Welcome back to A-list talks. I'm your host Adam Armbruster. We have an amazing guest today.
Just amazing, Linda Carson. You're going to hear a lot about her. Linda started out as a cub reporter in Atlanta, but she's gone on to interview world leaders, had personal experiences with them to talk about.
Married to a NFL coach, moved around the country. I'm already exhausted reading this resume. Welcome Linda.
Thank you so much. It's great to still be here after all that.
Linda, I'm going to start with a simple question if you don't mind. What's one word if someone described you, what's the word you would like them to use? This is Linda. One word.
Positive, kind, caring. That's three words. Either one will do.
That means a lot that you're starting out that way. It says a lot about you and that's what shows if folks live on the west side of Florida or even really people around the country.
Linda's a household name. She's been in television her whole life. What is a word that describes something that people don't know about you?
One word. Winner of a contest. I was chosen the happiest girl in the world. My senior year in college. Happy as a Studebaker Lark.
I traveled around the country promoting Lark's cars on the Jack Parr show, the Johnny Carson show, all over the country. I was like 20 years old. That was something that directed me toward television.
Were these live commercials on the show? Or we said promoting. How does?
No, they were not live commercials. I would go on the show to be interviewed and I just had to get the name Studebaker Lark out there as often as possible and smile because I was supposed to be the happiest girl in the world.
And you did something for Coca-Cola too, I think.
I did a lot for Coca-Cola. I was from Atlanta, of course, and their agency was in Atlanta, the advertising agency.
I did one series of commercials called Pick a Pear. So a guy and I were on a bicycle boat for two. He was guiding. I was pedaling. I couldn't see forward because he was tall.
We came down a hill with our Pick a Pear, Coca-Cola, and down we went into the water over and over and over. We were supposed to stop just before the end, but I had the brakes and he had the guiding.
So we were in big trouble from the time we started. So that was great fun.
Where were you as a child? Was it Atlanta?
Yes. I was born in Atlanta, Georgia. My dad was the local Baptist preacher. So people always expected me to be good. So I grew up fighting that all my life.
But it was a time when I thought all people were good, all people were basically good. When I was the happiest girl in the world and we were in New York City one day, we got into an elevator.
I stepped on and I said, oh, hi, hi, my name is Linda Carson. It was Linda Watson at the time. Hi, how are you and how are you?
And the agent with me said, no, no, you're not supposed to talk to people. That was the first time I'd heard that. I thought you were just nice to everybody.
You just walked down the street and said hello to them.
That's quite a culture difference. What is the first thing, Linda, that pulled you into media, television, performing, interviewing? Do you remember like an early spark?
Oh, yes. Brenda Starr in the comic books. Brenda Starr was in the newspaper comics every Sunday. This is in the days now. I was, I'm 86 years old.
So this was when I was about 10, 12 years old. She was beautiful and she was smart. She wore beautiful clothes and she was a newspaper reporter.
She got to travel all over the world. I wanted to be Brenda Starr from that moment on. So I wrote for my high school paper. I was editor of my high school paper, wrote for my college papers.
From then on, I really wanted to be Brenda Starr. In a lot of places I've worked, I've had a little thing that said in front of me, Brenda Starr. So I'm still aiming for her.
That is really cool that you had that spark moment. What helped you get a start? Okay, you had the dream. You wanted to be Brenda Starr. What was the first shot? How'd you get a chance?
Well, when I graduated from college, I went to all the local television stations and applied and applied and applied and never heard anything.
One day I was walking into channel five and I saw a sign on the door that said, wanted writer for the promotion department. I was there to do a commercial and I said, oh, I want to apply for that job.
And the promotion director said, you're not a writer, you're a model. But Maggie Davis had that job at the time. She had just written a bestseller called Foreside of Home. It was going to be made into a screenplay and she was leaving that job.
So she said, come here. She said, you come in here and work with me free for three months until I leave and they won't even think about anybody else. And that's how I got my first job.
I was there every day, didn't get a penny. I started on New Year's Eve. There was an ice storm in Atlanta. I left my house about eight o'clock. I got to the station about five o'clock that afternoon.
But I got there and I was about the only one there could even get in the building. But I was there the next day too. And that was how I got my foot in the door.
You were determined to?
Absolutely. I think that's been my greatest talent. I am determined.
