Bob Hardt, a seasoned journalist with a remarkable career spanning from local radio to national news, shares his extraordinary experiences in this engaging conversation. He recounts pivotal moments in history, including the coverage of the Kennedy assassination and the impact of the Watergate scandal, highlighting how these events shaped his professional journey. Hart's transition from the bustling streets of New York City to the serene surroundings of Palm Springs reveals a personal evolution, including his coming to terms with his identity. The discussion also touches on his unexpected heart attack during a performance, which served as a wake-up call and a reminder of the fragility of life. With a blend of nostalgia and insight, Hardt's stories offer a captivating glimpse into the world of broadcasting and the profound events that define it.

Takeaways:

• Bob Hardt shares his incredible journey from a small radio station in Michigan to becoming a prominent news anchor in New York City.
• The conversation touches on significant historical events that Bob covered firsthand, including the Kennedy assassination and the Watergate scandal.
• Bob recounts the chaotic day of September 11th, 2001, when he struggled to reach his newsroom amidst the unfolding tragedy.
• Bob discusses the challenges and changes in the broadcasting industry over his lengthy career, particularly the shift from AM to FM radio.
• The episode highlights the importance of adaptability in journalism, especially during major news events and technological advancements.
• Bob's personal journey of self-discovery, including coming to terms with his sexuality, adds a touching layer to his narrative.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• McCallum Theater
• ABC News
• WXYZ
• WKHM
• WOW
• NBC Radio
• Minnesota Public Radio
• I Heart
• Clear Channel
• Sinclair
• Tegna
• Camelot Theater

On this episode.

South Tower. And I said, Jane, I gotta go. I gotta go to work. Grabbed my go bag, not even showering, hopped in the car.

By the time I got to the George Washington Bridge to cross over into Manhattan, it was closed. Yeah. Even with NYP New York press plates and credentials and all, I could not get across.

From the coveted corner booth in a Little Bar at the center of the Coachella Valley universe. Welcome to another Big Conversation with Patrick Evans and Randy Florence, presented by the McCallum Theater.

Thank you very much, Howard. That is, of course, absolutely true. We are here at the corner booth at Little Bar in Palm Desert, California. Skip Page's little bar.

By the way, stop by a brand new menu out, try the steak sandwich. It's really delicious. Want to give a shout out out to our presenting sponsor, the McCallum Theater?

Go to mccallumtheater.org Pick your tickets because season is moments away if we're not already in it by the time this podcast drops. So you want to get those tickets to all those great shows. My name is Patrick Evans.

I'm here with Randy Florence, my co host extraordinaire, my good buddy and thespian former banker.

Wow.

What other accolades can I lay at your doorstep today?

I think that's it.

That's it.

Yeah. I'm a pretty good sidekick.

You're a very good sidekick. You're. You're Robin Level, who was the Green Lantern?

You mean Howard Stearns Robin?

No. No, you're not.

No, I'm not.

Quippers.

He is really good. She's really. No, no, no.

He's talking about Burt Ward.

No, you're Bert Ward.

I do want to say, and I know you don't like to take any of the credit for the weather because then you have to take the blame for the weather. Is every while we record this, is everybody happier than they have been in months and months and months in this valley?

I don't have to wear a disguise when I go to the grocery store.

Anymore, which is nice.

It's tremendous. We've been waiting for this for a while and it was gorgeous today.

Yes. No.

So thank you.

No, I'm actually feeling chilled. Like last night I went out for dinner and I was chilled and.

Yeah.

And my significant other looked at me.

And said, you're what?

Yeah, there's one in every crowd in John's. John's the one. Next time, get dressed for dinner. For God's sakes, put on a pair of pants. Big boy pants.

Any pants.

Any pants would do at this point.

That's so funny.

I'm really excited about today's guest. And I did not realize this, but Bob Hart had an incredible career with ABC News.

He moved out to the Valley from New York City and discovered that he just felt at home here and got involved in a lot of different interesting ways in the community. And he and I crossed paths on several occasions doing a fundraiser for Desert Performs. Bob, welcome to the program. Nice to see you.

Good to see you, Patrick. It's been a while. Nine years.

I keep up with you on social media. I've followed your travels and that sort of thing, but I didn't realize I hadn't seen you in person in nine years.

Oh, yeah, it's been a while.

Did he do something or it just worked out that way?

Well, no, no. Yes.

Just worked out the last time. And we will get into this, but the last time I saw Bob, I gave him a heart attack.

No way to go.

That was. And he held a grudge, apparently.

It's been a while since he felt comfortable coming back.

Okay, we'll see how it goes. Today I took my carvedilol and my abs.

I wear a pacemaker. I spend a lot of time around Patrick.

Okay.

I hear that that pacemaker is remotely accessible.

That scares the hell out of me. I mean, I've told you this story.

Is that an app I can download on my phone?

I went in one day and they're like adjusting it and I go, is that you? And she goes, yes.

And so now my biggest fear is that they're going to be having a Christmas party and they're all going to get hammered and they're going to go, hey, let's have some fun with Randy. And I'm flopping around on the floor in my bedroom.

See, that's why I want to download the app. Just so I can be like, I wonder what Randy's doing right now. Let me turn this down just a little bit now. That's terrible. And I would never do that.

I'm sure you wouldn't because the app's not available. You started. Did you start at wabc?

WKHM.

That's right. You were from Michigan.

I was from a little town which is home to the world's largest walled prison, State prison of Southern Michigan. Dr. Kevorkian. Spent his last years. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And now I, I started with small station there.

I worked there six, six years through last two years of high school and all four years of college.

