The Fabulous and Terrible Lessons of those Near-Misses

     My dad (Lew Wuergler) used to joke that he would been a zillionaire if only he hadn’t stopped inventing when he created “6 Up”. The joke, of course, is that if he had only gone one more little step and invented “7Up” we would have been a very wealthy family, 7Up being a very popular soft drink of the times.

     I actually had that “oh, so very close” experience that I look back on and smile about. Three times, in fact.

     When I was in Cannes, France at the big international spring TV market, I had purchased the broadcast rights to one of the very first rock video albums ever produced. This was ELO (Electric Light Orchestra), one of the most creative and innovative rock bands of the day. It was a truly fabulous production and I was excited to be able to sell it around the world.

     One day during the market, I was at lunch with one of our great clients, Rob Pittman, and I started thinking out loud about “what if” there was a television channel devoted exclusively to rock and roll music that could be a display venue for all of these fantastic video productions that we knew were coming…ELO being one of the very first. That would be really terrific, I said, and wondered if someone would ever do that.

     Little did I know at the time that yes, someone would start up what would become a highly successful venture for showcasing music video by all of the top rock and pop performers and which would soon “span the globe” - this new cable channel was called MTV.

     And it was a sensational smash hit, and to this day, remains a worldwide phenomenon...Music Television...MTV. And guess who started it (instead of just wondering about it)?
Not me, but my friend and client, Rob Pittman. I actually don't think that he took my seemingly random comment that day at lunch and made it happen...I think he already had this idea in development and was just being cagey by not saying anything. Never play poker with Mr. Pittman.

     That was the first of my three “near misses” and a great lesson learned.

     The next was when my good friend Bill Little and I had laid out a new concept for television that we just knew would a real winner.

     We called it The Food Channel.

     This would be famous and not-so-famous chefs demonstrating their recipes and showing viewers how to recreate them in their own kitchens. The channel would be themed to the seasons or to a particular type of food. We were really excited about it and created a very good looking presentation complete with a budget for a full year of various programs broadcasting for 18 hours a day.

     We took it to the largest cable operator in the country and got a great reception for the idea and were highly complemented on our presentation...but, were turned down for what seemed like a really weak reason.

     And, wouldn’t you know it, but about a year later The Food Channel officially debuted on national cable, complete with a lineup of famous and not-so-famous chefs demonstrating their recipes...sound familiar? Miss #2.

     Near miss #3 was a real doozy!

     When the Donny and Marie Show went off the air, the family created a new show they called The Osmond Family Show which the network (ABC) aired on Sunday night. Sadly, it only lasted for one season and so they called me in to build a development team to see if we couldn’t come up with a new and different concept that would keep them on the air.

     Having a background in successfully producing a show that did well in syndication (The New Mickey Mouse Club) I decided we should try something really bold.

     Why not create an entire lineup of prime time programs that would air Saturday and Sunday nights and place them in syndication instead of attempting to persuade an existing network to take this on, which we know would have never happened.

     What we created was really fabulous - in theory, of course. But, Wow!! If we could make this work?!

     This would have been my version of “7 Up”.

     We called it The Family Television Network, and it was really loaded with possibilities.

     Look at this lineup...

"Lost Legends" - a fast-paced escapist action-adventure dramatic series shot on location
"Sunday Punch" - an up-beat musical/comedy variety show featuring famous performing families
"FTN Signature Series" - 90-minute special featuring the "signature" of your favorite personalities

"The Saturday Evening Post" - a true "magazine" show with departments, fiction, features, cartoons...
"Osmond Saturday Special" - an upbeat kickoff to Saturday's lineup with music and comedy

"Country Gold" - your favorite gold-record Country stars celebrating their million-sellers
"Thrills and Chills" - a zany half-hour of two performing families - animals and auto show
"Sunday Funnies" - half-hour of animated cartoons right out of the Sunday papers.

     And, did you notice that the artist drew me into the Director's Chair? Fun, huh?

     After we had all of our creative work completed, the estimated budgets calculated and a really good looking brochure designed, we were ready to make our pitch.

     We made an appointment with Bill Bennett who was the head of the monster Metromedia broadcasting conglomerate based at Channel 11 in Los Angeles.

     They had 6 huge independent stations around the country and, in our mind, would have been the perfect foundation upon which to build our “network” of independent non-network-affiliated stations. We made a great pitch and felt that he was duly impressed with what we had put together. We left his office feeling pretty good about where this might go next.

     But, for where it actually went...we were totally unprepared.

     Not very long after our meeting, the industry was stunned by the surprising announcement that the 20th Century Fox Corporation had purchased all of the Metromedia stations, thereby creating the cornerstone of what was to eventually become the amazingly successful Fox Network.

     And, I’ll just bet you can tell how they started out, right?

     You guessed it...prime time on the weekends with a variety of programming.

     We wondered at the time if we had given them the idea or if they had been working on something like what we had presented. We also wondered if we had the basis of a lawsuit for stealing our intellectual property but quickly abandoned that idea because we really knew how Hollywood works. It had been pretty much a standard reply that if you gave someone a really good idea they would say something along the line of, “no thanks, because we have something like that already deep in development”.

     You never knew if that was the truth or not, of course, but you truly had no recourse. You just chalked it up to yet another painful lesson learned.

     So, there you have it. 3 near misses, each of which would have left each of you an amazing inheritance.

     Sorry.

A Great Idea and a Great Business Education all rolled together...

