- Welcome to Counter Culture, a talk show normally in a diner.

- Your body temperature is normal.

- Joining me on tonight's show are former investigative reporter on NBC10 and the author of I Dare Me, Lu Ann Cahn.

- We get stuck in our habits and we forget how wonderful it is to explore.

- Satirist, comedy writer and former senior editor of Mad Magazine, Joe Raiola.

- Mad didn't shy away from controversial subjects.

The political humor in Mad was always sharp.

- And legendary network television producer and executive Erni Di Massa.

- When people say to me, "What did you do "on The Oprah Winfrey Show?"

I say, basically, "I stood back and got out of her way."

- All right here on Counter Culture.

Mm!

Hi, folks, I'm your host, Grover Silcox, coming to you from Lehigh Valley Public Media's Studio B while we wait for the go ahead to return to our original home at Daddypops Diner in little old Hatboro, PA. - I am here to dare you to go on your own journey, to stop listening to your "no" voice and say ,"Yes, do the new!"

- My first guest is a familiar face to folks in the Philadelphia region.

She served as an Emmy Award-winning anchor, news reporter, entertainment show host and investigative reporter for NBC10 for 27 years.

She's a cancer survivor and has overcome a multitude of challenges.

Today, she's the author of I Dare Me, a hilarious if I do say so myself, and inspiring book which chronicles her effort to do something new every day for a year.

It's a fun read, but even more, it's an inspiration for all of us.

And it is a pleasure right now to welcome Lu Ann Cahn to Counter Culture.

Lu Ann, hi!

- Hi, Grover.

Thank you.

I'm sorry we're not at an actual counter together.

- I, believe me.

I feel like I have just turned on NBC10, though.

And there's Lu Ann Cahn!

Because for years, people in the Philadelphia area, you were a familiar face and a reassuring voice and someone who was always out there giving us the latest news and some of the best investigative journalism.

- Well, that is so, so very kind of you to say.

And I loved my career in TV news.

And now actually I'm at Temple University launching the next generation of communicators.

So I've still got my hand in it.

- I know.

I think that's great.

So you were raised in Georgia, right?

Atlanta?

- My my family moved around a lot.

But I would say most of my growing up was in Atlanta and I went to the University of Georgia.

- Mm-hm.

Did you go for communications and radio, television, all that?

- I'm one of those weird people who decided at age 15 what I wanted to do for my life.

And I knew I wanted to go into TV news reporting.

You know, it was the '70s and the first women were getting into the business.

And I remember my father was a social worker.

And I remember he pulled me into a room and said, "Look, there's there's a woman and she's reporting "and you could do this."

And I thought, "What...an exciting career that would be!"

And that was it for me, you know, it involves all the things I love, you know, writing and performing and and storytelling, more importantly than, you know, than anything, storytelling and telling stories that were important for people to know.

- When you were at NBC10, you fill many roles.

I mean, you were a host, you were an anchor, a street reporter, a feature reporter and an investigative reporter.

In fact, you're an eight-time Emmy Award winner.

And then you sort of switched roles in a way because you shared your own story of being a survivor of breast cancer.

- Within the next four weeks, I met 12 different doctors, had a dozen different tests, went through every emotion in the book, and then a faced lumpectomy... - This is where you'll have the scar.

- A mastectomy... - More rigid and firm.

- Reconstruction with an implant... - Make an incision along the outside... - And now, chemotherapy.

- And I always think how brave that must be because you really have to get personal.

And that's really not our normal position.

- No, definitely not.

You know, when you're trained as a journalist, you're told you are not the story.

But in 1991, when I was diagnosed with an aggressive breast cancer, I had just turned 35 years old.

And at that time very few women would speak publicly about breast cancer.

All the pink ribbons and the marches and everything you see today just really didn't exist.

I went to a doctor with a lump as a young woman.

There was no breast cancer in my family.

I went to a doctor and they told me there was nothing wrong with me.

And so I walked around with this thing while it grew.

- Wow.

- Until I finally got diagnosed and I just thought if it happened to me, it could happen to someone else.

If I picked one story that I'm most proud of, I would say it's probably that one.

- My personal battle with breast cancer is over, hopefully for the rest of my life, but it will always be a part of my life.

