When I was about 6, my aunt worked at some local modeling studio, and they did a local commercial that flashed some head shots. I was one of them - I have a vague memory of sitting around watching the tv to catch the commercial when it aired.
Then, when I was in 5th grade, I enrolled in the “Big Brother/Big Sister” program, which paired up older people with young kids from single families in a mentoring environment. It never stuck with me (although in retrospect the guy I met was pretty cool - he took me to a local play and encouraged me to read the Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy series), but I ended being interviewed on the local News as part of a promotional segment.
At one point the guy interviewing me asked if I had a girlfriend and I responded “No, but if anybody likes me I’d like to say hi.”
The anchor, off camera, laughed at that line.
What can I say? I peaked early.
Have you ever been on television? Tell us about it.
I was in a local commercial for my place of work. I was one of a group of four who were shown walking toward the camera. No dialogue. We did the walk 3 or 4 times and called it a wrap.
It aired, seemingly, every hour on the hour for a couple of weeks. Then it vanished.
(Maybe) the first time: there was this local UHF station that had an afternoon kids’ program with a host in a clown suit or something, he introduced cartoons, did bits between cartoons, interviewed the kids in the audience, etc. It was quite the thing for 4H groups or Cub Scouts or whatever, and sure-n-begorrah, I was there with my Cub Scout troop. They gave you a hot dog and a chocolate milk. I hid mine underneath my chair because a) a hot dog and chocolate milk is a terrible combination, and b) I was always taught not to eat in front of other people, and in my 8-year-old head that included the kids at home who didn’t have a hot dog and chocolate milk. I also remember freezing up (a la Ralphie with Santa Claus) when the host came to interview me.
(Maybe) the second time the local news came by the school where I and some other kids were bused for the “gifted” program, and I was in the crowd in a few frames.
When I was on a year’s sabbatical in Japan, attending college courses (taught in English), I was recruited with other foreign students for a TV commercial for a language lab. Since I was older (30) than the other students, I was assigned to be the “instructor”. I sat in a control booth and each “student” was in their own little cubicle, and apparently all interactions between us were electronic (TV screens plus headphone/mic). I remember being made up; I remember the looks on the face of the makeup person while they were trying to make me presentable. I guess I was basically unphotogenic, because in the final commercial (which I did manage to catch on TV) all they showed of me was a nano-second of my face from the right rear, sweeping down to my arm working the controls. I made 10,000 yen (about $200 at the time) in cash. It took about 4 hours. I had to wash off the makeup myself.
I’ve been interviewed about a trial at least three or four times in my 38-year career. I can’t think of any other occasion where I was on TV (except answering phones for a local PBS station in high school. I think we were shown a few times in the background of the fundraiser)
When I was a kid, I was in the studio audience for a local kids show at least once, and my father directed a play in which I was Cupid, and a local station broadcast a scene from it.
I also met Captain Kangaroo and Mr Greenjeans when they visited our city. We have photos of them with my sister and me, at like 3 and 5 years old, but I don’t think we appeared on the show. They were just in town for publicity.
I’ve been interviewed at my job once or twice.
And like a character played by Bill Murray, asked by an interviewer if he’d ever been on TV, “Well, a wide shot at a ball game, once.”
You reminded me that, when I was in 6th grade, we went to a taping of the Mickey Mouse Club. I remember them coming out and shaking hands with kids in the audience, and that we all stood around and danced at the end. I have no idea if any of that made it to air. (The funny thing about this is to me was that this was the Brittney Spears/Justin Timberlake/Ryan Gosling/Christina Aguilera era; I probably saw them, but I don’t have vivid memories of the show).
I’m in a few seconds of this PBS Frontline episode trailer. I was never interviewed.
Everyone in my family has. I’ve been on Jeopardy. My oldest daughter acted, and she was in a commercial and had a continuing role in a series. My younger daughter was in a local news segment about hand washing (no lines) and my wife was interviewed by Japanese TV (their PBS) on the inventor of a vaccine and his story.
I didn’t see it, but I was in a TV store in Manhattan when Apollo XI lifted off, in a crowd that was filmed by a local TV station. Don’t know if it ever got on, and hope my boss didn’t see it if it did.