     If the low-power television business was considered to be the “minor leagues” I was about to be called up to the Major League business of hard-ball full-contact rough-and-tumble television syndication. It was time to really “buckle up” for the bumpy road ahead. And, boy, what an education I was about to receive.

     It didn’t take long to wind down the JPD closure and, sadly, that whole experience also created a rift between the LCM partners, up to the point of them also choosing to go their separate ways. My financial backing from them also dissolved in the same wave but it really wasn’t too much of an issue because my forced neglect of the Wuergler Productions business during the time I was in California had caused all of my proposed projects to dry up anyway. It was an amiable departure between me and my partners and I was grateful that they trusted me enough to manage their investment in JPD and in the low-power world. Sadly, the federal government’s failure to issue construction permits for stations was what really killed that business.

     So, on to the next gig, right?

     And it didn’t take long. My good friend Randy Largent knew of an energetic venture capital investor who had been approached with a deal for a totally new scheme of television syndication that sounded promising to him, but since he knew nothing about that business he was looking for someone to run it for me and Randy knew just the guy…me!

     And this idea was truly brilliant. The concept that was created by Tom Hughes was to offer first-run movies to syndicated TV stations so that audience would get to see films long before they hit the cable networks. We would build our own network of stations and give them one new movie per month that had not yet been on the pay cable networks. I called it the “First Wednesday Film Series” and I started building the business by hiring an excellent syndicator, George Back, who went to work right away selling this idea to stations around the country. We were off and running.

     We went to the NAPTE convention with this idea and created a lot of “buzz” about the idea. And I wound up on the front page of the Calendar section of the Los Angeles Times. 

     I had already been to several major movie distributors and started to make offers on their newest movie releases, and also generated a lot of serious interest with them as this was truly a brand-new market for them and an exciting new source of revenue.

     We were thrilled to go on the air with our very first offering “Godzilla 1985” and had built a solid group of stations. One of my artist friends created a fun ad which we placed in TV GUIDE and which loudly proclaimed our “World Television Premiere”.  

     We were really making some noise in this business.

     Here is the terrific article that appeared in Daily Variety:

Syndicators Plan Ad-Hoc Web for 1^st-Run Features

New York, April 8 – Two syndicators have joined forces to set up an ad-hoc network that would funnel theatrical features into tv syndication before they get any runs on pay-cable.

The plan, put together by All American TV and a new company called Alternative Network Television, kicks off with “Godzilla 1985” which goes out on barter May 16 in primetime on a lineup that already has reached 81% of the country.

Just about all of the stations taking “Godzilla 1985” including those in the top 22 markets and in 39 of the top 40 will run it day and date, giving the advertisers a genuine alternative network and allowing the distributors to launch a national promotion effort.

“This is a syndication first,” says George Back, president of All American TV, which will sell the 14 minutes of national barter time in “Godzilla.” “To my knowledge, all of the previous nationally televisied movies in recent years have had multiple runs on pay-cable.”

Mike Wuergler, president of Alternative Network TV (ANT) says, “Independent tv stations are severly hampered in the ratings when they play a movie that has had a number of runs on pay. That’s why we’ve cleared so many stations so fast – “Godzilla” will be coming to them without any pay-tv exposure at all.” ANT is clearing the stations for the ad-hoc network.

Sources say ANT paid New World, the theatrical distributor, about $550,000 for two runs of “Godzilla 1985” within a 60-day window between mid-May and mid-July 1986.

Tom Hughes, v.p. of programming and station relations for ANT, says his company is negotiating with a number of independent theatrical movie distributors to outbid HBO and Showtime for the first post-homevideo window. (New World released “Godzilla 1985” to homevideo late last year.)

If “Godzilla” get good Nielsen ratings for its May 16 telecast, Buck says he and Wuergler plan to buy at least 12 new theatricals (with no previous pay-tv exposure) for a proposed monthly ad-hoc network that would run from September 1986 through August 1987.

Wuergler says he’s negotiating with the following theatrical distributors for new pix: Hemdale, Concorde, New World, Cinema Group, Sandy Howard, Dino De Laurentis and Samuel Goldwyn.

     What we were about to discover what that we had been “tickling the tail of the sleeping tiger” in being so successful so early in our efforts and were about to get hit with a large dose of financial reality. This is what I meant earlier when I characterized this business as “hard-ball full-contact rough-and-tumble”.

     We had made the cable network giant HBO take notice, especially with the Variety article that outlined our battle-plan…and our apparent challenge to them. They knew that we were, in effect, stealing away a potentially large audience from them by offering free movies to television audiences long before those films would ever show up on their Pay TV channel.

     What happened is that HBO simply went around outbidding us with the movie distributors. And, they must have felt that we were a credible threat because their offers were far and above what we were offering so producers and distributors took HBOs offer and left us “all dressed up with no place to go”. We had a wonderfully viable company with a terrific idea but were outbid by the “tiger” we had awakened and were, quite effectively, simply put out of business. Hard ball, right?

     Our principal investor was really good about this in that he realized that he just didn’t have deep enough pockets to get into a bidding war with such a giant organization as HBO, so we parted ways in a good way and I then went about folding my executive tent, saying a sad goodbye with my deepest thanks to all of our television stations who pioneered this concept with us, and, then…with a heavy heart but with a fantastic learning experience under my belt, I turned out the lights.   

     And, as a fun little add-on for you, I received a terrific mention in Mark Wolf’s article in the Rocky Mountain News after the NAPTE convention in New Orleans. After talking about the ATN Network and what we were doing in the business, his final three paragraphs were a nice nod to me and a bit of my history in Denver.