- My oncologist this year said, "You are no longer a cancer patient."

I can't believe it after all these years.

I said, "Are you kidding?

I'm done?

"I don't have to come in here anymore?"

And he said, "Yeah, you've survived so many years "that you are now done."

So cancer free and healthy.

But I did get very, very stuck in 2009 when the economy tanked.

- Yes.

- And there were a lot of changes in the world, not unlike what's going on now, except it wasn't a pandemic, but it was still an avalanche of change coming at us.

And I found myself very angry, very stuck.

Being told to change, not wanting to change, having loved my job as an investigative reporter and then being told, you know, "Half of your staff is gone, "you've got to shoot your own video.

"You've got to edit your own video.

"You've got to tweet, you've got to Facebook.

"You've got to do all things," and...

I'm sure many of your viewers can relate even now we have to learn so many new things and I just went, "No."

Things changed and I had to learn to change as we are having to learn to change now with all of the the new ways we have to learn to communicate and work, go to school.

All of these things are changing now, too.

- And that, is that what prompted then this sort of metamorphosis into challenging yourself to do something new every day?

And then that blossomed into a terrific book, which was great.

I loved reading it.

- Oh, thank you.

I'm so glad you like it.

And I love that you think it's humorous because I know you're a stand-up comic, too.

And I think it's important to bring humor into our stories when we can.

But yeah, when I got stuck, I would say I was somewhat depressed.

I refused to change and my daughter, who had just finished college, had come back from LA, and she said, "Shame on you.

"You know, you're a two-time cancer survivor.

"You need to fix this!"

And long story short, is she convinced me that I needed to do something new every day and start a blog about it.

- Some of them were what would seem simple, although they might not have turned out that way.

And others were kind of like, wow!

- Most of them were simple because I was working and I had to fit them into my everyday.

I mean, I did do some big things, like, the first day was the polar bear plunge in Atlantic City.

It was so outside my comfort zone because I don't go into the ocean in the middle of summer, much less the middle of winter.

But that was day one.

- I like the one where you tooled around in a wheelchair, which really actually was a great learning experience, right, an eye opener?

- It was truly eye-opening.

I think that was one of the most made me feel so grateful for what I have and so inspirational and made me have a completely different insight of those who are disabled or in wheelchairs.

The difficulty going to the grocery store, just the difficulty crossing the street, just the difficulty getting through the building.

And now I realize, too, any of us could be in that situation any day.

When you start stepping outside your comfort zone on a regular basis, you know, you start reinvigorating your life again.

Everything refreshes.

You start realizing you haven't done everything.

You haven't learned everything.

There are other things we might like to do.

If we if we don't push ourselves, we'll never know.

- The book is doing well and you speak.

I don't know how the pandemic is working now.

- I started doing virtual events and I realized, "Wow, this is fun, this is interesting and this works."

So, yes, the speaking goes on.

- Fantastic.

Well, thank you so much, Lu Ann.

I am so thrilled that you dare, but I'm even more thrilled that you share, and sharing it all with us today.

Thanks.

- Yes.

Well, thank you so much for sharing this with your viewers.

I appreciate it, Grover.

- Same here.

Lu Ann Cahn, a broadcast journalist, motivator, survivor and inspiration who dares all of us in the most delightful way to make every day a beautiful adventure.

If you were among the millions of readers who cried when Mad Magazine closed shop forever and retired Alfred E Neuman, the face of Mad, then you'll love my next guest.

As he writes in his bio, he spent an embarrassing 33 years writing, creating and managing the madness at Mad Magazine.

Today, he performs a one-man show called An Evening of Mad Comedy, sharing stories behind the scenes at the magazine.

Anyway, he's got tons to tell us.

Please welcome Joe Raiola to the counter.

Joe, how are you?

- How are you doing, Grover?

Thanks for having me on.

I'm sorry you couldn't get a better guest.

- Well, hey, I was thrilled.

Are you kidding?

- I'm the one who's thrilled.

The first interview I've ever done without pants!

And it's very comfortable, let me tell you.

- Somehow I thought you probably weren't wearing pants.

Anyway, Joe just for those folks who might not be aware of Mad Magazine and what it is, describe it.

- America's longest running humor magazine.

Simple as that.

