and then there was just nothing. You know, there's just hours and hours you can drive with just space.

And one time I was sent to a conference in Missoula, which is on the western side of the state where the University of Montana is located.

It's a really beautiful area. And I can't remember how long that drive was, it was several hours drive.

And one interesting thing about Montana is there was no speed limit. The speed limit is... 'safe and reasonable', I think is what it was called.

[00:15:40] Steve W: In 1996 in the State of Montana, a chap called Rudy Stanko was given a speeding ticket for driving at 85 miles an hour.

There was no speed limit.

Drivers could drive at speeds that were "reasonable and prudent".

Rudy argued that the law was unreasonably vague, all the way up to the Montana Supreme court who agreed.

And so Rudy won his case and the law was changed.

But for Elizabeth on this day, reasonable and prudent was the speed limit.

[00:16:25] Elizabeth: And so I'm driving along, listening to my CDs at the time.

Well wouldn't you know it? Suddenly, out of nowhere, a police car comes and pulls me over.

And he says, " Do you know how fast you're going?" And I said, " No".

And he said, "What are you doing?" And I said, "I'm just listening to my music", and he writes me a ticket.

I said, "How am I getting a ticket, there's no speed limit?"

And he said, " You're not driving reasonably and safely". And I look at the ticket and he said, "Driver admits to driving recklessly while listening to music".

 And I thought, "What?" And I realized, people told me later, it's because I I still had my California license plates.

And they do not like Californians moving to Montana.  

So, there is a speed limit for Californians I guess.

[00:17:22] Steve W: A little bit unnerving for a Californian whose face appears all over the Billing's TV network every week.

[00:17:35] Elizabeth: Yeah, it is true.

Social life of a TV anchor

[00:17:40] Steve W: Now, you were a long way from home. What was the social life like?

[00:17:45] Elizabeth:  I was the weekend anchor and I was a weekday reporter.

 My days off were either Monday, Tuesday or Thursday, Friday.

So I was always working Saturday, Sunday. And in my mind, the interesting things that would come through Billings, maybe the ballet from Seattle or a concert or something, would always be on a Saturday night and I was always working.

If people were getting together, it was on the weekend. And so I never could do anything with people.

So, I was really lonely  and pretty much the only people I knew were people from work. And I remember telling myself so many times like, "You are here for a reason. You are here doing this job because this is your passion. Diane Sawyer told you to put your boots on the ground and put the time in and just do the best work you can".

[00:18:41] Steve W: The limited social life wasn't Elizabeth's only issue.

[00:18:52] Elizabeth: I really wanted to tell interesting stories. That's why I got into the whole thing.

And instead I was being groomed to be a newsreader.

It's sort of interesting in its own right, but it's not really what I wanted to do.

So I would have to push to do series on... I remember I did this series on education in Montana and I thought that was super interesting.

And my bosses would say, "Yeah, but how much time? We don't have a lot of time that you can commit to this because we also need you to cover the crash on the highway," you know, the... day-to-day stuff, and I wanted to do like really in depth stories.

 So it was kind of this push and pull between what I thought was actually important for viewers to know about. Yeah.

A TV anchor who doesn't have 'IT'

[00:19:44] Steve W: Things came to a head on the day that KULR-8 hired a consultant to give feedback to the anchors about their performance on air.

[00:19:53] Elizabeth:  She said, " Okay, go up and read", and I did.

I came off the set and she said, "Well, Elizabeth, here's the thing about this business.

Some people have it and others do not have it. I'm afraid you do not have the 'it' factor."

And I was a little crestfallen and I sort of went about my day and I thought, you know, "Is she just writing me off? Do I have no future in this business?"

I didn't quite know what to make of all of it. And then she came back the next day, day two, and she said, "Elizabeth, come here, come here".

And she pulled me into this room and she had all these bags of stuff and she had hair and makeup, and she said, "Come on".

And she put all this makeup on me and did my hair this other way.

And she goes, "Go back, go read now".

They put this script on the teleprompter and I did the, to my mind, the exact same thing I had done the day before, came off the set and she said, "Ah, now you have it".

And it was so discouraging to me. I thought, "Oh, so 'it' is the hair and the makeup".

[00:21:01] Steve W: You're working so hard on these stories and constantly trying to create great content and yet it's coming down to the hair and makeup.

[00:21:08] Elizabeth: Yeah. It really is a looks-based business. I knew that. I mean, I'm not naive... clearly I know that looks in TV news play a factor for women more than for men.

At one point someone told me, "Have you considered radio?"

And I thought, "I don't want to hear that. Are you telling me that I'm... that I'm too ugly for TV?

[00:21:33] Steve W: Well, the consultant's feedback proved invaluable to the anchors, particularly to Elizabeth who decided to leave... not just Billings, but TV anchoring altogether! Now there's consultancy for you.

[00:21:51] Elizabeth: And they said, "Well, we're not going to let you out of your contract".