     Here is a portion of that article 

ANTv’s package has not yet been sold of a Denver station, but Wuergler’s roots to KWGN-Channel 2 go back nearly 20 years.

Wuergler is a Denver native who graduated from Aurora Central (then just Aurora) High School and the University of Colorado, with a degree in speech and drama. He hosted Teen Time, an afternoon music-and-dance show on Channel 2, live from a teenage nightclub near East High School and performed for seven years in and around Denver as a member of the band The Hustlers.

He appeared in productions of Oklahoma and The Boyfriend at Country Dinner Playhouse and returned to Denver as production stage manager of the national company of Fiddler on the Roof at the Auditorium Theater. Wuergler produced the revival of “The Mickey Mouse Club” for Disney in 1977, served a hitch as president of Osmond International, then became a film producer for Comworld. Among his movies were “The Avenging” (filmed in Telluride in 1981), “One Dark Night” and “Hit and Run”. “They were tax-shelter movies,” joked Wuergler.

     Ok...now what? 

Teaching Seminary

   
     One of the most satisfying and truly joyful things I love to do in my life is to be of service by teaching the beauty and simplicity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I think, at the bottom of my heart and soul, I’m a teacher and one of the true joys that I have had the privilege of doing is teaching teenagers during early-morning seminary. The teenagers of the church are a truly amazing group of people and when they choose to get up really, really early and come to a religion class way before their regular school begins, it truly warms my heart, because they really want to be there and they really want to learn.

     I was able to have this calling three times. The first was in Anaheim when I first worked for Disney. The next time was in Orlando when I was at Disney World and that was especially a challenge because I had to drive 30 miles to the place where we held the class. Then, in Palos Verdes when I was working at JPD, and that was especially wonderful because I was able to have my own daughter Debbie in my class.

     During each of their four years of high school, the class focuses on a different course of study. Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon and finally, Church History and the Doctrine and Covenants. There are in-depth studies of each of those scriptures so by the time a student graduates from high school, they have been introduced to deep discussions on gospel topics that give them, hopefully, a more firm and solid testimony of the reality of how Jesus Christ affects their lives and how He loves and cherishes them. It is a joy to be a part of that process.

     One day, a news reporter came to our class at Palos Verdes East High School and sat in for the whole hour. She took a couple of terrific pictures and wrote an article that wound up on the front page of the religion section of the Palos Verdes Peninsula News.

     I hope you enjoy reading this wonderful little story.

Students Forsake Sleep For Early Bible Study

By Joan Denslow (Religion Editor) and Beth Paullin, Saturday, October 6, 1984

Every school day, about two hours before most Peninsula students have climbed out of bed to quiet a noisy alarm clock ringing in another day, Laura Merrill, a freshman at Palos Verdes High School, is preparing to leave the house.

Like Merrill, PVHS junior Gordon Anderson is also one of a small number of early risers who can be found about 6:40 a.m. weekdays sitting in the Oral Arts room at the Palos Verdes High Estates high school.

Merrill and Anderson are part of a group of some 100 high school students who , as members of the Palos Verdes Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, are seminary students who regularly meet for scripture study just about the time most of their high school chums are sitting down to breakfast.

But the early-bird Bible study isn’t as rare as the 12 or 13 participants at PVHS might indicate.

In 1983, according to church records, Mormon seminary students numbered 10,699 including two such classes that meet at another Peninsula public high school, Rolling Hills High.

During the four-year seminary program students review most of the King James version of the Bible as well as the Book of Mormon and another book known as Doctrine and Covenants, which is also accepted as scripture by the Utah-based Mormon Church.

“I love to teach,” said teacher Michael Wuergler during a recent seminary session with his PVHS group.

Wuergler, who follows his early-morning class with a full day’s work as a television producer, added: “Religious education is as important as academic education. My goal is to have the students know and understand the teachings of Jesus Christ so that they will learn to love Him and make Him part of their lives.”

“They think I’m crazy,” laughed Jennifer Davey, another PVHS senior who attends the early morning session, when asked what other students think about the seminary’s early call.

“But I think they respect us too for getting up early,” Davey commented.

Some of the seminary students echoed the feeling of Rolling Hills High School student Dru Morgan. “When I don’t go to seminary the day seems lost,” the student said.

Leisa Hadley, another student who attends the RHHS seminary class, added that the camaraderie of the class group “is like a large and very close family.”

Other seminary teachers in the Palos Verdes Stake in addition to Wuergler are Mark Williams, John Perotti, Antoinette McNeil, Gwen Williamson and Tessie Castillo.

     I truly loved the kids I taught and we became very close friends. I just wish I had stayed long enough in one place to have gone through all four years with them. But, I still have life-long friends that I made in each of the three years I taught this wonderful class.

My Television Network Executive Experience
     Just as I was wrapping up my assignment at the Disney Studios in late 1983, there was an interesting development in the television broadcast industry that would affect me and my family quite powerfully and personally…unbeknownst to me at the time, of course. The Federal Communications Commission had approved a new technology which they called LPTV (Low-power Television) and which allowed a station to obtain a license to operate outside of the area of dominant influence of the major television markets. In other words, those signals could not cross.

     But, these tiny-market stations needed programming, right? So, it turned out that a rather enterprising person from California named Jim Devaney had created a network which he titled the JPD Television Network (his initials, of course). 

