When Mike Leiderman was fired from his sportscasting job at WMAQ-Channel 5 some 13 years ago, he wasn’t exactly sent out the exit with the dregs of Chicago TV sports. As a matter of fact, now, almost 10 years after the door at Channel 5 sports finally stopped spinning, the list of talent that left with Leiderman from 1975-83 reads like an honor roll of the small screen’s best and brightest.
Departees during that strange era at NBC, some voluntarily and some not: Johnny Morris, Tim Weigel, Greg Gumbel and Chet Coppock.
And then there was Leiderman, now comfortably ensconced as a mini-media conglomerate in Highland Park with such hosting and production assignments as the weekly “North Shore Magazine on the Air” on WEHS-Channel 60 and “Sportsfire” on SportsChannel, plus numerous live event staging gigs. But back in the dark days of the summer of 1980, he was about as low as a good man should have to go.
“I walked into the Channel 5 sports department in December of 1977 bright-eyed and optimistic and still subscribing to the belief that enterprise and hustle meant something in the TV news business,” Leiderman said. “But from the start, I was swimming upstream. I wasn’t a `Joe Beer Can’ sports guy. I thought that a sportscaster who presented thoughtful, well-produced segments with some quiet wit and style would play well to a market with the intelligence and sophistication of Chicago. But according to the people who were calling the shots at Channel 5 back in those days, I was wrong.”
Leiderman apparently was so wrong in the eyes of those in charge at Channel 5 back then (who have long since been scattered to the airwaves by top NBC management) that he was let go after 30 months as the station’s second sports banana. “I got a registered letter in April 1980 telling me that my services were no longer needed,” Leiderman recalled, still, 13 years later, with a trace of pain.
“Like so many other decisions in that business, no reason was given. They were nice enough to not completely fire me outright, instead telling me that I could work until I found another job. But I don’t care who you are, you never really recover from something like that.”
Thanks to some members of the Chicago media, Leiderman did not have to go gently into TV’s good night. Of Leiderman’s dismissal, John Schulian, now a highly successful TV screenwriter (“Miami Vice,” “L.A. Law”) and then one of the country’s top sports columnists, wrote in the Sun-Times in May 1980: “. . . (Leiderman) found himself upsetting the same old status quo. He had grace and wit and intelligence and his higher-ups couldn’t deal with it all. So now he sits with his awards and his story ideas and wonders where his next job will be. If it will make the waiting any less painful, he should know this: He really was too good for Channel 5.”
Added Gary Deeb, the grand enfant terrible of Chicago radio-TV writing in that era and now the media critic at WLS-Channel 7, after the fall, “Naturally, just as Leiderman was beginning to gain widespread acceptance among Chicago TV sports fans, Channel 5 fired him. And who replaced him? An utterly inept fellow named Rich Brenner, who in just a few months has earned a reputation as the Wrong Way Corrigan of TV sports.”
But while the words of his colleagues were kind, Leiderman’s new home economic reality was of the first degree, as in, “Where’s the next paycheck coming from?” “My wife, Hermine, and I went through some days of hell,” Leiderman said. “She was an attorney, so we had some cushion if we chose to move back East, where she was a member of the bar, but my major-market TV career very well appeared to be over. I was 35 years old and basically damaged goods.
“Hermine and I made the hard decision that I would stay in media in Chicago predicated upon two goals: First, we were going to raise our family in a stable environment despite the inherent instability of my field, and, second, we were one day going to be positioned so that we could do some decent things that would have a positive effect on people.”
Leiderman’s goal of doing “some decent things” has not only greatly enhanced the growth of his Mike Leiderman Productions but also has helped generate millions of dollars for such local and national charitable organizations as the Better Boys Foundation, the March of Dimes and the Jewish United Fund.
In June, for instance, for the ninth consecutive year Leiderman produced the National Football League Players Association Mackey Awards Banquet at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare, a mammoth event that brought together such pigskin types as Mike Ditka, Walter Payton and Steve Young and grossed close to $1.1 million for the Better Boys Foundation.
Said BBF founder Joe Kellman, “Since Mike began producing the Mackey Awards dinner, the event has truly come of age. Now I don’t know if that’s going to get him to Broadway, but I do know that his talent for organization and detail is remarkable and his assistance with the banquet has tremendously benefited us.”
Equally focused was Leiderman’s relentless shepherding of the development of the “North Shore Magazine on the Air” TV program into a viable over-the-air commodity. After 20 months on cable, the show, “a hidden gem,” according to Chicago Sun-Times radio-TV writer Rob Feder, made the switch to Channel 60 in May (airing at 9:30 a.m. Sundays), dramatically increasing the show’s potential audience.