And I said, " Please, I'm not going to another competitor. I'm getting out of the business".

 It was really hard, but they let me do it.

A life reassessment

[00:22:10] Steve W: Elizabeth returned to California, took a degree in documentary film, got married, had children and when they turn three and five, she...

[00:22:19] Elizabeth: was offered a position to work on a documentary film with an academy award winning director and I couldn't believe it.

I mean, I had not worked for a few years. I had been a stay at home mom.

And if I had come up with what looked like a dream job, this would have been it.

It was near where I was living. It was film, it was an interesting topic, it was with one of the most incredible directors, the perfect opportunity and yet....

I ran into a friend at the grocery store and I just started crying after my second meeting with this fellow and she said, "What's wrong?" and I said, "I don't know I just... I don't think I'm ready.

And she said, " I think that's your answer".

And he was fantastic by the way. This director was such a gentleman and he said, "I understand. My kids were little once too and I get it..." you know, "Circle back with me someday".

[00:23:31] Steve W: That was an important moment for you. Wasn't it.

[00:23:34] Elizabeth: Having the opportunity to say "No" to something that seemed perfect was actually me choosing my life and that really helped me rather than feeling I was just default, "Okay, now I'm home with my kids, what am I doing?

There's nothing else".

Well, there was something else and that actually wasn't what felt right for me at the time.

That was quite empowering.

[00:24:00] Steve W: And Elizabeth never looked back.

She carried out some voluntary work, was at home for her children during those formative years.

And as the kids became teenagers and as that creative gene, that desire to interview people, to share stories, still burned inside, she started to think how she could harness that creativity.

Well, what does anybody do when they want to create something and share stories?

They start a podcast.

Podcasting

[00:24:30] Elizabeth: I was a little naive. I think I thought it would be simpler, easier than it actually is.

I had this idea a while ago before the pandemic. Pandemic hit, other things happened.

But I eventually got my way to starting a podcast and indeed it does encompass a lot of the things that I love.

It also has a lot of aspects of things I didn't know how to do and I'm still needing to learn.

[00:24:58] Steve W:  It's basically like starting a little business. I'm not a business person, I don't know how to market things and grow things and there's a lot of stuff that is not in my wheelhouse, but I think that it's good to be challenged and it's good to have to learn new things.

And talking to guests about their life experiences is definitely in Elizabeth's wheelhouse and her podcast, "What it's like to..." is up and running and proving very popular.

Check out the links in the show notes.

 And Elizabeth is enjoying the added benefits of the podcast format over that of interviewing on the telly.

[00:25:40] Elizabeth:  I used to interview people to try to put stories together where I essentially disappeared.

And now, as soon as I started doing an interview style podcast, I hadn't realized how different that would be.

It's subtle, but significant.

So, just the way that I would interact with people, it's more present and less passive, I think.

I think I used to try to get things out of people.

I mean, the most extreme case would be in TV news.

You're trying to just get a, sort of a quotable quote out of somebody who's been at the scene of something that's happened.

And you're trying to get just one interesting quote that you can put on the news.

But I'd say the podcast, because I decided on this interview format, is just a more of a meandering conversation.

And so I'm not trying to get as many of, sort of, pull-quotes as, "How can we have this full cogent conversation" where my part is, sort of, as interesting as theirs.

[00:26:56] Steve W: Yes. And what I particularly like is how you avoid dominating the conversation, you know, let the guests do the talking.  

[00:27:03] Elizabeth: I'd say it's a work in progress because I get feedback from some people who say that I should talk more than I do.

I think a lot of podcast hosts insert themselves a lot more. I don't know, I don't mean that negatively. I'm just not that way.

[00:27:20] Steve W: Has it made you a better listener?

[00:27:23] Elizabeth: I think that I've tended to be a good listener over time, but I think I listen in a different way during the interviews.

In news, you're listening for follow up questions. Not just zingers, but you're... trying to get a certain story told, so it's literally follow up questions.

You might need to, kind of, dig deeper.

But I think in these podcast interviews, I'm listening to see where the conversation is flowing.  

[00:27:55] Steve W: Elizabeth's sometimes precarious journey led her from food journalism to anchoring the news in Billings Montana to her current destination in California, with a happy family, a funny little dog who follows her everywhere and a podcast.

So reflecting on that journey, what advice would she give to her younger self?

A former TV anchor reflects on her journey

[00:28:23] Elizabeth: I think it's important to try a lot of things, figure out what your passions are and to create as many options for yourself as you can, as you're coming up.

But then, when you become an adult, you start making decisions  and with each of those decisions, you're naturally limiting your options.

You are deciding to go to one college, so you're not going to another college. That's limiting an option.

You're deciding to take this job, this career path, so you're not doing those.

You're deciding to marry this person, so you're not marrying all those other people.

So, it's just sort of natural, I think, that you grow up trying to create opportunities, and then as you're an adult, you're having to limit your options so you have to, kind of, realize that that's... that's just a part of growing up.