Bob Holliday's lasting impact
Jun 27, 2009
The magic of television is that it’s both temporal and lasting. The images come and go, oh so quickly, but what’s amazing is how long we remember those pictures in our minds.
At WRAL, few have been responsible for those pictures and words for as long as Bob Holliday. He arrived in 1981 and left our anchor desk on Friday. I watched from the mezzanine as Holliday, tall and thoughtful and always prepared, took his seat in front of the camera one last time.
It is easy to be good at covering sports. You talk to athletes and coaches, transcribe what they say and put it out there in words or pictures.
You put a little spin on it, of course – a nice turn of phrase or a slick presentation, and then you call it a day. Any recent journalism grad can do that.
But it’s hard to be great, to rise above the clatter every day.
Bob Holliday has done that. He asks more than good questions - he asks the right questions. Coaches respond to Holliday with more thoughtful answers because they got more thoughtful questions.
Journalism isn’t about being tough or asking the obvious; it’s about seeing trends and connecting dots and helping your audience gain a deeper understanding of the subject. In a world awash in information, those who shine are the ones who see context and tie events together.
This is difficult in the tough beast that is television. It requires, unlike newspapers, moving pictures to tell a story. It demands, unlike radio, a subject in front of a camera. It is limited, unlike the Internet, by intense demands on time.
The clock in television runs at a furious pace. WRAL Sports, for example, gets a mere 3 minutes, 40 seconds in the 6 p.m. news during the week. Three minutes and 40 seconds? Heck, Clarence Darrow couldn’t clear his throat in that time, and Faulkner couldn’t complete a sentence in that span.
I was reminded of the tyranny of time again on Friday as Holliday said goodbye. We showed a marvelous tribute to Holliday that Jeff Gravley had produced, and afterward, I saw on our clock behind the cameras the red letters that indicated one minute left in the 6 p.m. news.
It was Holliday’s time to say goodbye, and I watched as he began with the numbers slipping to 56 … 55 … 54. …
He said thanks, most of all, to the audience, and I knew how deeply he meant it. He said thanks to Tom Suiter and Gravley and the many who worked with him at WRAL.
I kept wondering if he’d have enough time as the numbers slipped to 35 … 34 … 33 … and then I realized this is a man who had mastered television’s form and knew its rhythms exactly.
20 … 19 … 18 …
And then some final thanks with the other anchors on the set.
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I had thought I would feel sad, as this time slipped into single digits, but I did not
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Instead, I had a deep feeling of gratitude for Holliday’s 28 years, a sense of marvel and wonder at his long and graceful career.
And I felt …
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those of us in WRAL Sports have inherited a great tradition and we have …
3 … 2 … 1 …
a responsibility to see it continue.