     Jim and his wife, Susan, had obtained broadcast rights to some really old TV shows, purchased time on a satellite transponder and had started broadcasting (or maybe narrow-casting is a better term considering the ultimate reach of the signal) for 12 hours a day in September of 1983. The FCC had announced that they would award construction permits in the hundreds and thousands by the end of 1983 so the future of the JPD looked really, really good as the network could then add station affiliates by the bucket-load and thereby grow the business rapidly.

     Didn’t happen.

     For some reason, the FCC was dragging its bureaucratic boots and this fledgling industry was floundering and not quite off the ground. While I was in LA, however, Jim Devaney had discovered the deep pockets of the LCM Group and had gone to Dallas and made what must have been a pretty convincing presentation regarding the potentially bright future of LPTV to Bruce, Kenny and Alan to the point that they agreed to back JPD…but, only if they could have their own guy who knew something about the television business on the inside keeping a watchful eye on their investment.

     Guess who that was going to be?

     You guessed it, I was about to take yet another detour.

     Bruce and his partners were okay about me putting all of my Wuergler Productions efforts on hold and asked me to move from Dallas to Southern California to be their venture-capital-investment watchdog and to become, of all things, a television network executive. Who knew? 

     I think Jim Devaney was very reluctant in having someone look over his shoulder, but because he needed the financial backing of LCM, he wound up taking their deal and agreeing to have someone (me) come to Palos Verdes and take up residence inside his company.

     So, once again, away we went.

     I found an absolutely fabulous home for rent in East Palos Verdes that was only a one block walk to the Pacific Ocean – Lunada Bay. I have often said that if a person was going to live on the West Coast, why not live on the west coast?!?

     So we did. 

     Getting there was half the fun. We had three cars, so Sherry drove one with one of the kids, Debbie did the same and so did I. I bought three CB radios, one for each car, so that we could talk along the way, announce the need for a bathroom stop and let everyone else know when someone was hungry. Somewhere in west Texas, Debbie had a great big ol’ 18-wheeler truck driver call her on her CB radio and after they chatted for a while he tried to get her to pull over so they could “get acquainted” a little better. She coyly replied, “Well, you’ll have to ask my daddy first”. He came back with “ok little darlin’…where’s your daddy?” And she told him, “He’s the one right behind you in the black Cadillac”.

     We never heard from him again.

     We moved into the home, got Leah and the boys registered at Lunada Bay School and Debbie enrolled at Palos Verdes High School. We went to church and made instant friends that are still in our lives to this day. The Palos Verdes Peninsula was an absolutely fabulous place to live. It was the southern-most tip of Los Angeles with the Bay on the west and the LA Harbor on the south. We were right in the middle. 

     The JPD offices were on the other side of the Peninsula in Rolling Hills Estates so the drive to work was beautifully breathtaking, each and every day. And, they had not spared any expense on decorating the offices, they were stunning, right down to the huge seawater fish tank filled with truly exotic fish.

     I got right to work by negotiating a more favorable satellite transponder deal, acquiring some more upscale and newer programming, creating an affiliate relations department and putting in place more rigorous expenditure policies than what they had been used to. After all, I was now the company officer responsible for the investor’s investment (and, they were my partners remember).

     I called my old CU buddy, Bill Little, and he and I also went right to work creating a more pleasing “look” for the network, with station break graphics, music bumpers and animated logos that were really cool and fun to create on the newest video editing equipment that had just gone into production use. I mean, these were cutting-edge machines in that day. And, if I say so myself, this small little low-power network looked really good.

     Our station affiliates were beyond happy with the changes.

     In February of 1984, we were invited to the annual NAPTE convention. This is the National Association of Programming Television Executives and we were asked to appear on a panel discussion that featured the low-power industry, probably because we were, at the time, the “only game in town”.

Here is the article that covered our discussion.

How to sell LPTV: change name.

NAPTE panelists say outlets should be called “community television stations” and be heavily promoted in market.

Pioneers in the new field of low power television who want to succeed should heed the advice of the ad man who said that selling the steak meant first selling the sizzle. And the first step in that direction, an audience of broadcasters at a NAPTE panel session was told, was that low-power operators should stop referring to their operations as “low-power”. They are “community television stations”.

We can get rid of the “low power” and concentrate on “community television”, said Michael Wuergler president of Wuergler Productions, which provides programming for low-power stations that are beginning to emerge from the mountain of 12,000 applications on file at the FCC (96 are on the air in the continental U.S., 200 in Alaska, with 158 under construction). The FCC staff, which is preparing to set up a series of lotteries to dispose of competing applications, hopes to clear out the backlog by the end of the year. “You compete with other stations, however their signal is received, whether directly or by cable television,” said Wuergler.

     Sadly, back in the office and in my capacity of being the watchdog, and after several months of “watching the dog” I had discovered several policies and practices that had placed the investor relationship in jeopardy and which would lead to the partners taking full control of the network. I had become the “hatchet man” for the investors, and as you can well imagine, that move made things extremely tense in the office from then on.

     Here is the press release announcing that move.

American Television Network (ATN), a newly-created network, will be taking over all programming, technical operations and facilities of JPD Television Network, Alan Preston, a successful Dallas businessman and land developer, will control the new network.

Michael Wuergler, who was the Chief Operating Officer of JPD, will step in to head up the new management team of ATN. The new network will continue to air family-oriented programming to LPTV stations with interruptions of daily broadcasting. James Patrick Devaney, who was President of JPD, will continue affiliation with the new network as a consultant.

“ATN will represent heightened professional standards in the LPTV industry”, states Wuergler. “Our first step in this direction is an intensive market study of LPTV stations. Market research of this scope has not yet been done in the LPTV industry.”