“Although the cross-promotional benefits of a successful TV venture to a magazine like us are potentially great, we were leery of getting into it all unless we could rely on a steady, reliable television professional to help us with the project,” said Asher Birnbaum, the editor and publisher of North Shore Magazine. “Mike has proven to be just that kind of professional. He commands instant respect among his peers in the TV business, and his name gave us some extra instant credibility in the new medium. As I made the rounds of the various TV stations shopping the show, I also discovered that people in that business genuinely like and respect him.”
John Tuohey, director of programming and operations for SportsChannel, said, “I’ve worked with Mike almost 10 years. He’s terrific. He has done just about everything for SportsChannel over the years. He’s produced programs, he’s done play-by-play. He’s a true professional.”
Likeability, respect, focus and relentlessness-and toss in a proper measure of resilience-have long been the key components of Leiderman’s stock in trade, a mix of professional calling cards that can trace its genesis to a young Long Islander’s first exposure to the marvelous new medium of television in the early 1950s.
Appropriately enough, Leiderman’s initial in-studio TV experience occurred in the court of one of the great icons of the era, Howdy Doody. “I was 7 or 8 years old and in the Peanut Gallery at NBC in Manhattan one day watching Buffalo Bob Smith do the show,” Leiderman said. “After it ended, when all the other kids ran toward Howdy Doody and Clarabelle and the rest of the cast, I, instead, gravitated toward the equipment and actually had my first conversation, however brief, with a union cameraman.”
Leiderman touched the camera and the cameraman swore at him. “That in itself should have told me something,” Leiderman said. “Nevertheless, I was hooked.”
Leiderman’s young addiction sparked a developmental odyssey that took him from Great Neck, N.Y., to Brandeis University in the Boston area, graduate school at Syracuse University’s prestigious Newhouse School of Communications and a series of TV jobs along the Eastern seaboard before his move to Chicago.
While in Boston, Leiderman got his first paying TV job, a $2-per-hour niche as a production assistant at WHDH-TV. “I worked on the local version of the `Bozo’ show, first stuffing goodie bags for the kids and later being promoted to ringmaster. But the ringmaster on that show was really kind of an off-camera usher rather than the featured role Ned Locke had here for years,” he said.
From Brandeis, Boston and Bozo it was on to grad school at Syracuse (where he met his wife-to-be and worked briefly as a soft-rock radio jock) and a brief turn in the Army Reserves “in 1968, which meant nothing but civil disobedience drills and duty.”
General reporter jobs followed at TV stations in the Syracuse and Albany-Schenectady markets before Leiderman got a major leg up on his path to the big leagues in 1972 as a Manhattan-based producer-reporter for the Newsweek Broadcasting Service, a national syndicator of TV news features that was owned by the Washington Post Co.
By 1977 Leiderman’s work attracted the attention of management at WMAQ-Channel 5. “My goal was to be (with a) network by 30. I also had long had the sports bug. One of my heroes growing up was (baseball broadcaster) Mel Allen, and I was a die-hard Yankees fan. But I was a bit wary about leaving the East Coast. It was and remains plainly obvious that I’m a New York Jew, and I wasn’t positive how that would play in Chicago.”
Leiderman’s ultimately embittering experience at Channel 5 must be put in proper context against the backdrop of the state of Chicago TV news in 1977. Of the three major news shops, WMAQ was the most unsettled. WBBM-Channel 2 was just beginning the successful run sparked by the teaming of Bill Kurtis and Walter Jacobsen and the addition of Morris. WLS-Channel 7 was still happy-talking its way to ratings giggles with Fahey Flynn, Joel Daly, John Coleman and Bill Frink.
At 5, while some eventually enduring new news hires were being made-including Carol Marin, Linda Yu and the late Paul Hogan-the station management was desperately trying to replace the once enormously popular Floyd Kalber, who had left for an anchoring roost on “The Today Show,” and flailing about in sports after the departures of Morris and Weigel.
“I was hired as a sports producer and weekend sports anchor and less than three months after I got to town, the people who had brought me in were fired,” Leiderman said. “Overnight my position and security were blown out the door. No matter how good my work was, the new people didn’t like me on air. If I had accepted a role as a producer only, I could probably still be working there. But I wanted to also be on the air. And I think my adamant stance about that did nothing to lift my stock in their eyes.”
Sandy Whiteley, who currently produces “First Thing in the Morning” on Channel 5, watched the Leiderman dynamic unfold back in the late 1970s. “That was a very strange time in our life at the station then,” said Whiteley, a WMAQ staffer since 1975.
“Ultimately, I think they let him go because his `Q’ rating (a numerical industry gauge of on-air talent’s recognition, acceptance and likeableness based on a viewer survey) was lower than they wanted, or at least that was the rumor which was floated.