And just about a month before I graduated Michigan State University and was all set, off to go and teach high school history, I got a call from a friend of mine I'd worked with at wkhm. He'd moved on to be news director at WXYZ in Detroit.

And he said, that's a big station.

He said, hart, I know you're going back for your masters in the fall, but I need somebody in my newsroom to cover all my shifts for 11 weeks while everybody goes on vacation. You can live with Nancy and me. We got a room in the basement. Your rent is mowing the lawn once a week.

Wow. I said, is that still available?

Yeah, right? Yeah, yeah. I said, can't beat that.

So the day after I graduated from MSU, hopped in the car, drove to Detroit, and nine weeks into my 11 week summer gig there, they said, we want you morning drive anchor, Monday through Friday, anchor editing. So I said, all right, let's. I've gone to school all my life. Let's take a, let's take a sabbatical. Go.

Let's take a year off, see how it goes out in the real world. And if I like it, fine, you know, I loved it.

I'm sure it didn't work out for you.

It did. Right, right, right.

Still trying.

Still trying.

So the first station in Jackson, I was reading that your job titles, and then I got a smile onto this because I'm sure almost everybody in radio has these. Announcer, reporter, engineer. Those are your job titles.

Announcer, reporter, engineer, floor sweeper, wire machine, ribbon chain.

So by the time you left there, did you kind of know which one you, you liked best? You knew you wanted to be on air?

I loved it all, really. And I was a history buff. I was history major, history and social sciences. So news and reporting on current events was a natural fit for that.

And I'd done, you know, covered city council meetings and things at the little station. So yeah, it was a natural move for me into news full time. So that started, what, five years at wxyz. That was an education in itself.

I mean, I learned the basics of broadcasting at the little station.

But coming to Detroit at that time, the fifth largest market, you know, and working with people who'd, you know, really been at the high rungs of the profession in Detroit, it was an education and a half.

What year were what Years were you there?

63 was a big year.

Oh God. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was a big year. I started there in June and I'd gone full time in September. And then November 22nd hit. Yeah.

And I had just gotten off. It was like 1:00 in the afternoon. I'm standing in the newsroom with my boss, Ed Hardy, and it says, hart, get your ass.

Get your ass home for the weekend. When the wire machines went bonkers. Multiple bells. Kennedy shot in Dallas. Well, that ended the weekend and the rest was history.

And it was, it was an incredible weekend. I was on Sunday, as a matter of fact. We all pulled extended shifts. So I was the news guy on Sunday morning until probably 6 in the afternoon.

And I come back about 45 minutes later and my engineer's going bonkers. Bob, Bob, bop bop. Oswald's been shot. So while I was having my grilled cheese, Lee Harvey Oswald was done in by Jack Ruby. Wow.

Good gracious.

Of course, thank God we were in the network. The network had it covered. So, you know, it wasn't on me.

But we talk now about the 24 hour news cycle. What was it like that weekend? I mean, did you have enough information to be able to.

Yeah, thank God. As I say, we were an ABC affiliate and owned ABC station. So the network was providing us with copious amounts of information.

And, and was it all correct? Pretty much, yeah. What we were doing locally at WXYZ is covering the local angles.

Were you trying to insinuate that it was fake news, Randy? Is that what you're saying?

No, but early on and stuff like that, interesting information comes out. We see that every day.

Okay, you're one of those. All right, that's good to know. All right.

But yeah, yeah, we were, we were all into it. And so it was, it was a great, great to run at xyz.

And the day I walked in, I'm suddenly walking, working with a couple of engineers who did the Lone Ranger now and a couple of producers who were producers of directors on Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. All these shows I'd listened to on the radio growing up as a kid and. Oh my God.

So now I'm starting hearing the back stories, you know, all the things you didn't know when you listened to the radio program that were going on in the studio.

How cool. So talk about that a little bit. You moved into radio during high school. How did that happen?

What interested you and did you know right away, this is what I want to do?

I was always fascinated by radio. I remember as a little kid, Saturday afternoon, my mom would let me go to the movies downtown, the Capitol Theater or whatever.

Well, the Capitol Theater is right next to the Gilbert Candy Store. And one of our local stars, his name was Jack Underwood, he later went on to WOW in Fort Wayne, 50 kilowatt station, covering the.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And a big star there. Anyway, Jack was the afternoon disc jockey at wibm, a little station in my hometown.

And he did his afternoon shows on Saturday from the window of the Gilbert Candy Store.

And I get out of the movie, waiting for my mom to pick me up or something, and I walk next door and I just stand there like, you know, with my, my eyes and within stars and watch him. And one day, to my amazement, he turns around, grabs his big RCA 44 DX BX mic, you know, one of the big ones, big heavy thing.

He turns around and bends over to me and says, hi, who are you? What do you want to do? That was my first time on the radio, you know, and if so, I was, I was always mesmerized.

Was that a cool experience for you?

Cool experience, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So. So that the radio book had bitten me from an early age.

You know, somebody coming on their way down would work at a little station before they disappeared other people on their way up, you know. And I said, I don't like this, I don't like this. I want some. I want a profession that's going to be stable.

I, you know, and that's why I said, okay, I love radio and maybe I can do it on my side, but I think I want to be.

A school teacher, which is far more. And you're right, I mean, radio is far less stable today than it was then.

Oh my God.

Yeah, but by a map.

So that's how the bug got bit to me. But when I got to Detroit and started doing this full time and news full time, that was it. There was no turning back.

So you were. And that was an o. An owned and operated station by abc.