It takes a lot of that in the TV business, doesn't it? You have to.
It does. It does. We just had one of my best friends on Suncoast View here. She came in. She now lives in Colorado. Jane Chastain.
When I was working at Channel 5 as a writer for the promotion department, I got a call saying from the news director, saying, we're looking for a sportscaster.
One day a week, we're looking for Coach Friday. She will sit on a stool. She'll wear a tight t-shirt that says Coach Friday and short shorts.
And she will predict who's going to win. And then the sportscaster will predict. And she will be smarter than the sportscaster. This is going to be hilarious.
So I auditioned for it. And they said, oh, you were great. That was perfect. You've got the job. You've got the job. So I call my agent.
And I said, they said, I've got the job just one more hour. They have just a few more auditions and more and more hour and then I've got the job.
My agent called Jane Chastain. Jane came down, auditioned. And the next day they said, oh, we decided on Jane instead of you.
I thought, I honestly thought, that's the end of my career. I ran down in the woods and beat my head on a tree until it bled. And then I thought, it's over. It's over.
But six months later, there was an ad that Channel 11 was looking for a weather girl. So I said to my boss in the promotion department, I'm going to audition for that.
And he said, if you do, don't come back here because that shows your disloyal to that station. So if you even audition, you're out of here for good.
So I was really torn because I liked my job. I had my foot in the door, but I really wanted that other job. And so later that week, we went to see Sound of Music.
And they played Climb Every Mountain. And I said, OK, that is my signal. That is my sign. I'm going to audition for that job, which I did.
And I was number 257. I was the last. Oh my gosh.
This is honestly the truth. As I was auditioning, a fly started to go across my face. It went through my mouth. I kept talking. It went around my nose. I kept talking.
And then it was then the audition was over. And they said, OK, Union hours, we're out of here. Can't do it again. We're out of here.
And so I went in my car and I cried and cried and thought twice. This has happened to me twice.
But the next morning I got a call from the station manager saying, are you the girl with a fly on your nose? And I said, yes. And he said, after 257 women, you all look alike.
But we could certainly remember you and the fly. So that started my career.
I thought you were going to tell me the fly got the job. You met some amazing people. I want to get to your relationships too.
But you met some amazing world leaders along the way here. Some of these things that I mean Dr. Martin Luther King, you were with George Bush on 9 11 here in Sarasota.
There's some powerful moments here that you sat and looked in their eyes on the day of some of these big events. I mean, you saw some things that no one on the planet saw.
What's the one that really comes up first when you think about these things?
I think Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Because I was a brand new reporter. First woman on the street as a reporter in Atlanta.
My photographer was the first black photographer on the street in Atlanta. So they put us both together.
And we were, Dr. King was leading the civil rights movement. It was just starting.
And he would be over at Pritchard's restaurant with his group every day. And if we wanted to do an interview, we just went in there and talked to him.
We just went there and stood beside him and asked questions. And then as he started to travel, I first traveled with my cameraman and I traveled too, if when he went to another city.
And then the station said, this is not right. A woman traveling with a man like this, this is not right. So you cover Mrs. King.
But Mrs. King went a lot of places that Dr. King did too. And one thing I will never forget.
We were interviewing Dr. King and my cameraman, Clarence Gordon, had been a football player.
And he said, as we were wrapping up, Dr. King, this nonviolent existence, nonviolent resistance is not going to work.
If I hit you and you don't hit me back, I'm just going to hit you again harder. And Dr. King said, sit down. Let me talk to you.
So we sat on his floor. We missed our deadline. We sat there and listened to him. Well, he talked about if you let good people see the truth, they will stand up for the truth.
They would not let Gandhi starve. I think today they might let Gandhi starve. I'm not sure I believe that. But he drew, he made me believe if you show people the truth, then the people will make the right decision.
So you got to sit with Dr. Martin Luther King. What's the energy the guy gave off? I mean, we'll never know. What kind of energy do you pick up off this guy? I mean, he's one of a kind.
You knew he was different?
How so? How so?
Yeah, because when he spoke, people listened. We went to his church every Sunday to cover his sermons. My dad was a preacher. Dr. Martin Luther King Sr. was also the one that I dealt with a lot.
