re: Who was Buddy D?

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How Hap changed TV New Orleans Magazine. New Orleans: Oct 1994. Vol. 29, Iss. 1; pg. 44, 2 pgs Abstract (Summary) The impact Hap Glaudi had on TV news broadcasting is discussed.

After seeing Glaudi on a New Orleans' TV station, a national consultant began to spread the concept of "happy talk" among other news anchors.

Full Text (1078 words) Copyright New Orleans Publishing Group Inc. Oct 1994 He bought an education ac one of the most prestigious high schools in town with a $2 bet, and went on to become a legend. It's the kind of story his publicist would have made up if he'd had a publicist.

But Hap Glaudi was the genuine article. Back in 1961 when television personalities were just beginning replace neighbors, he turned up in everybody's living room as WWL-TV's sports anchor, and he was as easy to like as the guy down the street. He rattled off the scores in pure Yatspeak, a comfortable contrast to the cultivated tones of the national broadcasters and the locals imported from out of state. And he'd say whatever he wanted--usually about sports, often about something else that perked his interest. He might even ask the floor director for instructions, or make some comment to the news anchor, or read a passage from a new local book or wish someone a happy birthday. This was an era en anchors faced the camera and read the news with the pomposity of Ted Baxter on the old Mary Tyler Moore Show." "It wasn't natural," Hap later told a reporter. Hap was natural. So natural that he changed newscasts throughout the country.

Or so the story goes. A representative from a national television consulting firm stopped off in New Orleans, flipped on the television to see Hap chattering to the news anchor and the weatherman, and decided it was a good idea. And so he spread the concept of "happy talk" among newscasters nationwide. Other stations actually wrote what Hap was doing off-the-cuff into their scripts. WWL's Phil Johnson remembers reading one. "It scheduled one minute for this story and one and a half minutes for that story, and then this is what it said--'30 seconds for trash.'"

Eventually, WVUE-TV hired Buddy Diliberto, a younger man cut out of the same cloth as Hap. He was rough-edged, talked Ninth Ward English, didn't have a phoney bone in his body. He was a Jesuit graduate, too (which is ironic--Jesuit known for its socialites and professionals rather than for its Yacs). Diliberto went on to become a local legend in his own right, and there are those who insist that it was Hap who made Buddy possible.

Television was a second career for Hap. He'd later start a third, when he launched a call-in show "Hap's Point After," on WWL radio.

But before all that he was a sportswriter--one who loved writing, knew his territory, and took a fierce delight in beating out the competition. Some of his finesse was developed ac Jesuit High School.

He entered as a freshman in 1931 when he was 19 years old. Before that, he'd been an exercise boy ac the Fair Grounds, a kid who'd dropped out of school because of no money, but who hadn't given up on his future. A jockey friend gave him a tip that a horse named Tiger Flowers was going win big. Hap put $2 on him, won $135, took the streetcar over to Jesuit High School on Carrollton, and asked the principal, the Rev. Percy Roy, how much education his winnings could buy. Quite a bit, it turned out. By the time Hap collected his diploma (one of the few documents on which his real name, Lloyd, appears), his writing in the school paper had been spotted by Fred Digby, sports editor of The New Orleans Item, one of the city's two afternoon newspapers. Digby offered Hap a job and became his mentor.

The work became Hap's life. He was a two-fingered typist as most newsman were then. Nobody ever bothered to teach typing in high school except to girls. And he'd pound away furiously at a column until he got it just right, then stay and rewrite it for the second edition. When Digby left in 1947 to work full-time for the Sugar Bowl, Hap became sports editor. He hired the 19-year-old Phil Johnson, who would come to regard working under Hap as a crowning experience in his life.

When The Item closed in 1958, Hap landed a job at a newspaper in Indiana, but to anybody weaned on red beans and rice, that amounts to exile. Still, when Johnson, by then a bigwig at WWL, asked him to become a sportscaster,, he balked.

Hap used to like to tell the story about that job interview. Even he didn't think his audition had gone well. He was no pretty face, and he didn't have a broadcast voice. But Johnson, confident in Hap's sports expertise, offered him the job anyway. A storm was raging outside, and just as Hap opened his mouth to refuse, thunder rolled something crashed, and a television set in the room popped and fizzled off. Evidently somebody was sending him a sign. "I'll take the job," he said.

After 17 years, the powers-that-were at WWL-TV decided it was time for a fresh face and a new outlook. The Saints had become part of New Orleans, and covering pro football meant going into locker rooms and interviewing coaches on camera, which Hap didn't like to do.

He moved over to WWL radio--at the same pay, Johnson points out--and began his call-in show "Hap's Point After." A lot of viewers didn't like that idea of Hap leaving TV, and they picketed the television station for a full two weeks after he left. But the radio show was a success, another chance for Hap to say what he thought, and this time he could talk directly with the kind of people who spoke his language and shared his passions. The show went on for 11 years with Hap there until the day he could no longer make it up the flight of stairs into the broadcasting booth. He went to the hospital and died two weeks later, at age 77, of lung cancer.

The show is still called "Hap's Point After." Its host now is Buddy Diliberto, who still gets callers addressing him as "Hap." "I used to correct them," he says. "But I gave that up. I just let them go on and call me Hap if they want to."

In August, Hap was inducted into the New Orleans Broadcasting Hall of Fame. And WWL-TV has initiated an annual $4,000 Hap Glaudi Writer's Scholarship. This year it went to Dominic Massa, a promising freshman in Loyola University's communications department. You could say the $2 bet on Tiger Flowers is still paying off.

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the new Saints GM came into the studio and announced they were considering changing the Saints colors and logo

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I know old white dudes were racist

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