So the network actually owns and operates certain large stations like in television, all of the, you know, the. All Los Angeles stations. It's NBC. If you go to work for that station, you're actually working for the network itself.

Got it Right. So I was in effect work a stringer for the ABC network in New York, working at W, X, Y, Z. And in those days, I'm sure you remember this, Patrick.

The FCC had limits on the number of radio or TV station she could own. 7, 7am, 7, FM, 7 TVs. Not like our I Heart bless with what, a thousand or more radio stations? They don't give a damn about Sinclair. Sinclair, yeah.

Tegna, Clear Channel, which is no more.

They're gone.

The TV side of Clear Channel is gone.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, Clear Channel morphed into I Heart.

Oh, yeah.

It was Lowry Mays and. And WI and all that. Those folks in. San.

Well, now that they're iheart, they sound like a friendlier.

I like. I like what Bob said. I heartless, you know. Side note about Clear Channel. When the TV part of.

Of Clear Channel went away, the gentleman who was running it at the time, his parents lived in Palm Springs and he moved to Palm Springs and he was the general manager at the CBS affiliate where I worked. Don Perry, he was the last of the big television presidents at Clear Channel tv and he oversaw the dismantling of their TV stations.

And their corporate news director was a guy named Steve Minium. And he became the news director at our CBS affiliates.

Wow.

Yeah.

Six degrees of separation.

Yeah, more like one and a half. They were right there.

It's like the Kevin Bacon game right now.

So how did you transition out of Detroit to New York? Was that the. I mean, you were already working for the network?

Yeah, I was getting. Well, I am one of my co anchors at xyz, Mike Moss, who went on to work for NBC Radio and then Minnesota Public Radio.

Years later, we were both getting a little bit frustrated with this station. It was. It was. It was having a hard time in the ratings and the morale was in the basement. And we said, okay, both.

Both of us have been here four or five years now. Why don't we look for bigger and better things? So we started applying. I know both Mike and I applied. In fact, we did a. This is funny.

We did a joint application. Mike Moss and Bob Hart, news anchors, xyz, ABC in Detroit.

And we sent this package off to a blind box Ad in Broadcasting Magazine, which said, network radio news operation needs good reporter anchors who know how to use tape and know how to write. You know, and the whole thing. So off it goes to blind box. 2 bright tail, bright eyed, bushy tail.

Guys from Detroit looking to improve their lot in life. And we didn't hear anything back. And about a week and a half later, my boss there, Ed Hardy, called us both into his office.

He said, hey, guys, no problem. But I just want you to know that Blind Box, you answer. You answered in Broadcasting Magazine.

That was Tom O'Brien, the VP GM of ABC Radio News in New York. Wow. Yeah. For whom we worked as stringers.

That's right.

So why wouldn't Tom hire us? Well, Tom had this thing about not robbing.

He wouldn't poach talent from his own station.

Right. So he would. He would tell people like us, go work for somebody else for six months and I'll hire you. So anyway, it was.

Was it a problem at all that you were out looking for another job?

No, no, no. Ed was fully aware of that. And by the time I eventually got my offer to move to New York, Ed had already moved on to New York.

And it was he who called me and said, hart, I wanted want you in New York. So. Okay, you know, which is why you don't burn bridges. In our business, you don't burn bridges. WABC had made a decision, with Ed in command.

To move from the old style of doing things in New York. And in New York, it was very heavily unionized market, of course, unionized operation. There were engineers unions. There were writers unions.

There was the on, after the on the air unit. And the twain or whatever would never meet.

So anyway, the decision had made to go over to having anchors on the air who actually wrote their own copy and were news people, not staff announcers. The old way was the writers would write a newscast. They would hand it to a staff announcer who came out in, you know, five minutes earlier.

After doing my local soap opera of the day, announcing, right? Pick up the script, go in the studio, sit down, read it. Most of them were damn good.

Some were awfully bad and fumbled names and pronunciations and the whole thing. And so the concept. The Writers Guild agreed to let anchors write. We were designated. I hate this term. Reader writers. Okay? So I was the first reader.

I was the first.

How do you spell that?

I was first reader writer hired at wabc, which means I could write every bit of copy I wanted. Nobody else could read it. I could not write for anybody else, only for Myself and read for myself. So that. That was it.

That was a big sea change in all of broadcasting when the staff announcers went. Went by the wayside and used to be in local TV news. Case you had staff announcers who would, you know, anchor the news. They would.

They would do the weather, you know, buy a gas pump. Who was your sponsor that day? They do the commercials. They do it all. Yeah, no, there was, there was. And, you know, then they moved toward.

And it was the right move, moving toward journalism and having journalists write their own copy.

Exactly. And some of the staff announcers were so good and so versatile that they were actually hired as reader writers for the network. Don Gardner at the.

At the radio network. You guys probably don't remember that name, but he was the guy who delivered the President Kennedy is dead to the ABC radio network.

Don was one of my heroes. And others who worked both locally occasionally, but mainly for the network as correspondence anchor, wrote their own copy. But.

So that was a sea change. And that's what took me to New York.

And about three months after that, Ed came to me and said, okay, Hart, you're doing afternoon drive and the big 6:00. I need an anchor for the morning, a reader writer anchor for the morning. And I said, look to look back in Detroit. I know a guy at WKNR who is the.

That was the radio station that cleaned our clock and the ratings. They said, Jack Mars. Great. I know him casually. We've worked on the street side by side. And a month later, Jack was in New York.

Two old Detroit guys anchoring the Monday through Friday newscast.

And did he know why he got the call?

