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  Great TV News Stories was a series of 14 hour long documentaries produced by Dan Cooper Productions for ABC News.  The series aired on VH-1, and was distributed by MPI home video.
It was 1987, and I got a call from Av Westin asking if I would like to be part of a new ABC News series called Burning Questions.  Of course I would.
At the first meeting, the staff gathered in the 20/20 conference room.  I was impressed with the people present, most of whom I knew.  Among them was Sandy Socolow, who along with Russ Bensley, had served as executive producers of The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.  I was thrilled at the possibility of working with him.
As soon as the meeting was over, I was summoned to another meeting with Annette Kreiner, the dreaded production executive who worked with Av Westin.  She told me to forget about Burning Questions, because Av had another, more exciting assignment for me.  OK.
Annette told me Av wanted me to produce a series as an out-of-house packager.  She told me what she would give me per episode, and she outlined the concept.  When I asked if I could review the budget with Av, she responded in her typically acerbic manner:  "Why ask him?  He doesn't know the price of toilet paper."  I was reminded of how delightful it was not to work on staff at a network.
Anyway, Av and I had a kick-off meeting, where we discussed the concept.  Each hour would deal with one great story of the TV age.  I would excerpt from ABC News broadcasts, with no running narration.  There could be occasional linking narration to tie sequences together.  That was it.  The entire ABC News archive was at my disposal.  In fact, for the first time, show masters would be let out of house for my staff to work with.
Among the topics:  the Challenger disaster, the Kennedy-Nixon debates, and the dawn of the Gorbachev era.
It took about 10 months to complete, with two producers and two PA's in my unit.  I set up shop in a couple of rooms I sublet.  I bought a JVC professional VHS editing setup for off lining, and conformed the shows at Unitel.
I made a tidy profit, further developed my skills as a packager, and thoroughly impressed Av (and, incidentally, Bob Iger).
Av had left for King World by the time the series was completed, and the quality of the shows, plus my demonstration of power as a show runner, motivated him to offer me Instant Recall, his new King World syndicated strip.

 

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