"We Have to Figure a Way to Get You on Television"

David Robichaud, '83, is a reporter in the nation's sixth-largest television market . . . the path he took to get there "is not the usual one," he says.

by David Wilson, '71

"The hardest part about this job is the fact that you have such a small amount of time — perhaps a minute and thirty seconds — to tell what is sometimes a very complicated story," says David Robichaud, '83, a reporter at WBZ-TV in Boston. "Which pictures, which facts, which words will convey what people need to know in order to make sense of the information you're trying to convey?"

Because the television news business is so extremely competitive — especially in a major market such as Boston — each day David and his colleagues at Channel 4 are under the most extreme pressure to get to where the story is happening, collect the information and interview the people involved, then write the copy as tightly as possible and edit the film, and, finally, to rush to put it on the air for broadcast, hopefully before the other stations do.

As an example, David describes his very first on-air assignment as a reporter for WBZ-TV.

"My big break came when I was at a wedding reception in Boston for one of my colleagues here at the station," explains David, who at the time was working as the assignment editor in the Channel 4 newsroom, but was interested in becoming a television reporter.

"I was wearing my WBZ beeper, and it suddenly went off. I called the station and was told that a police officer had been shot in Leominster and there were no reporters available to cover the story. `We need you to go out there,' I was told.

"I was wearing a three-piece suit and I jumped in a taxi and said, `Take me to Leominster,' which is a good hour's ride, if not more. I met a news photographer there and I did the story. The police officer happened also to be a semi-professional football coach, so we went to the football game and got interviews with the players.

"It was the lead story on the 11:00 p.m. news and that was my first time actually appearing on the set as a reporter," he remembers.

Most of the men and women we see on the evening news holding microphones have followed a fairly predictable career path to get to the big cities such as Boston.

"Everyone else who's a reporter here had started off in something like the 120th market — working in small towns often in the most isolated parts of the country — and worked up to make it this far," he says. "Truthfully, I felt very lucky to have been given the chance to start my on-camera career in Boston.

"But I also paid my dues to get that opportunity," he states. "I earned it spending more than a decade working in some of the most thankless jobs in television."

A most unusual turn of fate was involved in bringing the face and voice of David Robichaud into our living rooms every night and making him such a familiar presence to millions of television viewers all over New England. The crucial, if unlikely, ingredients: a Christmas party in 1994, an Engelbert Humperdink melody, and an impromptu, bravo singing performance that "brought the house down" were all responsible.

"This really was the key turning point in my career," says David, looking back.

"At the WBZ station Christmas party that year, there was a live band, and my colleagues were pushing me to `go up and sing with the band.' They know that I love to do karaoke, and although I have a varied taste in music, I really enjoy the cheesier, `lounge-lizard' types.

"I agreed and I went up on stage. I asked the band members if they knew any Neil Diamond or Barry Manilow songs, but they didn't. However, they said they could do an Engelbert Humperdink song. So I got up there with the band and sang `After the Loving.' When I finished singing, I couldn't believe the reaction — it brought the house down. People were standing, cheering, whistling and applauding.

"When I came down from the stage, a number of those in the audience came up to me, and one of them was the station's general manager at the time, a woman named Deb Zeyen. She said, `I'm flabbergasted. I never knew you had that type of personality. We have to figure out a way to get you on television.' "

David didn't let the acclaim go to his head. "My immediate reaction was not to take her seriously. After all, this was a Christmas party. I dismissed it," he says. At the moment, he was satisfied in his job as assignment editor and wasn't considering anything else.

But on Monday morning, "the news director called me and said, `Deb wants you to do a screen test.' I thought he was joking. But he said, `If this screen test works out, we're going to put this into motion.' So I did a couple of screen tests."

The results were so good that Channel 4 decided to try something that no station had ever done before.

"During the regular morning news broadcast, as the anchors — Joe Shortsleeve and Suzanne Bates — were reading the news, there would be a segment where I, as the assignment editor, would appear on screen to talk about the stories we planned to cover for the day. A remote camera was put in the newsroom specifically for that purpose," he explains.

So at 6:55 a.m. each weekday morning, the anchors would say, "Let's take a look at the stories we're working on here at Channel 4. We're going into the newsroom now to talk with assignment manager David Robichaud."

His on-air career had begun.

Soon he was, he says, "bitten by the bug."

"I was amazed at the response those segments generated from the audience," he recalls. "I think a lot of it had to do with the unique personality of the people involved. Suzanne and Joe and I would routinely joke around with each other and talk about our personal lives on the air. Soon people were stopping me in public and saying, `Oh, I heard you got married!' or `Congratulations on being named a godfather!' No one was more surprised than I was to be recognized in public. People really think that they know you. Total strangers would come up to me in supermarkets and gas stations and call me `Robi.' I definitely got the bug to be an `on-air person' from that point on."

Looking back to his days in college, he says that originally his ambition was to become a reporter, "but once I got a taste of management, I started going in that direction. In fact, I looked at a management position as more secure, more stable, than being a reporter. However, appearing on television every morning was such a great experience I decided this is what I really wanted to do."