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So. So that was it. And there I was in New York and I loved it. And I was there for. At the local station, as we called it, for.

So Detroit's a big town, but it's not New York.

It's not New York. It's different. It was a great, great place to work. We had some amazing talent in Detroit, really did. And some of that talent moved on to the network.

So I go to New York and who am I working with? Staff lounge as we still used. They had a union contract with. After that said only staff announcers could say for the legal id WABC New York.

So they would come in and they'd go into the announce booth, my news booth, and they'd sit there distracted with points with WABC New York. Well, you know, you know, that sort of thing.

It's a living.

So who am I working with? Fred Foy, narrator of the Lone Ranger. Right. Oh, God. One of my childhood idols. Yes. And others. Mike Wallace of CBS News came from Detroit.

Hugh Downs came from Detroit, a number of others. So yeah, Detroit was a feeder market for talent for New York.

Now you did. So you were at WABC local. Local for 11 years.

Yeah, I work Monday through Friday at till like 7 o'clock at night at local. Hop in a cab, go 10 blocks uptown to the network and do an evening show on the network.

Or I'd work Monday through Friday for wabc and on Saturdays I'd do a full shift on the network, you know. Oh my gosh. Six newscast with Sunday off. Why did I do it? Because I loved it and I knew the network was the place I wanted to be eventually now.

So I got the foot in the door with Tom O'Brien, the guy who'd gotten the blind box ad application from so many years earlier. And yeah, talk a little bit.

Tell me a little bit about the experience you had. You came from the small town and Detroit was a pretty big city, but then New York is on a whole different level.

Oh, it's a whole different level.

What was the culture change for you like when you moved to New York and got settled into the big city?

It was amazing. I will never forget the first time I went into New York.

I had to do a pro forma audition for Rick Sklar, the programming genius who made WABC such a top 40 powerhouse. And I fly to Newark Airport. This is in the fall of 67. And I'm in a cab driving into New York.

We're just about to hit the Lincoln Tunnel to go in and the cabbie has WABC on. And Ron Lundy is on one of the. The midday disc jockey and he's doing his good morning love, wabc, the greatest city in the world.

He did that in what was the movie with Dustin Hoffman and John Voight. Oh, Midnight Cowboys. He did the same thing in that movie. You know, John Voight is riding into town and listening on his Transister.

That was Ron Lundy doing that. Wow. And I'm hearing those. I'm going, holy crap, here I am. Yeah, New York was wonderful. I ate it up.

I lived for two and a half, your first two and a half years there. One block from ABC, I got into apartment on 7th and 53rd. It was only one block to the ABC building where our studios were. And I loved it.

I just immersed myself. I sold my car, left it in Michigan, and just immersed myself in living in New York City.

If I wanted to go someplace, I walked or I took the subway or a cab, you know, if I needed to get away or I rent a car on the weekend. And, you know, that's.

And you were there through the mid-70s?

I was there through the mid-70s, yeah. Yeah.

And that. It was starting to change. In the 70s.

It was starting to change. The city was changing. The business was starting to change. As far as the business was, WABC had phenomenal numbers. This is an AM radio station. Right.

This was the start of the disco, right, sure. So it was Disco 92. WKTU, their first book, wiped us out. Not totally, but they're on top by several points. And that was. We could see it.

That was the beginning of the end of AM radio dominance in music radio format.

Right.

Which continues to this day.

Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. AM has a much smaller footprint, smaller signal.

Well, some. WAVC that. My God.

No, that's true.

We covered 40 states and eastern Canada.

Yeah. When the sun went down, you could get it everywhere.

That's right.

I grew up listening to it.

It was a Sirius satellite.

Yeah, yeah. Right.

But didn't they have power restrictions during the day? Didn't they have to. Did you guys have to cut back?

Not A Class A 50 kilowatt clear channel station. No, no, not at all. No. So. But the industry was beginning to change at that point.

And New York City in the late 70s was having its own stroke struggles as a town.

It was a tough town.

It was a tough town. Crime was up, and it was not a. John Lindsay, who's mayor, while I went there, called it Fun City. It was anything but fun. By. Yeah.

I don't think that's what Ford said.

Oh, the Daily News headline.

Yes.

For the city. Drop Dead.

Drop dead.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, God. Oh, boy.

So then you transitioned from WABC, right, to the network.

Yeah, yeah.

Doing what?

I'VE been doing for the past 10 years freelancing there, only full time.

And you stayed with the network until you retired and came out here?

I. Sure.

And that Was what year?

2000?

Now you mentioned obviously when you went to work in Detroit and the Kennedy assassination. But talk about the historical events that you covered.

Yeah, because we always like to say, you know, journalism is the, is the first draft of history, but look at the number of incredible events that you cover firsthand.

Right, right, right.

I like to say my career was book bookended by the Kennedy assassination on one end and the Iraq war on the other, because that's basically what it was and everything in between.

You know, the gas shortage.

Yeah, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that, that impacted me because by the time we hit the first Arab oil embargo in 74, I was four years living in New Jersey. I bought a house in New Jersey. Yeah. Single, single guy buys house in a suburban Italian, mainly Italian neighborhood.

I like it already. This sounds great.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My neighbors. What's, what's a single guy buying in buying a house? I had great neighbors. But yeah, that, that impacted me because I commuted by car.

You were driving back into the network.

Right, right, right, right. I think the, probably the, the worst day I ever had in my life.

And probably the thing that prompted me to finally consider retiring was I was sitting at my breakfast table that morning. It was about quarter to nine or some, something like that, as I having my morning coffee and listening to all news wins.