The new management will be focusing on building a local image for the affiliates with programming scheduled to facilitate local promotions and the sale of local advertising.

As ATN is targeted to entertain America’s heartland, it is introducing its new logo on Independence Day, July 4. On that day each affiliate will introduce its viewers to the new on-air look of ATN.

“I feel these positive changes will enhance not only current ATN affiliates,” states Wuergler, “but will attract many more construction permit holders who, with their addition to the network, will help to create a more prosperous LPTV industry."

     The NAPTE convention created a great deal of positive press for us.

     But, at long last, after really struggling to grow the business over the past year or so, we started to take notice of the gigantic elephant in the room – the FCC. Their lack of approvals of station construction permits did not allow this promising industry to grow, but instead, was causing it to spiral downward at a rapid rate.

     One of the most difficult jobs of a consultant is to recommend to the people who hired you for your expertise, is to tell them that your expertise is guiding you in telling them the sad news that it’s time to pull the plug, which would of course, cause them to lose their considerable investment.


So…with much regret, we pulled the plug.

     Here is the press release announcing the news:

The American Television Network stopped its service to the Low Power industry today, it was announced by Alan Preston, the Dallas-based businessman who acquired the network last May. Preston, citing the cash flow problems of the affiliates, with several in default, and the slow growth of the industry in general, said that “it was too early to provide such a ‘Cadillac’ service to an industry that was only ready for something less. The FCC has hurt us as well, by announcing their intent of awarding construction permits in the hundreds and thousands by the end of 1983, and only delivering a fraction of that number to date.” There are only 107 low-power stations on air and ATN had 17 of those on air as of yesterday, with the balance of stations either broadcasting religious programming, teletext, or educational fare. “You can carry somebody else’s business just so long before it catches up with you,” said Preston, “and we were just unable to be the bank for the industry as well as a source of programming. I am sure there is future growth in the business, but we couldn’t carry individual stations along with us and expect to survive the long haul.” 

Preston said that the syndicators and program suppliers have been “champions” in the startup of this business and he had nothing but praise for their assistance in helping ATN go on the air last September. “They have been good to us and we felt that this business was going to be beneficial for both of us, but the affiliate base has just not been there, and some of those that are on the air have not been making paying us for the programs a priority.”

So closed a very interesting part of my work history. I walked away having learned a great deal about both management and leadership. I was managing an enterprise that struggled to grow and was adversely affected by conditions beyond our control. I was also leading several teams (production, marketing, publicity, operations, accounting and finance) and was learning what it meant when that leadership wasn’t always welcome in certain circles (being, of course, the guy who represented the financial backers). It was, truly, an advanced course in both executive “combat” and in continually striving to do and be your best in extremely difficult situations. With all of that going on in the background, we still were able to produce excellent content for the network and create a product that was smart-looking and had the potential of great success. I was truly sad that it never took off as it was projected to do. But, what an absolutely fabulous business education I obtained along the way.

Okay. So now what?

Yet Another Big Adventure...

     The next 10 years were to prove to be an interesting education for me. All throughout the next several adventures I am about to share with you, my primary end-in-mind was always the continuing comfort and well-being of my family, so we pretty well had to follow the money/job/opportunity, wherever that was going to take us.

     Our wonderful twins, Michael and Mark were born in 1979 while I was working with the Osmonds and living in Provo, Utah.

     In the next several years, we would find ourselves moving to Dallas, Texas; East Palos Verdes, California; Redondo Beach, California; Orem, Utah; Provo: Salt Lake City, Utah; Santa Clara, Utah; St. George, Utah; Orem, Utah; back to Salt Lake City; Boston, Massachusetts; and finally settling just outside of Atlanta, Georgia in the city of Alpharetta, which was changed to Johns Creek during our time there, and where Sherry and I have spent the largest amount of time during our so-far 43 1/2 years of a fabulous marriage – as I write this we have been here for the past 15 years.
\ 
     My time with Comworld came to an interesting end. Dick Callister (the President of the company) had found outside investors to put money into each of the other two films that I was producing in the
package of three. As I worked with Tom McLaughlin on his terrific little scary movie One Dark Night, the investor in this film came by the set one day. A pleasant enough fellow, whose name I cannot recall, but he kept injecting himself into the production and suggesting things to do that were just not feasible, given what the process of film-making was all about. And, I, as tactfully and professionally as possible, attempted to “school” him on the way films were made and why we had to do it the way we were doing it.

     I learned the next day that he had called Dick and demanded that I removed from the film.

     You know that “The Golden Rule” was being applied here, right? Not the one that Jesus taught us
regarding doing unto others in the exact manner in which you want them to do unto you in return. No,
this not-so-golden rule is stated that “whoever has the gold makes the rules.” And this guy had the gold and, as far as my boss was concerned, he was the one making the rules. So, I dutifully turned over the movie to my associate producer to finish up and headed off to New York to help complete that film. Of course, giving control to my assistant was also giving him the task of dealing with the meddling investor. The only reason the film turned out to be a success was that it was really the director's film - not anyone else. Tom did a sensational job.

     I didn’t take that change of assignment personally, but that little lack of support from my boss
encouraged me to begin working on, at long last, leaving Comworld and eventually hanging out my own “open for business” sign. I still completed my principal assignment of finishing those three films and getting them up and running before I ever made a move to leave. But, I had my exit strategy all planned out for quite a while but I made certain that I executed it with the upmost of integrity and didn’t pull the trigger for several months.

     I resigned as the Executive VP of Comworld on February 17, 1982 and walked into my own new world on that very same day.