And he knew my dad well. Once, as I was getting on an elevator to cover a story, Dr. King said, Missy, you go home and put on some decent clothes or I'm going to call your daddy because I had on a miniskirt.
And he said once, he said when Martin got the Nobel Peace Prize, he said he was sitting on the front row saying, keep it simple, Martin. Keep it simple.
And once I asked him, wouldn't you have rather that he just, Martin Luther King just kept talking, preaching at his own church at Ebenezer Baptist instead of doing what killed him?
And he said, no, no. That was his destiny. And we did what we had to do. But we were, the night Dr. King was killed, I was anchoring the 11 o'clock news that night, Bill Conover and I.
And the AP machines just went wild. They just went out ringing, ringing, ringing. And we went back to look what they were saying. And it said that he'd been shot.
You would never do this in news today. But we called the mayor, Ivan Allen, and told him what had happened. And he said, I'm on the way to tell Mrs. King. And we said, we'll follow you. We'll be right behind you after you go in. Then we'll come to the door.
So I knew her very well by then and went in and I kept saying, oh, he'll be okay. Somebody had tried to stab him before and he survived. But we followed them as they left the house. But that moment, I will never, never forget.
And we had just done a story a week before when he was in jail and I went over to her house and I said, what do you tell the kids when daddy's in jail? Bad guys go to jail. And she said, that's not our problem. She said, our problem is what do you tell the children in case he gets killed?
She said, we always have to think about that and realize it might happen. And not too long afterwards it did.
Wow, such a powerful experience for you, for his family. Wow.
For the nation. Things were going in a different direction. We would have had such peace as people were coming around to follow him. And we were cheated out of all of that too.
Wow. Wow. You were in Sarasota on 9-11, George Bush is here at elementary school here in Sarasota and he gets someone lean in and tell him what happened and you're sitting there. And then you walked with him after that, I guess to the airport or the jet.
To the media room. He was there to listen to the kids read and then to talk about reading and to promote reading nationally. So all the national media was there. So they were waiting in the media room.
And so we would walk from the classroom up a path to the media room. So we were in the room. We were, Anne Compton from ABC was there and me and my cameraman and the school board camera.
And we were the only ones in the room with him and he came in and they had told us put away your cell phones, put away your cell phones, which of course I did.
And Compton had a second cell phone. So he was listening to the kids read. Who was it? His assistant came in, whispered in his ear and I thought he said time to move on.
So I stood up and then Compton said, Mr. President, are we going to deal with the fact that a second plane just hit the World Trade Center? And he said, we're going to do that right now.
And he walked out of the room. He did not jump up immediately. He listened to the kid finish the sentence. There was a movie that said he had the book upside down. Absolutely not true according to our video.
He seemed calm. He seemed thoughtful. And you could tell there was like a determination, like a powerful look on his face. He got up. He walked out.
The people that were standing in that garden area had been waiting to shake his hand as they stuck their hands out. He walked straight ahead. Just look straight ahead.
I still didn't know what was happening. And he walked into the media room and people started to cheer and then they saw his face and then it just stopped.
And the national media was in. They knew what was going on by then, but we didn't. And so he stood by the television. They turned it on. And that's when he made the speech to the world.
He could do that because the national media was right there. That was one of the most powerful feelings I've ever had in my life.
I grabbed the hands of the people next to me. I have no idea who they were. I just grabbed their hands and held on. And I felt at that moment that we would do whatever we had to do to defend this country.
I felt a feeling about this country, a love for this country I had never felt before. One of the most powerful feelings I think I've ever had in my life.
After he made the speech, which was very short, he immediately left, immediately. So we were still there as the world was finding out what was going on.
And we stayed there for the rest of the day, reporting live every so often. This is what happened. You don't have to worry about the kids here.
They had the FBI checking them out. They had the Secret Service checking this place. The kids here are safe. They are being taken care of. They will be delivered home on time.
Don't feel that you have to run down here. Everything is safe. So we stayed there the whole day.
A year later, the people there, all except the President, came back for that day. And we gathered there in that room once again.
And this was the best award I ever got, but we were presented an award, ABC7, for the best coverage that day, for keeping people calm, for keeping them informed and calm, and not creating panic.
And I have never been as proud as I was that day, because we felt that what we said that day could make a difference.