And all of a sudden the bulletin comes on about a plane hitting the World Trade Center. Said, what, what, what? I said, okay, well, quarter nine, traffic helicopters are still up. Right. They're going to get pictures of this.

So I go down basement, turn on the tv, and here's the north tower smoldering, you know. And I picked up the phone and called my then by that time ex wife Jane. She was a, an editor at CBS Radio. We had a media marriage.

That was another big thing in my life. But Janie and I were married 16 years and decided after that, okay, let's go our separate ways. She was in Connecticut by that time.

So I called her up. Jane, have you. Are you watching? No. No. Turn on your set.

We're standing there sitting there talking to each other on the phone about this and what it could mean, what it. And South Tower gets hit. And I said, jane, I gotta go. I gotta go to work. Grabbed my gold bag, not even showering, hopped in the car.

By the time I got to the George Washington Bridge to cross over into Manhattan, it was closed. Yeah. Even with NYP New York press plates and credentials and all, I could not get across.

So I turned around, up the Palisades Parkway on the Jersey side of the Hudson river, across the Tappan Zee Bridge into Westchester County.

Oh, my God.

Down to the Bronx city line. The city line at the Bronx. Could not get across there. The cops had all blocked off.

One of my colleagues got through by sneaking around with his bicycle and riding his bicycle all the way down to our studios in London. So I called the officer, said, guys, I'm blocked. I said, go home, Sit tight, keep abreast of the story and get in as soon as you can.

Well, it was 1:00 the following afternoon before I could finally get it, before they opened the bridge and I could get across and get in. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, our daughter Callie was beginning her freshman year at nyu.

Oh, my goodness.

Just a few blocks north of the Trade center or South Trade Center. And we couldn't get through to her because all the phones were out down there. She just started down there.

She was in a dorm, and we didn't know what the hell was happening. And it was many, many hours before she was finally able to get a call out to us and say, mom, dad, I'm okay.

They're keeping us in the dorm with all the windows shut and what have you. We're fine.

Don't worry.

But was. That was a bad day for me. A, number one, what had happened? B number two, what the hell's going on with my daughter? Oh, yeah. And we covered the story.

I finally got in, worked hours and hours and hours, and I said, you know, I have spent at this point close to 40 years covering the worst of human nature and the worst of Mother nature with the idea that you have to let it roll off your back or it'll get to you. This one I couldn't let off my roll off my back. It got to me.

You knew?

Yeah. One of our. One of our transmitter engineers at Channel seven went down with the north tower and it was just awful.

So I said, okay, you know, I think I've. I've gotten my fill. Still love this business. Love what I've done. I've had a good run. When I hit 62:0, we'll hang it up. So I did for you.

That's a. It's a damn fine run, as a matter of fact.

It really is.

I told my daughter, don't ever expect to stay with one employer for more than 40 years. It just doesn't happen anymore.

Or even one career anymore.

Well, yeah, I mean, there's no such thing as employees. Employer poly. From the employer to the employee and vice versa. It just doesn't happen.

No, it's. It's such a different world.

So you also got to cover some really cool stuff. I mean, there. There were things that were happening in the 60s and 70s. We put a man on the moon.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, supposedly. Did you put air quotes around that? We put a man on the moon.

Okay. Do you want to get Mr. Trump on the phone about that? I'd like to hear his think about that.

I don't think we have to. I think he's next door. So that had to be. I mean, that was a different type of thing.

You know, you were actually able to give people some really good news about something. And compared to what the 60s had been with the Kennedys and Martin Luther King.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was. Well, I told you sorry about Jack Kennedy. When Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, I was on active duty with the army in the Canal Zone, Panama.

I was in the Army Reserve and my unit had gone on its summer camp. Two week summer camp duty. We were in a FARTS Armed Forces Radio Television service. A FARTS Military radio, if you will.

It's a great acronym. A farts.

A farts. Yes, yes.

We should change the name of the podcast.

Hey, that's an idea.

Commanding respect across the globe. We are A farts.

A farts. So we were. We were an A FARTS reserve unit. Meaning if some.

Something hit the fan in some part of the world and they had to take existing, full regular army or military A fart units to go to bat. We in the reserves who come in and fill what they had been, you know, so.

So every year we went to summer camps at a farce facilities around the world. And I was in Panama doing news on the Southern Command Network. Right. Radio and television. It was funny. It's the only time I've done television.

Really? Yeah. I. People used to ask me, why does she do television?

I said, I don't have the looks for television and I don't like as a reporter being encumbered by all the crap you have to deal with in the field. In New York, it's not as bad out here, especially now one man cruise.

But in New York, you've got a reporter, you got a cameraman, you got a sound man, you got a lighting technician, all in separate unions, all wondering when they can get their lunch break. Well, you're trying to dig into us.

And often a producer tied. Tied to you as well.

Right, and a producer tied as well.

It's just too encompassed me for, for me, it was much easier with my little Sony cassette recorder and a microphone and clips that I could clip onto a tow in a, in a telephone booth and feed audio back to, back to the headquarters to go out and cover a story. I could do two or three stories in the time it would take one rep. Reporters to do one television.

Absolutely.

So in addition, in addition to feeling I never had the looks for television, I didn't want the. Didn't. Didn't really like it that much. So, so anyway, so I'm down in, in the Canal Zero, right. And sleeping. It's like 4:00 in the morning.

One of my fellow soldiers comes in. Bob, wake up, get down to the station. Bobby Kennedy's been shocked.

Wow.

So down we go. We anchored all day on the radio and then we did the television news that night. And I said I should be home. I should be.