Wuergler Productions was born.

     And, on that very same day, I signed a contract for an option on Alan Foote’s story, "Downwind". Over the next several weeks and months, I began lining up many potential projects such as the wonderful script "Bridge Across the Sky", the fabulous story of the Berlin Airlift. After kicking off with those two, I then bought the film and distribution rights to a fabulous book, "The Ogden Enigma".  Several ideas and concepts soon followed: a TV Special starring Clint Eastwood, a country music exercise video, "Disney’s Greatest Music" budget had been submitted for approval, "Even a Clown Must Die" was sent to A-Z Productions in London for consideration as a co-production, and I submitted "First Gentleman" and "Going Gold" to Paramount as concepts for TV series. And, all of this boatload of really great stuff was being generated from my basement office in our home on Foothill Drive.

     I was getting ready to really rock…and boy, was I excited or what!

     With all of this excitement swirling around, sometime in mid-April, I got a call from Dennis Despie at Disneyland. He was the successor to Bob Jani and was now the current Vice President of the Entertainment Division. He asked me to fly down to Anaheim as he had what he characterized as an interesting proposal for me. He wouldn’t tell me over the phone for some reason, so naturally, I was intrigued. I went to California.

    He truly stunned me by offering me the job of being the Director of the Entertainment Division at the new Tokyo Disneyland which was scheduled to open in Japan the next April (1983). They would move my family there, give me a private driver and give Sherry a cook and a housemaid, put my children in the American School, and “require” that we take a two-week “vacation” in Hawaii (or wherever) twice a year just so we didn’t get culturally burned-out or too homesick.

     Good grief! Wow! What an offer!

     After talking to Sherry and both of us fasting and praying about it, I turned him down.

     We had too much going on with our older children at the moment to uproot them from their current already “difficult teenager” routine. Plus, I had just hung out my “shingle” as a production company and had made multiple commitments to several people and to projects that I believed in. It was a hard choice to make, as I hope you can appreciate, as I would have truly loved to return to the Disney organization. But, deep down, I knew I was being guided in my choice to say no.

     None of my projects were in pre-production yet, but things seemed to be humming right along toward that end, when I get yet another outa-the-blue call.

     I had met Bruce West when I was running the international group at Osmonds and he now wanted to delve into the movie/TV business. He was an extremely successful real estate developer in Dallas and asked me if I would be willing to move my new company to Texas and become an arm of his operation. What was appealing about working with him was that he and his two partners would fund all of my preliminary efforts and would support anything I wanted to do…as long as it was profitable for them. That seemed like a better offer than uprooting and moving to Japan, especially since I could still be Wuergler Productions.

     So…off to Dallas we went.

     All of us except Todd. He didn’t want to move with us and since he was legally “of age” we said ok. He wound up staying with the Pope family, which was a blessing both to him and to us in so many wonderful ways. Lewis Pope was the Bishop at the time and was an absolutely wonderful man who, best of all, really loved Todd. It was a good deal all around.

     We rented a pretty little duplex on Moondust Drive and Debbie started to school at Richardson High School. Leah, Mike and Mark were too young for full-time school so they stayed home with Sherry. I have always been grateful that I continued to earn enough so that Sherry could stay at home at be a full-time Mom. That was always a great blessing for us.

     One of the happy accidents that happened in Dallas is that Leah, Mike and Mark were recruited to be runway models for children's clothing. They were on the "catwalk" at the Dallas Fashion Mart showing off kid's fashions and they were so very cute doing their thing. I don't know if they enjoyed it (ask them if they even remember it) or not but Sherry and I sure did. It was great fun for all of us. We even spent a little time and money to take some modeling headshots of them - which we didn't know would come in handy in about another year or so. (I wanted to get into the act too...)

     The office for the LCM Group covered the entire 8th floor of the Republic Bank Building on the North Dallas Parkway, which was a fabulous address.

     They gave me a great big office (not as big as theirs, of course) and a budget to buy some really gorgeous office furniture, which I did right away. I set up shop and started to focus on my roster of possible projects, attempting to get them funded and produced.

     After a couple of months with a lot of activity but with nothing solid happening, I got yet another call for yet another opportunity that would send me on yet another short detour. My buddy Phill Catherall had also left the Comworld organization and had gone to work back in Los Angeles…surprise, surprise…for Disney.

      Their international home video group, the sales side of which Phill was leading, needed a fun
subject with which to launch their world-wide efforts and they had landed on something they called
“Disney’s Greatest Villains” – that’s all they had…a title and an idea. Would I be interested in coming
back to the Studio and writing/producing/and directing this little project?

     Would I? Yes, but I just got to Dallas and had just purchased an office full of terrific-looking furniture. Plus, I now had partners (Bruce, Kenny and Alan – LCM Group) to whom I was accountable and couldn’t just jump up and leave. But again…surprise, surprise…they said go ahead and do this for Disney as it might lead to some great business for Wuergler Productions.

     So, off to Burbank we went.

     It turned out to be kind of a family vacation as we got a Disney-owned condo to stay in and Todd flew into town to visit us for a few days. It was a terrific three weeks for the family.

     But, it was a grueling three weeks for me. This little project, which was nothing more than an idea with a title, had to be written, produced, new narration recorded, art directed, edited, packaged and shipped out in 15 working days. Holy Moley. Phill didn’t tell me that when he extended his invitation. I first had to select the clips featuring which Disney Bad Guys I was going to use, and then piece all of that together into some kind of storyline that made sense and which was fun and entertaining to boot.