“Mike, for all of his glibness and gregariousness, can be a pretty determined fellow when he wants something. And he wanted a regular on-air role in sports here. That ran directly counter to what management wanted. Finally it all came to a head and, as always, the side that signs the paychecks won.”
Leiderman was out, perhaps unceremoniously but not without sanctuary. “They had let me stay on until I found another job, which eventually was as the first co-host (with Jo Anne Williams) of the Chicago `P.M. Magazine’ on Channel 32,” he said.
“Actually, prior to that, I had an interim job flying in and out of New York every weekend anchoring the sports on WNBC, but that ended. And then the Channel 32 deal ended because I thought that I was going to be hired at Channel 2 after Bruce Roberts died. The Channel 2 deal was so far along that I was told by a person in their management to quit `P.M. Magazine’ because I was about to be hired to back up Johnny (Morris).”
But Channel 2 opted instead for Kevin Lynn, and Leiderman had actually lost ground in his campaign to re-establish himself as a sports presence after the dismissal at Channel 5.
“My family and I struggled for a little while, but then I caught a couple of breaks when SportsVision (now SportsChannel) started and I was hired as a studio host, and the Chicago Council of Rabbis began `Friends,’ a Sunday morning public affairs program ironically on Channel 5, and asked me to co-host with (then-Chicago Tribune TV writer) Marilynn Preston. If nothing else, those two roles let people in the business know that I was still alive.”
A third freelance slot as a Midwest reporter-producer for the syndicated “Entertainment Tonight” also soon followed. “What I did during that period came about only after some bitterness kicked out and reality and character kicked in,” Leiderman said. “Reality, character and the support of my family. I looked around, assessed my strengths, realized what I would probably never be again and began to delve into existing situations and project possible scenarios where my strengths could be an asset to someone or something and keep bread on the table.”
With that new attitude, Leiderman’s professional portfolio, as a top independent TV producer and host, a peripheral sports media operative and a major stager-for-hire of charity events, has expanded to impressive proportions. Currently, besides the “North Shore Magazine on the Air,” SportsChannel “Sportsfire” and Better Boys Foundation-Mackey Awards Dinner assignments, Leiderman also co-hosts and produces the annual Jewish United Fund telethon and the SportsChannel Sports Awards Dinner, which benefits the March of Dimes.
He also has done voice-over and/or spokesman work for numerous corporations, including Brunswick, Parke-Davis and Infiniti automobiles, has written for North Shore Magazine and has produced numerous promotional and documentary videos, including “In Their Own Words,” an award-winning examination of sexuality and multiple sclerosis hosted by Dr. Ruth Westheimer.
Around his Highland Park household, Leiderman’s attention is engaged by wife Hermine, a community activist who is a past president of the Board of Education of District 111, among other things; daughter Jill, an aspiring TV star who recently graduated cum laude from Northwestern University’s speech school with a degree in theater and has interned on the sets of “The Today Show” and “Days of Our Lives”; and 16-year-old son Eric, who plays drums in the heavy metal band Crumbcake when not attending Highland Park High School.
“He’s a consummate professional in television,” Hermine said of her husband. “He really has made a tremendous niche for himself in Chicago. We feel very rooted in the community, and we feel that the community likes us. We made a decision not to drag our kids across the country, and along with that decision came certain circmstances.”
Aside from remaining a good partner and family man, Hermine said, Mike has been a good editor for her, helping to sharpen her legalese style of writing into plain English as she writes documents for the Illinois State Board of Education. “He’s really helped me develop a much more appealing and succint style of writing,” she said. “I really have learned from him.”
But more than anything, she admires his steadfastness. “He has tremendous respect for his profession,” she said. “He really wasn’t willing to compromise that professionalism. He’s a constant. He’s here to stay.”
“I guess to an extent my story is one of professional survival,” Leiderman said. “I was fortunate that along the way to the sportscaster job at Channel 5, I had developed other things, so when the Channel 5 job ended, I wasn’t a one-trick pony and hung out to dry. I was also very fortunate to have been steeped in a personal tradition which emphasized strong family values and having a strong family to lean on when times got tough.
“As far as the future, I’m actually quite enthusiastic about my positioning because of the ever-increasing growth in TV and the attendant need for more good programming. Let’s face it. When we all have access to 500 channels in our living rooms, there will be a need for programming content on those 500 channels, and I’m positioned to be one of the suppliers of it.
“Right now, the fact that I do have such a disparate network of income sources also means that if one fires me, I’m not out of work. I like that. It kind of provides an uncomfortably comfortable sense of job, or at least income, security.
“If it looks like I’m having a rebirth, great. For now, watching my kids blossom, having my family happy and healthy and doing work which I frequently find fulfilling keeps my plate full. And bread on the table.”