Now, from a military standpoint, I know you had to kick into action for the news, but from a military standpoint, did anything take place? Because Bobby, I mean Bobby.

Not that I know a PFC like I was at that point.

So there wasn't anybody thinking it was a big conspiracy at that point?

Well, maybe to themselves they were right. But no, no, there was, there was no scuttlebutt around the office or in the barracks or anything like that. So. No.

But that's where I was for the Bobby Kennedy thing. Of course, I was home for the Martin Luther King assassination. And that was a.

Ken, I, I think I told you the worst day of my career covering news was 9 11. Yeah. The scariest was the night Martin Luther King was shot.

I was on duty when that happened and my boss hacked me and another reporter in the WABC mobile unit. This big frigging Pontiac station wagon with our call letters emblazoned.

You weren't hiding.

Go up to Harlem. Get man on the street. Oh, yeah. Okay. That was scary.

There weren't very many happy people in Harlem that day.

Very many happy people. No, no, no, and I made the mistake, and this is on me, of we asking a question I shouldn't. How do you feel? No, no, no.

I learned not to ask that question ever again.

Yeah.

But I got a couple of people saying, what? It's just horrible and somebody's got to pay for this. And we got it. We got. We got to go to action and really, you know, kind of militant stuff.

I got back and I put a couple of little clips in a piece that went on the air. Next day Variety comes out, Harlem vox pop off on WABC fans unrest. So, you know, that was my call. I shouldn't put them on the air.

Do you really feel like that? You feel like you shouldn't have done that?

I should have been a little more cautious about what I put on.

Just the sound bites themselves.

Yeah, just a couple of sound bites. That's all it was. But, but.

And did that change the way you did things in the future?

Yeah, yeah, it changed the way to a degree which I. The way in which I ask questions. Right. And I remember during the riots.

Oh my God, during the riot, the race riots we had in 67, I was still in Detroit, but I remember there was a story about one of the veteran New York City reporters and pictures of him in Newark in the streets of riot thorn Newark, sticking a microphone in some bloody victim on the streets. How do you feel? No, no, no, I don't know. No, no.

So were you there during the big blackout?

We live and we learned. Yeah, I was not during the big block out of 65.

Okay.

I remember listening to that on the radio as I drove back from Michigan. I was doing graduate work at MSU at that time and I was driving, had a seminar up there and I was driving back and listening to all that stuff.

The other blackout I slept through, well.

Of course, because the alarm didn't go.

Off, there's no light, there's nothing to get you up. I lived in New Jersey, right. We didn't lose power at all. And I had gotten home that night probably 7:30, 8:00, and I'd been working all day.

I'd gone in early that morning to tape a weekend show in advance. I was dead. And I just took a stiff drink and went to bed and went out.

Next thing I know, I wake up in the morning and turn on the radio and, uh, oh, and I said to my boss, you know, I went to work. Why didn't you call me, my God. He said, well, you'd worked all day, you know, and we've got it covered. You're here now. So.

All right. Before we continue, we have to take a quick break, and we want to acknowledge our presenting sponsor, the MacCallum Theater.

So a quick word from our good friends at the McCallum Theater.

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And we are back with Bob Hardt talking about his career in broadcasting and news from a small little radio station all the way to the networks and covering incredible world events. But let's talk about what you did after you hung up the headset and the microphone and moved.

What, first of all, made you pick Palm Springs, California. You were, you know, living in the Big Apple. You could have gone pretty much anywhere you wanted to go to retire.

Old friend of mine, Jim Hampton, we were roommates in Detroit. He was the overnight disc jockey on xyz. I was the morning news anchor.

So he'd be getting off, going home, going to bed and sleeping all day while I was working. And he'd be working all night when I'd be home sleeping. So, you know, opposite ends of the clock worked beautifully.

Jim had moved out to Chicago initially and then to Los Angeles and was producing syndicated radio programming in Los Angeles for a number of years. And he called, and I hadn't seen him in a while. And he called me up one day and said, hey, Pop, guess what I just did? What?

He said, I just bought a house in Palm Springs. Oh, okay, big deal. He said, no, no, no. I want you to. Want you to come out and see it. It's a beautiful home in the old Las Palmas section.

And it was in state sale. I got it for a bargain price. I'm going to dump a pile of money into it to fix it up.

And had you been here before?

No. Okay. No. And he said, come out and visit.

So that September, I think this was 94, 95, I came out and spent a few days out here and fell in love with the place. And some of our other friends from Los Angeles came and you know, spent time with us and hung out and partied and what have you. And so I.

At that point, I made it an annual right to come out to Palm Springs every year. Usually it was around Easter weekend or white party weekend or something like that, and spent a few days.

But I always gave myself an extra day on my own before I flew back home to further explore the area. The more I did, the more I fell in love with it and said, finally, you know, okay, I think this is the place I want to be.

I don't want a place where it's cold and snowy. That rules out Michigan. That rules out New Jersey. That rules out New York. I don't like Florida. Florida, as they call it. No. No way. I'll.

I'll take the earthquake risk over the certainty of the hurricanes.

Hurricanes. And the mosquitoes and.

And the mosquitoes. Yeah. So that was. That was my decision. And a year before I retired, I hooked up with Todd Wise, a realtor out here, and started looking for places.

And that's how I came to be here. And as I said to you, Patrick, earlier, no regrets.

I absolutely love it out here, you know, and it gave me a chance to explore a whole nother side of my life. I'd been married for 16 years.

Yeah.

Had a kid, the whole thing. And after Janie and I separated, I was slowly coming to the realization that, hey, I'm gay. Okay. So Palm Springs, from that point of view, was an.

Again, a natural place for me.

And was that a thought that was in your head prior to coming here?

No. No, no.

Really?

No, no, no, no. Because I. I really didn't come to terms with this since I was pushing 50 and he hadn't met Terry Ray. Wow.

So I've heard of Terry Ray.

Almost no influence from. Zero influence from Terry Ray. Unlike you, Randy. That's.

Yeah, it was kind of. It was the. The late 90s. My. My daughter, C. Had just begun high school, and she was living with Jane, five minutes away.

And I got home one day, and her counselor called me from school. Mr. Hart, you know, your daughter is. Is having a little time getting adjusted. Could I sit down and talk with you? Yeah, sure.

So I went over the next day and sat down with the counselor. I said, what seems to be the. The issue? She said, well, your daughter can't really focus on her studies here because she's worried about you, so.

She's worried about me? Yeah. Yeah. She. She thinks you're gay. She thinks you have AIDS and that you're sick. And I said, yes, no, no.

And at that point I came to the realization I had to tell her. I had to tell my ex, Janie about it as well. So Callie came home from school that day and we sat down. I said, what made you. What made you think?

He said, well, we had a house down on the Jersey Shore at that time, too. He said, well, you're always talking about your friend Ed down on the Jersey Shore, hanging out with him. I said, yeah, we hang out, but that's.

That's the extent of it. We're not involved or anything. And I said, yeah, I have come to the realization I am gay. Is that a problem for you? No, no.

I'm just worried about you being sick. I said, I don't have hiv. I don't intend to get it. The whole thing. Well, okay. On she goes.

Once. She wasn't worried anymore.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And my ex, Janie was totally accepting about it. She said, I didn't know, but I'm glad you found yourself.

And were you accepting of it?

Yeah, yeah. Finally. Finally I realized that I guess I'd been living in that place in Egypt. Denial.

But there was nothing with Ed down at the shore.

No, no.

I want to clarify.

Still early.

So this is a very off tangent question, but it is tangential. Where the shore? Because I used to vacation the Jersey Shore all the time.

Little town called Ocean Grove.

Okay.

Right south of Asbury, the next town from Asbury Park. It's an old Methodist Camp meeting community about a mile square. The Methodist Camp Meeting association owns all the land under the houses.

You lease your house on a 99 year, perpetually renewable lease. You pay the taxes and you pay $50 a year to the Camp Meeting association for a lease.

But it was a home, a location which had attracted a lot of elderly people as well as a lot of young people because the housing was affordable. It was known as Ocean Grove, home of the newlywed and the nearly dead. All right.

That's not a big billboard.

I feel like you did commercials for them.

But we loved it. We loved it. We had the house down there for most of the 90s and two blocks.

From the ocean because we went to Seaside Heights.

Okay.

Yeah, all the time. And occasionally Wildwood. And when we were feeling very upscale all the way down at the tip there.

I can't think of the name of the town all of a sudden.

Tip where? Point Pleasant. No, not Point Pleasant. Way down.

Yeah.

Cape May. Cape May, yes.

Beautiful little town.

Beautiful.

Full of Victorian homes. It's really a remarkable place. So anyway. Well, that's the story of Eds. There's no story to Ed, so that's.

We can move on.

That's it. Well, we are going to move on just for a moment. It's time for the Big Conversations Little Bar Rapid Round.

We ask our guests five key questions and we want them to answer all of them in under two minutes. The Rapid Round is presented by Vitara Wellness, just a stone's throw from a Little Bar at 7 4, 345 Highway 111 in Palm Desert.

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Well, are you ready for the Rapid Round?

Let's go.

All right. Dogs or cats?

Dogs.

Thank you. You know, everybody said dog, so we've been able to continue to the second question.

Well, one day we're gonna have a whole podcast about your hatred of cats, but that's not for today.

I love cats, but my heart was 100 by a beautiful Doberman pinscher years ago.

So I don't hate cats. I just think they should be used as oven mitts.

Jesus, they're eating the cats.

If you could only.

They're eating.

Oh, well, you can.

Have you been to Springfield, Ohio recently? Maybe Springfield, Ohio, where they're eating the cats? I mean, maybe that is you.

No, I don't eat them. I just want them dead. All right, you can only own one book. What is it?

One book. Oh, that's gonna take me a bit. The Power Broker by Robert Carroll. The story of the. I think it's a fantastic piece of investigative journalism.

The story of Robert Moses, the man who made the parks and the parkways and ruined neighborhoods in New York City in the process of doing it. It was one of his earliest works before he started the multi volume series on Lyndon Johnson. But it's called the Power Broker. Fantastic read.

You have to check that out. How about movies? One movie you could watch for the rest of your life.

One movie. I'm trying to think of the name of it. That's awful. When you get to my age. Oh, no, no, no, no. There are two. And the one I can't think of.

I can't think of the. The other one I can think of is called Inherit the Wind. Spencer Tracy and the Takeoff on Monkey.

Yeah, that was an important movie when it came out.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You can interview one fictional character.

One fictional character. Good question. Vamp it, will you? I'm not really sure fictional.

How about historical? One historical person you'd like to interview?

One historical person I'd like to interview again. I'm gonna flake out on you.

Don't worry about it.

No, no, no.

I'll get rid of those for the next time we have a news person.

On.

One place you take new people here in the Valley to when they come into town. What's one place you want to make sure they see?

Usually depends on the person. But the places are Top of the tram, the living desert. Right. We'll take them up to Idlewild every now and then just to. For a little.