Started in 1952 as a comic book.

In 1955, Mad became a magazine, the only surviving title from the legendary EC Line between well, from then up until the end of 2017 produced 550 issues.

- Wow, and it's a fictitious figurehead, his picture's right behind you, Alfred E Neuman.

- Alfred was named actually after Randy Newman's uncle, Alfred Newman, who scored films in the 1950s.

And the Mad staff back then were fans of his.

And somehow they decided they were going to name this gap-toothed idiot kid after Alfred Newman.

- How did you get the gig at Mad?

I mean, that seems like a dream gig.

- Yeah, I mean, you know, like a lot of things, there was an element of luck involved.

Started writing and performing comedy in junior high school, and I knew that that's where I was going with my life because I was totally unqualified, I realized even at an early age, to do anything else.

And out of college, I just started playing clubs in the late '70s.

I was playing all those places and failing miserably at them.

I was working with my good pal Charlie Kadau.

And we were at the right place, right time.

Al Feldstein, who had been an editor, the editor, the top editor at Mad for 28 years, was retiring.

And we were in our late 20s, which by Mad writer standards was certainly young.

- Right.

- We were selling to the magazine and they ended up bringing myself and my buddy Charlie on as assistant editors at the time, and we were smart enough to never leave that job.

And we were remained at Mad until the end of 2017 when the magazine shut down in New York City and foolishly moved to Burbank.

- I know you said that if you matured, you were fired.

- That is true.

It was perennially adolescent at Mad.

Always question authority.

Don't believe anyone, especially people who seem like they know what they're talking about.

That was Mad's message to to kids and adults through its through its long run.

- Yes.

Pure satire, pure satire.

- Pure satire and silliness.

- And silliness.

Right, yeah.

Funny was first and then whatever the message.

- Yeah, I mean we never took ourselves seriously.

That was the whole thing about Mad.

We never and if you took yourself seriously around there you'd be, you'd be cut down to size very, very quickly.

That got a little trickier as time went on.

I think comedy changed over the years and the satirists and comedians were expected to address very serious issues and at times not be funny, having to know when to turn it off, right?

We've seen it with the late night guys now.

Sometimes, they're not funny and they're intentionally not funny because they feel it's not appropriate.

- Right.

What were you known for coming up with?

Was there any one thing or?

- Well, you know, when I think of my favorite Mad piece over the years, it was a piece that I wrote that was based on the sighting of the Virgin Mary in the grilled cheese sandwich many years ago.

- Yes, right.

A true story, right?

- True story.

A woman down south saw the grilled cheese Virgin Mary in the grilled cheese, and she sold the grilled cheese sandwich for, I think, $28,000 to a casino.

And then she sold the frying pan that the grilled cheese was cooked in for $6,000.

She got $34,000 for this Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwich... - Wow, well that was a miracle right there, yeah.

- Yeah.

So I wrote a piece in Mad called "Other Religious Images and Food "Currently Available on eBay."

And it was a visually driven piece.

And we had stuff like Ganesh and baba ghanoush and the 12 apostles in a box of Chicken McNuggets.

Mad didn't shy away from controversial subjects over time.

Mad was not shy about going after religious extremists.

The political humor in Mad was always sharp.

I think it was especially sharp during my last years there when we really, I think, were ahead of the curve on on Trump.

- After all these years, why did it close its doors?

What happened?

- Well, you know, technically Mad is still open.

I mean, Mad is still publishing.

It's all reprinted material.

Corporate influence became stronger.

Mad became part of DC Comics.

That was always kind of a mixed bag in terms of Mad being part of that world.

Mad was never a... Mad was a comic book early, but Mad's readership and comic book readership were two different things.

Mad was never really a comic book buy.

It was a newsstand buy and they wanted to move to Burbank in California, and we didn't want to go, but they were determined to move to California and in 2017, they say, "We're serious this time, "we're going."

And we said, "Well, we're not."

They launched magazine in Burbank without us, with an all-new staff, without a person on it who had ever contributed, who had ever written an article for the magazine.

And a year later, basically, they were done.

- They were done.

There you go, there's a lesson there.

Tell me a little bit about Theatre Within, because I know that you've been involved with this theater up in New York for years.

- Yeah, I've been involved with Theatre Within which is a nonprofit since 1978.

And I guess we're best known for the annual John Lennon tribute in New York City, which I've been producing for 40 years.

And Theatre Within is all about providing free workshops in creative expression and mindfulness to communities in need.

Right now, we're focusing on the cancer community at Gilda's Club in New York, in New York City, and starting later this year in Philadelphia as well.

- Oh, terrific.

Joe, I want to thank you for stopping by and going a little mad with us.

We'll have you back.

We'll talk about your one-man show and all the other hijinks that you're usually up to, so... - Thank you for having me.

I really appreciate it.

- Same here.

Joe Raiola, a madcap madman now loose to share his madness on stage in a myriad of amusing, magical, curiously, mind-numbingly maddening ways.

My next guest I would call a legend, not in his own mind, but in the annals of television history.

He produced the Mike Douglas Show.

He launched Regis Philbin's career.

He wrote and produced for talent such as Oprah Winfrey, Billy Crystal and Charles Grodin, just to name a few.

He oversaw programs including Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy!

and Hollywood Squares.

He helped create and produce Inside Edition.

He's currently president of Vista Media, a full-service, new media and production agency.

His awards and recognitions go on and on, including, of course, he's a Philly guy born and raised.

Erni Di Massa, welcome to the show.

Welcome to Counter Culture.

- Well, Grover, it's so nice to be with you.

And yes, I was born at St Agnes in South Philadelphia, - Right on Broad Street, South Broad.

- My dad was, my dad was a surgeon there growing up.

- Is that right?

- Yeah.

- How about that?

You went to La Salle.

Was it for psychology?

- Yes.

Yeah, I, I got a degree in clinical psychology, actually got my master's at Temple and was working on my PhD at the time at Villanova when I ended up fully employed by Westinghouse.

- You have had so many interesting roles in your television career.

Did it start on the Mike Douglas Show?

Is that where it began?

Yeah, in 1969 I started as a what we called in those days, a production assistant on the Mike Douglas Show.

But what was great about it is that we had six people on that staff back then.

When I did Oprah, we had 200 people on staff.

So I did cue cards.

I actually ran camera at a time.

I booked transportation.

I answered the phones, I wrote segments.

You know, you you just learned how to do everything right.

- Right, Mike Douglas Show was based in Philadelphia.

- Yeah, we were the number one show on daytime television for 21 years.

The show had an unusual format in that Mike did the show by himself, but with a celebrity co-host who stayed for the week.

So we would do five 90-minute shows live in the first early days until Zsa Zsa Gabor got us off being life.

If you know the famous seven words that George Carlin used to talk about that we couldn't use on television, she used three or four of them.

And the FCC called us that afternoon.

And the next day we started on tape delay.

The other unusual thing about the show was we didn't do a one-on-one with guests.

We had the first guest come out and then we built a panel.

A fellow by the name of Woody Fraser created the show, brilliant, brilliant producer, along with, along with Roger Ailes.

And, you know, they came up with this idea that the panel should stay and talk to each other.

So where else in the world could you have Milton Berle talking to Richard Pryor?

There were just so many wonderful people, everybody from Paul Newman to Sophia Loren to Ingrid Bergman to Alfred Hitchcock.

My all-time favorite guest ever, Fred Astaire, who I just loved.

What a gentleman.

Jimmy Stewart, Bob Hope, George Burns, Jack Benny, you just name it, anybody that was anybody in the '60s and '70s did that show.

And politics.

You know, we booked a lot of politicians, booked a lot of sports figures.

You have to remember, there was no Internet, there was no social media.

So we would read five or six newspapers a day, take somebody out of the headlines, call them up and get them down to Philadelphia and put them on the show.

You know, I'll never forget, I was a young man and just had gotten married and I went to the Westinghouse management.

I said, "I keep hearing these rumors you're going to move "the show to Hollywood."

And, "Oh, no, that's not "going to happen.

Go get a mortgage, buy a house.

"Don't worry about it."

Same day I signed my mortgage papers, they told me, "We're moving down to Hollywood."

So we picked up and left and came out here.

We didn't want to come in.

The executives moved us.

- Wow, but you never look back.

And then the career just took off from there.

- When Mike went off the air finally, I met Regis Philbin, who had a local show in LA, and NBC wanted to put him on the network.

And we went out and we won an Emmy together.

And then I was lucky to meet the King Brothers, King World, which does not exist anymore, but people can look it up.

We had an amazing run of 20 some years and became the largest entertainment company in the world with Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy!, Oprah and then Inside Edition.

- Of course, we lost Alex Trebek and you knew him pretty well, right?

- Alex was just a wonderful - man.

I met Alex in 1983.

Actually, the King brothers, there were six brothers and sisters that ran King World, and their mother loved Alex Trebek, who had been a Canadian host at the time.

He was hosting a Canadian show and a game show and had just come down to the States.

And when they were going to bring Jeopardy!

back, I remember Roger used to say, people would say as we were relaunching the show, "Well, it's an old show.

It was on, it got canceled.

"Why are you doing that old show?"

And he'd say, "Well, we're changing nothing "except the host, the game, the rules and the contestants."

But but the King brothers' mother loved Alex Trebek and he got the job.

And what a wonderful human being, a truly terrific person, a real student of what he did.

He went in there.

He studied those questions.

He made sure all the pronunciations of every word he was going to say were correct.

He didn't want anybody to feel, you know, misguided in answering if don't get an answer to a question, you know, so just a wonderful human being and so sad to lose him.

- You were also involved...

It was a pivotal moment when the first female minority host was given a platform in daytime television with Leslie Uggams.

- I got hired by NBC to help create a show called Fantasy it was that you could write us a letter and ask for anything in the world as long as it wasn't for you and you had a good story.

So Peter Marshall from the original Hollywood Squares was the host and we needed a co-host.

And we auditioned a bunch of people, a bunch of people came through there and Leslie was just wonderful.

And Leslie still is wonderful.

- How many times have you said it, thought it, "Oh, if only I had a second chance, to do something "that's really important," or to undo something... - I didn't put her on the show because she was black.

She was just the best person to do the job.

The network came to me and they said, you know, "We put the first black woman host on daytime television," and then two or three years later, along came Oprah.

When people say to me, "What did you do on The Oprah Winfrey Show?"

I say, basically, "I stood back and got out of her way."

- Is it Vista Media, is now your company?

- Yeah, it's my own company.

We do media of all forms, and it's not always television now.

Matter of fact, my my license plate on my car is "TV or not TV" because it doesn't really matter whether it's TV, it's the content that counts and how you receive the content.

And if you make great content and deliver it, people are going to consume it and enjoy it.

Television has changed, streaming has changed it, YouTube has changed it.

The way people consume the product on an iPad or on a phone.

So it's a different world and you have to create content for what the medium can accept.

- And we want to talk about your involvement as a board member with the Lucy Pet Foundation organization and what you're doing for cats and dogs.

- And my dear friend Joey Herrick, who is just a brilliant man I've known for 45 years, he was my variety show drummer for many years.

He started a little pet food company with Dick Van Patten called Natural Balance, and Joey wanted to give back.

So he asked me to help him and I joined him and we created a foundation.

We do free spay and neuters of dogs and cats.

One feral cat on the street by itself in a seven-year period can produce over 400,000 offspring.

And so the key is free spay and neuter.

And we've now controlled the population pretty well of dogs in Los Angeles.

We'd like to get this spread out across the country.

Cats are tougher.

Most animals that go into a shelter never come out and it's sad because they're adoptable, and, you know, a rescue is the best pet you could ever have early.

- Erni, I want to thank you so much, really.

I feel like I was walking through the history of television.

No matter how much television or whatever you want to call it changes, you'll be part of it.

- Thank you, Grover.

It's been a pleasure.

- Oh, same here.

Thanks so much for joining us on Counter Culture.

Erni Di Massa, a man who has not only worked in television but served to shape its history as a creator, writer, manager and producer.

Best of all, he's still very much an important contributor to this amazing and ever changing medium.

Well, that's all for this episode, I want to thank my guests, broadcast TV veteran and author of I Dare Me, Lu Ann Cahn, the madcap former writer of Mad Magazine, Joe Raiola, and legendary television producer, writer and executive Erni Di Massa.

And thank you for stopping by.

Don't forget to stop in next week for more amazing guests and great conversation right here at the counter.