At Syracuse's Jazz Fest on Saturday, the music will stop briefly to celebrate beloved broadcaster Mike Price, who died in May at the age of 87. When Price died, an era of local broadcasting died with him.
He was one of the very first employees of what was then WNYS-TV, Channel 9, hired a few days before it went on the air in 1962 as a staff announcer. On the station’s very first broadcast, he served as the weatherman. Price stood behind a curtain to be introduced, said Tim Fox of NewsChannel 9. And when he was introduced, “all you could see is Mike batting at the curtain. He couldn’t find the break in the curtain,” Fox said.
Price gained lasting fame as a character – the comic vampire Baron Daemon, host of a late-night Saturday show of B-grade horror movies. The show proved popular enough with young viewers that their parents complained to the station that they couldn’t get their kids to bed on time. So the station created a weekday show – The Baron and his Buddies – that mixed slapstick and corny jokes with cartoons and short features.
With local musicians, Price recorded what is still Syracuse’s best-selling locally-produced single. The Transylvania Twist remains popular. The vinyl single sells on used-record sites for $150 or more.
“This was a guy who was a serious broadcaster and not just a comedian, you know?” said Fox. “He was a concerned citizen. He was a guy who was interested in what was going on, not only for himself but for his neighbors all around Central New York.”
Price produced an award-winning documentary during the Gulf War, when he was serving as a reservist called to active duty in his 50’s. Price’s concern for his community also led to his last and longest role – reporter of the Good News segment that ended nightly newscasts for 25 years.
Mike Price’s career mirrors the industry for which he worked – an industry that needed people like Mike to host locally-originated programs to fill the big holes in the schedules of local TV stations that their networks did not fill, in the era before widespread and inexpensive syndicated programs were available.
That meant jobs for people in front of the camera like Price and many more jobs behind the scenes for directors, writers, carpenters, camera operators, electricians and others. They worked on local programs such as The Magic Toy Shop, Monster Movie Matinee, Syracuse Bowls, It’s Academic and more.
“The death of Mike Price is, I think, the final metaphor, symbol, representative of the end of the broadcasting era, with a capital B, in Syracuse,” said Prof. Robert Thompson, who heads the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University and is an expert on the history of television programming.
Local broadcasters stopped producing much of their own programming as the industry evolved. Cable TV fractured the audience for local shows, which were often less slickly produced than national shows. Syndicated shows were widely available and less expensive than local production. Deregulation of broadcasting allowed owners to cut local shows in favor of greater profits. And now, internet delivery of network shows threatens even the national shows and live sporting events that local stations depend on for their highest ad rates.
So if the networks eventually cut local stations off and distribute solely through online channels, what happens to those stations? “Do we ever get back to [local program production]? I have a hard time seeing that investment ever happening,” said Thompson. “I can’t think of the possible business model that would allow that to happen.”
Instead, stations may have to load up on more syndicated programming or recycle their news broadcasts for more hours of the day (at least, for those stations that produce local news; many produce no local programming at all).
Which makes the passing of Mike Price, the last of the generation of Syracuse broadcasters who entertained us in the days when local stations created many programs for their communities, so significant.
Said Thompson, “If people think, ‘Who’s going to be the next Mike Price,’ there won’t be a next Mike Price.”