Pre-PBS, local stations produced educational childrens’ shows. When I was about 12, one decided they wanted a Boy Scout to deliver a PSA about the environment. For reasons I never found out, a producer came to my grammar school and my principal choose me. Because she knew I owned the uniform, I guess. Which they later decided not to want. I read a script off a music stand and did it in one take.
Boring, but the side story isn’t. The main guest on that show was the super-rich Margaret Woodbury Strong, heir to a Kodak fortune, who was talking about her world-class doll collection, which became the foundation for the world-class Strong Museum of Play, home to the Toy Hall of Fame. She made nice to me and invited me to her house. But I had to call first because she would probably be out playing golf. Never had the courage to call only to be told I would have to call back because of golf. I regret it now, but it probably never would have come off. Much later, however, I got a private tour of the collection in her house, why I don’t remember The collection was awesome, despite being merely part of her holdings.
I got sent on a book tour for my first book, on the then brand-new subject on lactose intolerance. Syracuse and Buffalo as well as Rochester news stations. None of the interviewers had read the book, of course.
I got interviewed for a science segment on the local news when I was the Facility Manager for NASA’s Zero Gravity Research Center. I might have the VHS tape around somewhere.
20 years earlier I was in a film made for PBS about the wind tunnel I was working in. It was supposed to be a dramatic shot. The camera was positioned in the test section of the wind tunnel and at the far end, several hundred feet away, I climbed up a ladder at the end and slowly appeared as I got to the top and started walking towards the camera. Then the camera shifted focus slowly to the test section in the foreground. According to the director it was a great shot. However, I never got to see the film Hmm, I should try and track it down. Here is a recent news story about the wind tunnel shot inside:
When the University of Kansas won the NCAA basketball tournament in 1988, I was working at the university bookstore. One of the Kansas City TV stations sent a news crew to do a story about the mad rush for national championship merch, and I was interviewed while folding t-shirts from a stack of boxes that had just arrived.
The Public Access TV station here will broadcast our minor league hockey team’s games and I got interviewed one time for their “Fan in the Stands” segment. I have it on DVD somewhere but I no longer have a working DVD player.
When I was about 12 years old, the Boy Scout troop in which I was a member attended a taping of the weekly talk show hosted by Bart Starr, who was then the head coach of the Green Bay Packers. During the show, there was a question-and-answer period, and I asked Starr a question about the team’s defensive backs.
About seven years ago, when I was taking a commuter train into downtown Chicago for work every day, there was an incident in which the trains were stopped for several hours during morning rush, due to some malfunction in the switching system; as a result, I was stuck on a train, a quarter-mile away from the station, for much of the morning, and I posted something about it on Facebook. An hour later (once I had reached my office), a reporter from one of the local stations reached out to me: she’d seen my post on Facebook, and wanted to interview me about the incident. She and a cameraperson met me at my office, and taped me answering a few questions. The clip ran on several newscasts later that day, and I got a lot of notes from friends: “I saw you on the news!”
Twice on quiz shows: my grammar school team for a variant of University Challenge (still got the prize, the Shorter Oxford Dictionary) and my college team for the “proper” UC (we got to the semi-final, and I’m told I was seen to mouth the F-word when I missed a question I should have known - still a big deal in the 1960s).
Much later, as a university administrator, I was interviewed for some German programme about universities, and tried to do it in German. Thank heavens I’ve never seen it (I hope it’s never been used).
When I was a kid in about 5th grade or so, our class went on a local TV show in Anchorage called ‘Cartoon Carnival’, or perhaps Kartoon Karnival. Anyway, the host was a guy in a clown outfit and in between trying to interact with kids, he’d run cartoons.
A few years later, I was at a movie and this same clown did his schtick before the movie started. My name got pulled out of a hat along with a bunch of other kids and we went up on the stage where we were supposed to answer questions until there was only one kid left, who then won a prize. I was asked “who was the first signer of the Declaration of Independence” and I fluffed it, saying “Samuel Adams”. It was broadcast on local radio and my sister-in-law heard it. I was razzed unmercifully.
My last incident was at the Anchorage Fur Rendezvous dog races, when PBS, who was putting together a film of the event, asked me to say a couple of lines, something along the lines of “Move aside! Dog team coming!” I think they liked my fox fur hat, which made me look like a sourdough. I fluffed the line and the scene wasn’t used in the documentary.