Incredibly powerful. Incredibly powerful. So you've been in some really amazing situations, but then you also were married to someone who had an incredible career, and your husband was an NFL coach.
Yes, he was. When I met him, I met him on an interview. He was head coach at Georgia Tech, and I was anchoring the news in Atlanta, and I was divorced.
And I heard that Carson had gotten divorced. And so I was covering a lot of stories, but more feature type stories.
So one day they said, well, it's Friday, and it's a Jewish holiday, so our sportscaster is not here. Who's going to go out and interview Carson?
He can be really tough. And I said, I'll do it. So I interviewed him, and I took a book, and I said, I heard you're divorced.
And I read this book when I first got divorced, and it helped me so much. And I'd really like to have it back, but I think it might help you.
But I wrote my phone number in there, so when you finish, just give me a call, and I'll pick the book up. He never fell for that, never called me.
But I said to the sportscaster again, why don't you take Bud and I out for lunch? So he said, well, I'll think about it.
So later we went back and covered him again. My cameraman, Clarence Gordon and I went back and interviewed him again, and he said, why don't I take you two to dinner tonight?
So Clarence said, well, I got to pick up my kid. He's three. I got to pick up Mente, and Bud said, fine. The funny thing about that is,
20 years later, when Bud was head coach at Cleveland, the quarterbacks came in for training camp. Clarence Gordon, that little three-year-old, was one of the quarterbacks.
And I organized a cheering section, we want Clarence, we want Clarence.
Bud didn't choose Clarence because he was not the pro-quarterback type, but it just is funny how life sometimes goes in a circle.
Television and professional sports are married, aren't they? So you were married to an NFL coach, you were in television. It's all marketing, right? It's exposure.
How did you guys juggle this dual career thing during this whole time? I mean, that's a lot of hours to work on both sides.
And he understood my job and the importance of my job and was happy to coach me constantly. And I understood his.
Well, like when we got married, we got married, he was defensive coordinator for the Steelers. They had a game Thursday night, they came back to town the next morning.
This was preseason, and we were going to get married. And so we got married, they had the weekend off, we went from Pittsburgh to Miami.
We got to dinner that night, and he said, I've got to go back. I don't want to blow this whole season. I've got to go back.
So we get on the last plane out and we go back home and he goes to work the next day. I was glad because I did not want to be the one who ruined the whole season.
So I understood where his priorities were and they were mine. They were exactly mine.
It kind of takes that in a relationship. Some people say it's 50-50, but it really isn't.
No, it never was 50-50 for us, but it was for my benefit too. Although I have to say when it got down to, when he got fired from Cleveland, I prayed, God, let me die and let him keep this job because it was that important to me.
His happiness was that important to me. So I was very lucky in that way.
Sounds like a beautiful marriage, Linda. It really does. You know, you shared some things about people that helped you along the way, but sometimes it can be a little more difficult.
It can be a little more prickly than that. Did anyone ever say anything to you that you were like, really? You just said that to me?
I mean, you're in the early days of television. There weren't a lot of women on television, right?
Absolutely.
You got criticized. I heard a few things in there, but anything else that really motivated you that was said to you and maybe not a positive way?
Well, I went to a meeting once when I just started as the weather girl, and the woman in charge was in charge of the biggest modeling agency in Atlanta, and she said,
for any of you women who are doing television, don't expect to be on the air after you're 30. They will not look at a woman after she's 30 on the air.
And here I was making a speech once, and after I made the second graders, and after I made the speech, a little boy raised his hand, and he said, I love you on television.
You're my favorite person. My dad can't stand you. He said, get that ugly woman off the air. But I say, I like her, which I took as a compliment.
So yeah, there were always people that said women didn't belong in news once when I was covering politics in Atlanta. I interviewed a politician standing right outside the station, and when we finished, he said,
honey, make sure this gets on the air, and he stuck a $20 bill down my dress. The camera was still rolling, so that part did get on the air.
But there were people that, it was a help. I could go in on an interview that was very serious, and afterwards all the other photographers, all the other people would leave, and I would be packing up,
and they would say things they would have never said in front of a man, but there was just a woman over there. So I got some of my best stories that way.
That's really interesting. You used what people perceived as a disadvantage. You knew it was an advantage.
And you used it despite their knowledge of you even using those techniques and those skill sets.
Yeah, well, I was hoping they would feel that way because I got a lot of information that way.
As my wife says, play dumb, you learn more. What's something, you know, a chance you took in the career that worked out, and maybe you made a decision,
and it took a chance at something that didn't work out, but you persevered. Anything like that in your career you could think about, I took a shot and it worked, or I took a shot and it didn't work.
Well, once I married Bud in Pittsburgh, I was doing news and weather. I was reporting three days a week and doing news, doing weather on the weekends.
And they said, oh, she's married to the football coach. She should do sports. So I became the sportscaster, assistant sportscaster.
Bill Curry was the main guy, and I was on Weekend Sports, and I reported three days a week on sports. I had never been to a hockey game.
I was not interested in baseball, but I knew a lot about what was going on in football. So my husband said, I never thought a woman should do sports, and now my wife is doing it.
But he would write my copy. He would call me if I came on at five and said something, and he thought it sounded like a girl.
He would call and say, no, use these words, use these words. So he was coaching me during the whole thing, and I started teaching, watching TV sports at Allegheny Community College.
I had a whole course on that, and I could take them when the team was out of town. I could take them in the locker room. I could say, oh, you think kicking a field goes so easy?
Let's go out on the field and try it. So then when we got to Los Angeles, then I started out doing sports, but then the team, the Rams, decided that was a conflict of interest.
So I went over to doing news again, which I like better, because my husband was very critical of my sportscasting.
And now when you watch an NFL game, so many of the sideline reporters are women.
Yes. Is that funny?
Perhaps you helped cause that.
Yes, that's very fun. I see that as very funny now. Women are smart enough to understand football. Guess what? We can raise kids. We can do anything that a man can do, and we listen really good.
That's an impressive career. Today, media is so diverse with podcasts like you're on right now, or social media, and there's cameras everywhere. Millions of cameras walking around.
For somebody who wants to get into media, say it's a young professional, walks up to you, Linda. What do you say? What's similar now, and what's never changed, and what's changed dramatically for a young professional?
What would you say to them? I want to be Linda Carson.
I think television is changing so fast. I don't know how long local news will be on as it is now, but I think people will always have a tremendous desire to know what's going on in their own community.
Yeah, you can find out nationally. And we will have AI, we'll have opinion, and it'll get mixed up.
On our level, I think people will always have a—from the town crier of the old days, we're just a town crier today, there will be a place.
So I would say go to college, major in history or political science, I'm majoring in journalism. The way we tell the stories changes so fast.
If I had majored in broadcasting back in 1960, I mean, at that time they were using film. Everything was different, and so what I would have learned would not have transferred.
But knowing history and how things have worked out in the past, knowing political science and how things have worked out in the past, learning to write, you need to learn to write, you need those skills.
And it's not about the way you look. People worry so much about, oh, I tried out when I won the happiest girl in the world, one of my prizes was I would get a shot at Broadway.
I would get a part on Broadway. Gypsy was on. They were looking for somebody to walk around without any clothes on with a balloon and say, you got to have a gimmick, you got to have a gimmick.
And I said to Joyce, do you think I'm pretty enough? And she said, pretty has nothing to do with this. We can make you look pretty enough.
That has nothing to do with this. You've got to have the determination to do everything it takes to get the job or you don't belong in this.
So I think the same thing is true in journalism. Don't worry about who's the prettiest.
Worry about who knows the most, know the background. Because if you know what happened, you have a better idea of the importance of what you're covering.
Sounds like some people perceive show business as glittery, but it's show business. It's a business.
Yes. Yes. Yes. And I think our business is just telling the truth about what's going on. Going to a story, knowing what the story is and coming back and saying, this is what I saw.
This is what I saw and not here's what I think about it.
What a terrific journey, Linda. And thank you for sharing what you've learned along the way, what you've experienced.
These are powerful moments that are, they're fleeting and they're gone, but they live in you. And I appreciate you sharing that.
These are things that A-list talks is all about because we want to hear these journeys.
Thank you.
I thank you for sharing that.
Well, thank you for allowing me to share that.
And special thanks to our producer, Melissa Ratliff, who rescued us today.
Thank you, Melissa. And that's it for A-list podcast with Linda Carson. Hope you enjoyed it, everybody. We'll see you next episode.