repost
.....1969......Saigon
“Major...you have an important assignment.”
“You’ll be on live television tomorrow morning with John Chancellor
but you’ll have to go out to the Saigon broadcasting building to get
hooked up for it.” This from the NBC News Saigon bureau chief.
“Oh boy.”
Was my reply...partly in shock about the live NBC-TV thing and
partly concerned about that facility with it’s antiquated radio
equipment.
That place did not have a good reputation for being able to do
anything that worked. If you’ve seen “Live From Baghdad” about CNN
having to use a similar facility you’ll know what I’m talking about.
Seems President Nixon was making an official policy announcement
in the evening New York time, and Chancellor would be anchoring and ask
me in from Saigon for comments....audio only.
So I would have to get out there and hope we could make the
connection to New York...then sit quietly and listen to Nixon’s remarks
and then respond to John’s questions off the top of my head.
Heady stuff for a little known radio correspondent but I was not flaked out about the thing.
They picked the sharpest cameraman as he was very well versed in
audio stuff to accompany me in case the circuit had problems...(or the
local Vietnam engineers did).
We arrived an hour before the speech on “Vietnamization” was set to start.
The call was placed with no problem and we sat around waiting for the Prez.
The
address was not long...Nixon sounded like he was turning the whole damn
war over to the Vietnamese...but that was public relations. I think he
also took the opportunity to announce more reductions in US troop
levels to appease the student protesters back home.
Chancellor was cool, as usual, and ask me what I thought. I was
subdued but ok. Then he asked me to guess at the reaction in Vietnam to
the President's comments and I was ok with that.
He closed our portion of the coverage (there were studio guests also) saying:
“Thanks Stan...that was NBC News correspondent Stan Major reporting from Saigon.”
The only video they used (I saw the report later) were a few
slides of me and some troops with this at the bottom of the screen
“Stan Major NBC News reporting from Saigon”.
My parents were thrilled...I was relieved that it went so well and I
returned to the bureau to get my radio reports ready for the two daily
circuits.
So...if it’s in the NBC News archives and you can get access to that...the date is:
November 3, 1969
President Nixon’s Vietnamization announcement.
John Chancellor anchor...with
NBC News correspondent Stan Major live in Saigon.
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http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/couric-williams-exits-source-article-1.2106268
stanmajor@aol.com
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