The news director agreed to let him pursue this. "I did my regular Monday-through-Friday job as assignment editor, and then I'd come in on my own on Saturdays and Sundays and go out on stories with news photographers. I put together a package of about half a dozen such news stories and then I showed the news director."

His determination paid off. Soon he was working weekends as a freelance reporter for WBZ-TV while he continued to hold down his regular position as weekday assignment editor. "I was very busy," he says.

Then came the wedding in Boston, the beeper call, and the race in a taxi cab to Leominster to cover a breaking story. His on-camera career took off.

Back when he was a Bridgewater State College senior, and looking for an internship in television, Dave Robichaud wasn't optimistic about his chances of being accepted at Channel 4 — never mind actually being employed there someday.

"Growing up in Concord, my earliest memories of television were watching Jack Chase, Channel 4's longtime anchorman, and reporters like Shelby Scott. The thought of actually coming here and doing an internship was intimidating to me," he admits.

"When I came for my interview I was pessimistic. I was thinking, `Okay, here's a kid from a state school and they're probably only going to take students from Boston University or Emerson. What are my chances?'

"During my interview I was asked what extracurricular activities I had been involved with — I had played football at Bridgewater for two years and had been a reporter for both WBIM, the campus radio station, and The Comment, the student newspaper — and the Channel 4 people were impressed," he says.

"When they asked, `When can you start?' I was stunned. To make the trip to Channel 4, I had borrowed my grandmother's car — a 1970 Chevy Nova — and I maintained my composure until I got outside of the building and into the car. Then I was so overwhelmed that I just broke down and cried tears of sheer joy. I remember thinking to myself, `This is the most unbelievable thing.'

"I drove right out to Concord to tell my parents and at that moment I became the family celebrity. The news rapidly went to the rest of my relatives — `David's an intern at Channel 4' — and it was treated as such a big deal."

Three days a week he commuted from Bridgewater to Boston, using his grandmother's car. He is convinced that whatever sacrifice was involved, it was definitely worth it.

"I know this — the internship that I had as a senior is what led to my getting the job I have now at Channel 4," he states flatly. "The courses I took at college were great, the extracurricular activities I got involved in were great, but there's nothing like the practical, hands-on experience I got when I was here as an intern," he says.

There was something else as well. "The key thing was, I made a pest out of myself. I said, `I'll do whatever you want me to do.' I was aggressive. After my internship ended, I kept in touch, calling every couple of weeks to ask if there were any job openings. Of course, they got to know me fairly well as a result."

While he waited for an opening at Channel 4, he looked for other work. "My first job out of school was working in public relations for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. I was also working at a drive-in theater part-time out in Shrewsbury and later I was a waiter at Faneuil Hall," he recalls.

After three months with MDA, he came home one day and his mother said, "You have to call Channel 4 right away," which of course he did. "I was invited in for an interview for a part-time job on the assignment desk. I was just thrilled."

Over the next several years he moved from part-time assignment editor to full-time assignment editor at WBZ (in the process shedding his other part-time jobs at the drive-in and as a waiter), then went to Channel 56 for a period of time when that station began a nightly news broadcast.

Eventually he returned to WBZ as a "planning editor," responsible for planning coverage of events that were weeks or sometimes months off. "This was a new position and it was a fantastic job. I especially recall Nelson Mandela's visit to Boston because it was by far the biggest planning job I ever had to do. It was months in the planning," he says.

Then came what would prove to be an important career decision, more important than it probably appeared to him at the time.

"I enjoyed the job as planning editor, but after awhile, I was getting bored with it so I did something that's almost unheard of, which was to ask to get back my old job as assignment editor," he explains.

"This appealed to me because as assignment editor, you really run the whole show. It's a thankless job, but on any given day the assignment editor is responsible for a dozen or so reporters and twenty photographers and four or five news trucks. In effect, the assignment editor is the quarterback of the newsroom because he or she decides what stories to cover, assigns reporters to those stories, and arranges the logistics of getting people and equipment to the scene.

"As planning editor, I missed that day-to-day, constant pressure that's so much a part of being the assignment editor. So in 1993 I went back to my old job," he says.

Had he remained as planning editor, that is where he might well be today. He isn't at all unhappy with his decision to switch. "I had no way of knowing that becoming the assignment editor would in fact be my career break, that it would lead me to becoming a reporter at Channel 4, but that's exactly what happened."

Now Dave Robichaud has been a television reporter for almost two years, and he clearly thrives on the job. But whenever he has the chance to help out a student intern at Channel 4, he is anxious to do so, recalling how pivotal that experience was for him.

"I always want to remember that fresh-faced kid from Scott Hall who was driving his grandmother's 1970 Chevy Nova back and forth to Boston, hoping that somehow I'd get the chance to work in television," he says. "For myself, I always want to have that same level of energy, that same intense ambition. When I see interns here who are pushing themselves to learn everything and do everything, I do anything I can to help them out. I know how grateful I am to the people at Channel 4 who did the same for me when I was starting out in the business."