From the Boston Globe 32 years ago
EDWARD'S DREAM A REALITY
Boston Globe (pre-1997 Fulltext) - Boston, Mass.
Author: Craig, Jack
Date: May 3, 1985
Start Page: 72
Section: SPORTS
SporTView / JACK CRAIG
How many have a dream, see it become reality, and discover it is even more fulfilling than anticipated?
Jack Edwards, Ch. 5's sportscaster, claims he is one of the rare ones.
"When I was a kid in New Hampshire, the only thing I wanted to be was a sportscaster for a Boston TV station," he says. "I was a Don Gillis fan, a child of television, I guess."
Edwards, 28, grew up in Durham, where his parents were on the University of New Hampshire faculty. His father was director of theater and his mother a music professor. When dad was stuck for a child actor, he would call home. Jack made his stage debut at 4.
Is there a little ham in Edwards that makes television a natural for him? "Yes and maybe," he responds.
Yet he did not travel a straight road to success at Ch. 5. He was fired from his first TV job at Ch. 9 in Manchester, N.H. "The general manager wanted me to lead every sports report with a high school story. We went around on that all the time," Edwards said. When the NFL strike ended (October, 1982), he led with it on his sports report. "I was fired nine days before Christmas."
Edwards was moonlighting at the time as host of the weekend call- in sports program on WRKO, and, while in Boston, he met Tom Shaer, who was about to move from his weekend sports anchor position at Ch. 10 in Providence to a radio job in Chicago.
Within a month of his dismissal at Ch. 9, Edwards had a job in the much larger Providence market, where at last he enjoyed the freedom given the weekend sports anchor. He also had an opportunity to participate in the station's extensive coverage of the America's Cup races that summer.
The Ch. 10 job also made his work visible to executives at the Boston stations, and he was hired as a sports reporter at Ch. 5 last winter. "It was Dec. 3 (1984) when I got a call from Phil Balboni (executive news director) and he told me 'Your ship has come in,' " Edwards said.
He vividly recalls his first assignment at Ch. 5. The date was Jan. 28, and he was spending part of the day at ESPN (another freelance job) doing skiing voice-overs, when he received a call from Boston. Lee Webb was sick and Edwards would make his debut that night as sports anchor on the 11 o'clock news.
He hurried to Boston, ripped and read copy from the wire service machines, wrote, helped edit material, then walked onto the anchor desk. "There I was, sitting aside Chet (Curtis) and Natalie (Jacobsen)," he said.
Generally, you can do or you can't do at the anchor desk, and training is only marginally helpful. Edwards can do, as he demonstrated that night.
But Edwards was hired as a sports reporter and says he prefers to be outside. He insists he even enjoys locker room interviews, the most uncomfortable part of the job.
"I like the field because you might get a chance to write around a two- minute piece. At the anchor desk, you might just attach a clever phrase to a 20-second action segment."
Edwards says he likes the writing side of television most of all, unusual except that it is what he does best. "I noticed his writing skill right away," says John Sawhill, general manager at Ch. 10.
"Clark Booth's writing was what I admired most at Ch. 5. I would notice that when his segment would come on TV, we would stop talking in order to listen. That's quite a tribute, when you consider it is TV," he said.
Edwards' spoken words do not evoke the sardonic memory of Keith Olbermann, who preceded him at Ch. 5, but Edwards' phrases are more clever than most others in local sports television.
Edwards' outlook is so sunny that he refutes the common belief that his is a selfish business. "People told me it was a rat's nest in Boston, that you have to watch out for yourself all the time. I have found it just the opposite," he says.
Network ambitions grind away at most superior local TV talents after a while and, the greater the skill, the worse the pang. Yet Edwards says he can't imagine such a dilemma because he is where he always wanted to be.
Wait a while.
