by Bill Ernst
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| Photos by Bachmann Studios/Jeff Zipay |
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Mark McEwen was on the scene of breaking news at a young age—not that he was aware of it at the time. The son of an Air Force colonel, he lived in Berlin for several years during his grammar-school days. The Berlin wall had just gone up, and there were tanks in the streets. It was 1963, and young Mark had the opportunity to see President Kennedy during his “Ich bin ein Berliner” visit to Berlin. On that big day, Mark stood on a crowded boulevard lined with wooden barricades, when a man standing next to him said, “Kid, you should see your President.” With that, the man picked him up, put him on his shoulders, and Mark got a glimpse of “his President” as Kennedy’s motorcade passed.
A serious time and place for adults, but a wonderland to this school-age kid—the cobblestone streets, gummy bears (not yet ubiquitous in the States), lederhosen and other uniquely German things.
McEwen has a warm spot in his heart for Germany, but Maryland is the place where he lived from his junior-high years through college at the University of Maryland. “It’s where my family is,” he says; a family influenced by music. “Music has always been in my family,” he says. His father used to sing with the Duke Ellington Band. His brother Kirk is a DJ at 98 Rock in Baltimore. His sister Leslie, now retired, was an opera singer with the Seattle Opera. “No one plays any instruments, but they’ll sing for their supper!”
But music played second fiddle to intellectual pursuits at the McEwen household. “My family was all about being smart,” he says. “We started the day with the Washington Post, and finished it with Huntley and Brinkley. In order to keep up with what was going on around the table, you had to know what was going on. Living in Berlin, there was no television, so you had to read a lot,” he says. He’s a voracious reader: “I like knowledge. So, having said that, the two things that are most important to me are being smart and funny.”
“Funny” plays a larger role in McEwen’s life than many people realize. While he jokes that his college major was “hops and barley,” he actually majored in journalism, prepping him for a news career. But his real dream was to act in sit-coms or the movies. Bill Cosby was one of his heroes. “I left Maryland to move out to California to be a stand-up comedian,” he says.
McEwen did do stand-up there, but eventually headed east to Chicago and took the fabled comedy course at Second City TV, the training ground for John Belushi and many other young comedy greats. “When you complete the course, you get to audition to go on the main stage. I never got that far because I took a job in New York, and off I went.” But the experience he gained there wasn’t wasted. “Improvisational comedy was a great foundation for live television because stand-up is ‘get to the joke,’ and improv is ‘make the scene work,’” he says. “On live television, you don’t know what Paula Zahn, Bryant Gumble or Harry Smith are going to say. My job was to see that pitch coming and hit it as hard as I could. Improv helped me with being in that live atmosphere.”
He maintains perspective on comedy’s impact on his career. “When you’re in the news room and you’re a funny guy . . . [people there] fall right on the floor. Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and those guys—that’s not a funny room. Having that wit along with the intelligence really helped.”
McEwen was a DJ at WNEW-FM in New York when Joe Piscopo got him a gig at The Improv. One night a man came up to him and said, “You can make a lot of money making commercials.” And right from the start—after his very first audition, in fact—he landed a FedEx commercial and his very first line on TV: “I’m covered.” That ad ran for a year. He recites his résumé of commercials after that one: “I did Lite beer from Miller. I did McDonalds and Burger King. I did Campbell’s soup, Eastern airlines—all national commercials, all on camera. My mother had every little old lady in Maryland watching out for me [and] telling me ‘It ran at 2:15—make sure you get paid.’”
Mention the name “Mark McEwen” and most people around the country will say something like, “Oh, right! CBS in the morning.” But the road to that network gig starts with radio.
McEwen was doing morning radio in New York at the same time CBS decided to make a change in its morning show. Also at the same time, The Daily News did a story on him, in which he said he’d like to do television next. One of countless New Yorkers who read that story was Bob Shanks, executive producer of the CBS morning show, who told his wife, “I think I found my new morning man.”
Before McEwen knew it, he was on the air. On national network TV, with no TV experience. “All I knew was one thing that I had read in a magazine that Chevy Chase had said: ‘When the red light comes on, talk to it like it’s one person.’ I was too naïve to tailor myself to be someone else. I was just myself.”
McEwen began as the show’s weatherman, then became the pop-music editor while still doing weather, then music editor (no more weather), then entertainment editor and, finally, anchor. He anchored CBS This Morning from 1996 to 1999.