     The idea that got me up and running was to use the two “baddest” guys from The Jungle Book, Shere Khan the tiger and Kaa the snake. I made them my narrators and the story simply took off from there.

      It was terrific fun. Captain Hook from Peter Pan, the Wicked Queen from Snow White, Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty were just a few of my stars.

     I wrote the new dialogue, hired some fabulous voice actors, recorded their lines, then I went to work and buried myself in the editing room for hours and hours – which, by the way, is absolutely the best creative fun a creator can have, especially when you create something new that didn’t exist before you starting cutting the film into an exciting storyline.

     I had an absolute ball!!

     And, best of all. I made the deadline!

     It really turned out great. Phill was kind enough to send me this little review from one of the home video industry magazines.

          Disney’s Great Villains; starring the greatest collection of villains and weirdos ever assembled:
          Walt Disney Home Video; 75 minutes; family entertainment.

          Hosted by Shere Khan the tiger and Kaa the snake from The Jungle Book, this movie is                        dedicated to all those unsung villains who have graced the silver screen over the years.

          Who can ever forget Captain Hook and his eternal fight against the crocodile and Peter Pan,
          Snow White and the Wicked Queen, and all the dragons and other weirdos that frightened the
          pants off us in our tender years?

          Shere Khan and Kaa don’t do a bad job either and are right up there among the villains. There              is also a review of some real-life scoundrels, and no movie about monsters would ever be                    complete without a venture into the future and The Black Hole.

          My one complaint about this movie was that it was over too soon, and we did not see enough              of these lovable villains. LMG.

     How wonderful to get such a terrific review! It was great fun to do and the family had a terrific time in California.

     Now…back to Texas and back to the main job-to-be-done.

     But, little did I know what awaited me back in Dallas…can you say "yet another detour"?

     I thought it would be good for each of you to learn the story of how I joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I wrote this many years ago but have felt prompted to share it with you.

I hope you enjoy reading it. 

Fishers of (Me)n

by Michael Wuergler

            “Is it alright if we come in and play the banjo? Your roommate said that you wouldn’t mind.”

            Not a terribly unusual request, assuming that I, indeed, had a banjo and that I wouldn’t mind if this stranger at my door came in and played it. Actually, there were two strangers…young men about my age dressed in suits and ties and looking very eager. Mormon missionaries, I thought, just like the ones I remember that came to our home in Denver when I was about seven or eight years old. Mom and Dad invited them in to teach my little brother Larry and I. We had just started Lutheran Bible School that summer and our parents thought that it would be a kind and gentle way of discouraging these proselytes from knocking on our door again. Mom and Dad would let Larry and I look up the scriptures while they deferred all the missionaries’ questions to us. The ploy must have worked, because I only remember one such evening.

            “Not at all, come on in.”

            There were four of us who shared the apartment in Boulder and my roommate did, in fact, have a five-string banjo that was one of the tools of our trade. We had a musical group that was actually doing pretty well at the time playing small-college concerts throughout the West. We also had a steady gig at Disney’s night club in Denver, did regular ski-season appearances at the Red Onion which was the hottest club in Aspen, and had just released our first single record on Finer Arts Records, a small local label. With all that going on it was real tough for me to carry a full load of classes at the University of Colorado so I was on student cruise-control, taking only about 3 to 5 hours a semester. I was having a great time performing with the guys and was in no hurry to graduate anyway. I don’t even think I was studying when the two missionaries knocked at my door.

            It’s over there in the black case, help yourself.”

            I came to the University of Colorado on a full music scholarship with the intention of getting my degree. I was a pretty good trombone player, tinkled an ivory or two, and could vocally belt a tune with the best of ‘em. I also subsidized my college tuition playing the pipe organ at weddings, funerals and worship services all over town. I had picked up the bass fiddle to play in the group…a “utility infielder” with a beat.

            “Hey, this is a beautiful instrument.”

            I loved music. When I was really young, Mom told me that music as not an elective for me. She said that it was to be part of my education and just maybe, some day it might pay for part of your schooling. Actually, it was my trombone that got me into college since an academic full ride was most certainly out of the question. Mom was right, as usual. Music would, in very deed, pay for my education…in more ways than one.

            “Strum away, Elder.”

            One of my roommates was a Latter-day Saint, so I knew enough to address this young minister properly. He also played a mean banjo!

            “Hey, you’re a real good picker.”

            I also knew the proper way to address a proficient banjo player.

            My music degree from CU was going to be just a necessary stop along the way because I was headed to a Lutheran pulpit. At least, up until that afternoon I thought I was. At the tender age of 14, I had chosen my career path and felt that I was well on the way. In my youth, I knew that I wanted to preach the gospel, direct the choir, compose a hymn or two, write the definitive work on Martin Luther, and wear all the fancy vestments on Sundays, all to the glory of God. It was a youthful decision that felt good and right. Mom certainly approved, even if she had been raised as an Irish Catholic. My immediate family was a real “Heinz 57” variety pack of religions. Dad was a Nazarene. My grandmother was a practicing Christian Scientist and Papa Max was my wonderful Jewish grandfather. Larry and I were raised as Lutherans because they had just built their church around the corner. It was close so that’s where we all went every Sunday morning to worship, every Thursday night for choir practice, and I mowed the lawn on Saturdays to pay my way through elementary school.

