Excerpt: Wendy Walker's 'The Producer'
"Woman behind the man" on "Larry King Live" pens book about behind the scenes.
Nov. 18, 2010 — -- For 17 years, Wendy Walker stood solid in the shadows while Larry King thrived in the spotlight. As the senior executive producer on "Larry King Live," Walker was there for nearly every newsmaking interview and helmed one of the most successful news programs in history.
But that's just the latest chapter of a career that started more than three decades ago at ABC. In the intervening years, she has seen it all and is finally telling her story in her new book, "The Producer."
Read an excerpt from the book below, and then head to the "GMA" Library to find more good reads.
My alarm clock woke me at 5:30 a.m., as usual. It was still dark outside as I reluctantly pulled back the covers, got up, and headed for the bathroom to wash my face and get ready for a new day. The digital readout on my clock told me it was Thursday, June 25, 2009, and I felt like I had a jump on the day.
The night before, when I went to bed, my staff and I had booked what I thought was a diverse and interesting Larry King Live show for tonight. I knew from experience over many years that if breaking news occurred anywhere in the world, we could and would shift our plans in an instant. That's always the case in the news business. But I was hoping for an easy day as I headed into my home of?ce off my bedroom to check my e-mails. They were arriving fast and furious since it was a little after 8:30 a.m. on the East Coast. I scanned my incoming box quickly and checked last night's ratings.
I love living on the West Coast, and in the blush of a promising summer sunrise, I scanned the wires and various reports from my East Coast staff to con?rm the morning headlines.
Then I went back to my e-mails. My production staff of forty across the country were streaming information to me from everywhere and would continue to do so—to the tune of at least two thousand e-mails daily. I know how impossible that sounds, but it's true.
Imagine taking a half-hour walk or driving a kid to school in the early morning and having more than two hundred new e-mails waiting when you get back home. That's how it is with me, as I scan thousands of e-mails every day, eliminating what I don't need and making sure I respond to what is necessary and hopefully not deleting something important.
While I started answering the messages, my staff kicked in. They do myriad jobs that are all important; it's the old it takes a village concept. Since ten of the forty producers are bookers, when we decide in which direction the show will go that night they make the calls and do the intense work of booking the guests. When we were in the midst of reporting the deadly earthquake in Haiti in February 2010, for example, we had to decide who we wanted to interview concerning a massive world tragedy. Everybody got on board with ideas and suggestions, and we came up with names.
Among our staff, one producer is assigned strictly to knowing all the books that come out and which authors might be right for the current show. Two producers are in charge of the ?fteen-minute water cooler stories, such as local tragedies that include people who are not normally in the news, which is how the Scott Peterson case began. Another producer handles celebrities and their agents and publicists. There are political bookers who work with Washington and the White House, and all of them have their A list: people we would have on at any time, such as Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt or a sitting president.
In other words, we are always working simultaneously on whatever is going on today, the rest of the week, and way into the future. While we do this, one of the editorial producers does the research for the open of the show: Larry is extraordinarily well- versed since he watches news all day long, but he still needs speci?cs. So one producer writes the open, others produce the video components, and still others are in charge of the live show. That includes satellites, audio, graphics, phone calls, the rundown, content, remote locations, and breaking news during the show. There are publicists, cameramen, makeup artists; everyone is doing his or her individual job to create a live show.
And so each job is a piece of the whole, like a set of dominoes. It all has to ?t together in harmony because if one domino goes down, so do all the rest. Everyone has to know what everyone else is doing, and we perform this intricate dance every day, all day long. If the show changes suddenly in the middle of the day, which happens very often, we start the process all over again, with less time and more scurrying around. But we always get the job done.
So far so good for this particular day. It seemed that Larry King Live would go forward as planned. On our roster, we had conservative Ann Coulter, Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, and Elizabeth Edwards, who was struggling with inoperable cancer and her ex-senator husband's stunning in?delity. I thought we might include some information on Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina who was also embroiled in an extra-marital scandal, so the show was off to a solid start.
I gave the go-ahead to check into the availability of Governor Sanford and a few others, but as executive producer I had to keep in mind that Barbara Walters was airing an ABC special about ailing actress Farrah Fawcett that night. In her advance publicity for the special, Barbara had suggested on Good Morning America that Farrah, who was struggling with the last stages of cancer, might not make it through the day. It sounded a little presumptuous on Barbara's part, but the actress had supposedly been at death's door for quite a while. If she died today, I would have to change the show. That was par for the course. I often changed the focus of a show when we were in the planning stages, since I had to respond to what was going on in the world at each moment. But I hoped I didn't have to.
I was in the middle of the morning booking call when, at 9:28 a.m., a ?ash showed up on my computer. Farrah had passed away. Barbara had been right and we had some adjusting to do.
Adjusting on a moment's notice is what this job has constantly demanded during the past seventeen years. Now we were facing the death of a beloved actress and we had to change the show. We did an about-face. There was no doubt that the show we originally planned was out. It was tough since we had to start from scratch again, but I didn't freak out. That would have taken up too much time and wasted too much valuable energy. We would replace show number one with show number two, which would be devoted to Farrah's death. We all got on the phone to reschedule our guests (we never cancel; we always reschedule) and round up the appropriate people for the tragic new show.
When a show suddenly turns on its head because something important supersedes our plans, each moment is crucial and we are ?lled with anxiety as we are required to book a whole new show in a very short period of time. It's not unusual for me to be ironing out the wrinkles of a show well into the late afternoon, which is edgy since we air at 6 p.m. on the West Coast. By the end of a day like the one I was presently facing, I have generally made hundreds of decisions, and the only way to do that is to remain calm. That would be the case today, I realized, reminding myself to breathe as we began drawing up lists of guests who knew Farrah, as well as checking their availability. Dreams of a simple day ?ew out the window as we began to prepare for show number two, but I had no idea how crazy the day would turn out.
Before I got back on the phone, I shot off an e-mail to my friend Lisa Ling, special correspondent for CNN, and The Oprah Winfrey Show. Her sister, Laura Ling, and a colleague, Euna Lee, had been detained in North Korea since March 17, 2009, for entering the country without a visa. They had been covering a controversial story on human traf?cking, and on June 8 the women had been sentenced to twelve years of hard labor, having been found guilty of the "grave crime" of illegal entry into North Korea, even though they were told by their guide that it was safe to do so.
Lisa had been working day and night to try to bring her sister home, and we had booked her, her parents, and the husbands of the two detained journalists on the show to make a public appeal. I recall being very careful to accentuate Lisa's needs rather than making the show what we wanted it to be during that hour she talked with Larry. This was all about getting the women back, which overrode our desire for good ratings. All of Lisa's pleas and maneuverings needed to be handled with great delicacy because of how political and disturbing the situation was. I couldn't imagine how she was getting up in the mornings, so I e-mailed her daily, asking about her progress and if there was anything I could do. This morning, I wrote:
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