A little kickback and 30 degrees cooler. And 30 degrees cooler. Yeah. I've kind of fallen for the Aquasure arena.

Yeah.

With some of the stuff they have going on out there.

What's the last thing you saw there?

A hockey match with the Firebirds.

That's a pretty cool thing, isn't it?

It's a pretty cool thing.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You came out to the Valley and you got involved. Involved. And, And I'm circling back. We met when you were doing some work with Desert Performs.

And it was an incredible thing that they gotten a gentleman by the name of Greg Oppenheimer, who was the son of Jess Oppenheimer who produced I Love Lucy and.

Really?

Yes.

Yeah. Well, you didn't know that. No. Yeah.

And.

And he's one neat guy, Greg.

Yeah, Greg's terrific. And he keeps his father's legacy alive. There's a great book called Love, Luck and Lucy that Jess Oppenheimer wrote. But we were doing this from.

And he wrote old style radio shows and you were a natural to be the announcer. And so you work with some really incredible talent like Gavin McLeod and Joyce Bullifont and all these really cool folks.

Gavin and Joyce. Yeah, it was. It was Phil Proctor, who's a. An actor out of Los Angeles, does amazing things.

I don't know if the event that you were on had this or not, but Phil and one of his partners did a fantastic reprise of Abbott and Costello. Who's on first? Oh, my gosh. Great. Peter Marshall.

Yes, Peter was.

I think the last one we did, I think, was with Peter. Had that. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Great, great people all. And I'm so sorry. We did five of those recreations. I'm so sorry they came to an end.

But it was a herculean job to put that together.

To recruit the talent from Hollywood, from Los Angeles to come in, to get the theater set up, to book the sponsors, yada, yada, yada, yada, and Michael Shaw and Clark, his partner, put that all together. How they did it, I don't know, but I can see why after five, they'd be totally exhausted.

Yeah, it was.

I wish we could do it again.

I think of all the ones we did, my favorite was probably the last one where we did a recreation of the low of an episode to the Lone Ranger radio show. And of course, I was the announcer for that and got to do the. The Fred Foy narration, you know. Wow. Oh, God. And that was fun.

That was fun. During one of those shows, you actually suffered a heart attack.

Oh, yeah.

And. And were carted out in the middle of the performance. I think you had introduced me and.

I had just introduced you. You. You were about a third of the way into the entire performance.

Is that the first time that's happened to you where somebody introduced you and then passed out?

No, it happens a lot. And I looked over because I could see Bob and I get to, you know, he was sweating. He looked very pale. And I thought, bob doesn't look great.

But Bob didn't feel great either. Thank God the backstage manager picked up on that right away. And there was something I didn't know.

That's where we were doing. So, I mean, they got me and I with a heart attack. I had to walk up those long back stairs all the way to the park. They got me up there. Wham.

EMTs were there, slapped an EKG on, pumped me full of baby aspirin, and said, a little unusual. We're going to take you over to the hospital. So within 20 minutes, as I told you earlier, I was in the cath lab, cardiac cath lab, and a.

An amazing doctor called by the name of Robert Bernstein came In and said, what the hell? Costly. Said cholesterol.

It wasn't Patrick Evans.

No, no.

My name didn't come up.

No, no. Bad, bad old Mr. Cholesterol.

Well.

And he saved my life that night. But.

And how are you now?

I'm fine. Nine years out. Yeah, yeah, great. In fact, my. My other cardiologist all died two months ago of a heart attacks. I outlived him. There's. There's one.

I don't mean to laugh, but that's not doctor.

Not Dr. Bernstein. He's fine. But I had a friend who was cardiologist in Whittier who was keeping an eye on me too.

And I saw I was his last patient he ever saw. He went home and died that night.

Wow. He was not taking his own advice.

Right, right, right. But that whole episode proved the old show business Maxim. The show must go on.

And Michael Shaw sitting in the audience watching, they got to him and said, michael, get backstage. Bob had a heart attack. You gotta pick up his script. Michael came on and finished the show.

That's right.

The show must go on. And it did. Wow.

And you were able to return for the rest of that series. But that was when I first got to know you in person. And it's just been an absolute delight to have you on this podcast.

Your stories are incredible and amazing.

Thank you. It's been a hoot I didn't even know about. I knew John was doing something in the way of pocket. I knew nothing about it. Now I do, so.

And the pipes haven't lost a.

No, I was thinking the same thing.

They. They don't last as long as they used to.

They still sound pretty. Pretty damn good.

Thank you.

Thank you. If you've ever wanted to co host a podcast, let me know. We can talk. Oh, sorry, Randy, you're still here.

Come see how you look in this chair. Oh, God, my heart.

Come on.

Evans does it again.

Oh.

That wraps up this edition of Big Conversations. Little Bar. Bob Hardt, our guest. Thank you so much, sir. Thank you. Appreciate it. Randy, Florence, my co host. Great job, buddy. Great research.

Again, you are not just the co host, but you are the research department for Big Conversations, Little Bar and our producer, John McMullen. Thank you, sir.

A big shout out to Skip Page and the entire team at Little Bar for taking good care of us and our presenting sponsor, the McCallum Theater. We'll see you next time. Please subscribe.

Thanks for joining us on this episode of Big Conversations. Little Bar, recorded on location at Skip Page's Little Bar in Palm Desert.

California, the center of the Coachella Valley Universe, and presented by the McCallum Theater online at mccallumtheater. This program is a production of the Mutual Broadcasting System.

All episodes are available from bigconversationslittlebar.com and most major podcast portals, including Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and Spotify.