            While Elder Goodfellow was pickin’ away and Elder Anderson was wrapped up in the strains of “Orange Blossom Special,” I took a quick mental trip back to my family’s living room and remembered sitting on the floor with my brother with open Bibles, giving those poor frustrated missionaries a real hard time. My memory was stirred and I recalled that they really didn’t come to teach a couple of youngsters. So, now might be a good time to make amends.

            “That was terrific Elder. You play real good. Hey,” as if I had just thought of it, “don’t you guys have a lesson or something?”

            As I now reflect back on the very moment, the mental picture I have in my mind is a large rainbow trout taking the hook. Elder Goodfellow set the banjo down and began to reel me in.

            “Do you know anything about the Mormon Church?” he asked “goldenly.”

            “I seem to recall a couple of things from my childhood,” I responded.

            “Would you like to know more?” The fish had been carefully netted.

            These two young ministers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, my contemporaries in age, proceeded to lay out before me the most wonderful and amazing story. Having a somewhat religious bent, it was easy for me to follow the logic of their presentation. It made sense. Papa Max and my Jewish friends in the neighborhood had given me a terrific head start in understanding the Old Testament, and between Vacation Bible School in the summers and Pastor Jim prepping me for the Lutheran ministry all year ‘round, I had more than a working knowledge of the New Testament. I was, at that very moment, taking a history course at CU on the Reformation, so I also knew enough about the Apostasy to let them breeze right through their intro material.

            It was the story of Joseph Smith that caught my heart first. Remember that as a devout Lutheran and for as many Sundays as I could count, I had repeated the Apostle’s Creed wherein I had vocalized my belief that there was some sort of mystical three-in-one God that was always really incomprehensible to me. I could never really connect with the idea of a Trinity, but there I was, declaring that I did each and every Sunday by rote.

            Elder Anderson stated with such conviction that he knew that Joseph did, in very deed, see and hear the Father introduce His Son. Two separate and distinct heavenly beings, standing in the air, bathed in a glorious light, speaking to a faithful young farm boy, in upstate New York (of all places), all in the full light of day. Wow! Did that knock a few slats out from under my Lutheran upbringing or what? Martin Luther’s “Here I Stand” took on a whole new meaning for me that afternoon. “One” in purpose, not a mystical triad. “One” in a unity that I could truly comprehend.

            That was a jolt. But it was nothing to what happened next.

            “Here, Brother Wuergler, read this passage in Ezekiel thirty-seven.”

            “Oh, I know this one. I never did understand the “stick” thing though.”

            They both smiled. You could almost see the fish being dragged into the boat.

            The story of The Book of Mormon as they laid it out for me was so powerful, so compelling, so overwhelming, that I could hardly catch my breath. Imagine, a book placed in the ground somewhere in America centuries ago by a prophet-warrior that contained within its pages the Gospel of Jesus Christ in all its purity, translated only once into English by the young Joseph who never went beyond a third-grade education.

            “This is amazing, you guys! Do you know what you are really saying?”

            The trout was in the cooler        

“Brother Wuergler, let’s try a little experiment. Hold your Bible in your left hand.”

I did.

“Now, take this Book of Mormon in your right hand and let me read this passage in Ezekiel to you again. As you listen, follow the instructions as the Lord speaks.”

As he read the scripture, something truly astounding began to take place.

It was sinking in that I was holding The Stick of Judah in my left hand. Because of Papa Max, I knew the implications of the Bible being the story of the Jewish nation. That was a given.

But, this strange and wonderful new book was in my right hand. As he read, I did what the Lord told the Old Testament prophet to do.

“And the two shall become one in thine hand.”

As I placed The Book of Mormon in my left hand and held them both together, I said out loud, in a very reverent voice of recognition, “the Stick of Joseph.”

I couldn’t breathe.

After a moment or two, I began to be self-aware again. I felt as if my heart was being plugged directly into an electric socket because I could feel the surge of power that was sweeping over me. There I was, sitting in my apartment, actually, literally, physically fulfilling Old Testament prophecy. It was absolutely electric!

“The two have become one in my hand,” I whispered.

Time stood still. Pure testimony was flowing.

I hardly remember the next few minutes or what the missionaries were saying to me. I was reflecting on the thousands of rabbis down through time that had no idea what the Stick of Joseph truly referred to. How many Protestant ministers had skimmed over that passage, along with a lot of others, that didn’t fit into their particular doctrine or dogma, or did not support a Sunday sermon, so they simply dismissed it? Now, here was clarity…revelatory clarity. The two sticks had become one bringing the same message to the world…Jesus was the Christ. The Mormon Church was teaching me a simple story that was so profound in meaning and implication, that it would change the world.

At least it would mine. At that very moment, I knew that my career path toward the Lutheran ministry was coming up on a major detour.

“Will you commit to read The Book of Mormon, Brother Wuergler?”

I was still tingling from the experience.

“Yes…I will.”

I remember being completely unable to put it down. I spent the next three days devouring its pages, being wonderfully fed by the Spirit as I read. With each succeeding page turn, I could feel my testimony being fortified. Yes, Lehi coming to America answered so many questions about native origins. Of course Columbus was led here. Yes, the Savior did appear to his “other sheep.” But those were evident and rational. What was more powerful for me was taking Moroni’s challenge seriously.

“With real intent.”

I knew it was true.

My first phone call was to Mom.

“I’m going to be changing my major again, and I won’t be going into the Lutheran seminary like the family expects me to. I am going to be baptized in the Mormon Church.”

Long silence.

“How could you do that? They don’t even believe in Jesus.”

My heart pounded.

“Boy, have I got something wonderful to tell you!”

I was now the one baiting the hook.

# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #