My wife's grandfather was an innovator in the early days of TV. Before that he was band leader in the Chicago area. But when you heard "Tony" talk about it, he had some very interesting thoughts about how TV developed. One quality that Tony had was a willingness to listen. He told lots of stories about thinking about this or that idea for a program (from Dave Garraway, to Zoo Parade, to Ding Dong School) and then implementing. Driving to work he saw the Chicago Zoo and thought about how to develop a program with one of Chicago's experts on animals (Marlin Perkins). (The photo is of Studio A at NBC.)
I thought about his innovations today when I was listening to a set of presentations on how to use social networking with Associations. The technology of things like Facebook and Twitter and YouTube is evolving like TV did when Tony was developing what was later called the Chicago School of Television.
When you talked to Tony about his role in all of these innovations he was quite modest, he said he was simply there at the right time. But as you listened to him talk about his work - that quality of listening and being unafraid to fail (I am sure there were a lot of innovations that he tried which did not work). The possibilities of new technologies will only be realized with experimentation.
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