“When I began covering entertainment, I covered 16 Oscars, 16 CMAs, 16 Golden Globes, and two Cannes Film Festivals,” he says. “I always treated the artists with great respect.” Recalling the Country Music Association awards, he says “country music then wasn’t what country music is now. If you sold 500,000 records, you did very well. Randy Travis was the first to hit a million. Now you’ll sell two, three or four million. I interviewed Garth Brooks, Vince Gill very early in their careers. So year after year they would want to be on our show because they would see the others on the show.”
Those interviews were well-received by his peers, as well. During his tenure with CBS This Morning, Mark won CMA’s Electronic Media Journalist of the Year in 1992, his first year as the show’s entertainment editor. “Being an African American and winning the Country Music Association award doesn’t happen every year,” he says with a touch of pride. And he wears a ring Garth Brooks gave him to celebrate Brooks being named Artist of the Decade.
But it was back to the weather desk when CBS hired Bryant Gumble as anchor. “I could have done one of two things,” McEwen says. “I could have left [the show] or stayed.” He decided to stay: “I came back to doing weather, to be alongside Bryant.” But bringing Gumble in didn’t help the show. “When Gumble came in, it never took off like we thought it would, so Bryant was the first to go, Jane Clayson was the second, and I was the third.”
What was next for McEwen? On one hand, he says, “it was, Now what do you do? On the other hand it was, Hey, now what can I do? We’re in a business where you’re rated . . . In a business like that, you’re a nomad. I’m lucky that my tent sat in one place as long as it did, and now we’ll see again what’s over the next horizon.” One of the things over that horizon was Florida.
After the CBS show ended, McEwen continued hosting A&E’s Live by Request, which began in 1996, and considered several news-job offers, including one in Chicago, one with Fox News, and possibly MSNBC. His agent also got a call from Skip Valet, WKMG’s news director. But when McEwen heard it was local news in Orlando, he wasn’t interested. “They’re good people,” the agent continued. “It’s nothing but a plane ride.” OK, he’d go and talk to them.
“I thoroughly enjoyed Skip Valet and . . . Henry Maldonado, our general manager—what they said, how they said it, that look in their eye.” He returned home and told his wife, Denise, who had lived here for 17 years. The idea of coming back was exciting.
“The other thing is that I’ve got little ones. I don’t want to make too much of this, but 9/11 shook a lot of people to their core,” he says. “New York City is still shaky . . . I’ve lived for 22 years in an apartment, and I feel my children deserve to have grass under their feet. They ought to be able to ride their bikes in the front . . . and play in the back yard.” These were some of the things that made Orlando interesting to him, he says. “It’s a place that has great possibilities for me and my family.”
With the WKMG job in hand, the McEwens settled on Seminole County as “a lovely place to live.” “My wife picked Seminole County. It’s a delightful place.” While he likes all of Orlando, “and Orlando has been very very nice to me, I thoroughly enjoy right where I’m living in Seminole County.” So does Denise. She’s “into flowers and gardening, [and] has a great eye for putting things together in the house.” And she’s an athlete, he says: “She runs, she bikes, she does all that stuff. And she’s the best mom on the planet.”
And their neighborhood seems to love them as much as they love their neighborhood: “After moving out of Manhattan [to New Jersey], nobody said a word when we moved in. When we moved in to Winter Springs there were cookies . . . baskets, people ringing the doorbell. I can’t tell you how dear that was. We have a great neighborhood [and] great people . . . I thoroughly enjoy it.”
McEwen moved into his new house last September but didn’t do his first broadcast until October. He watched from behind his desk at WKMG as the others presented the news. His eagerness to slip into the anchor chair nearly drove him crazy. But this allowed Mark to ease into his new position. It also gave him an opportunity to get to know his colleagues better before working beside them on the air.
“After a while, you’re asking about their kids or their college, that sort of thing. Now when I get on the air and I’m throwing [the story] to Nancy Alvarez, I’m throwing with feeling, because I like Nancy,” he says. Ditto for his other colleagues on the WKMG staff, the best bunch of people he says he’s ever worked with. “Louis Bolden—I’m throwing with feeling. Jessica Sanchez, and Chris Trenkmann, [too].” And he’s especially impressed with his co-anchor Jacquie Sosa. “These are all people I’ve learned to respect and really enjoy working with. It means a lot more . . . when you have relationships . . . and admire their work, because they do good work.” He considers himself extremely fortunate: “You can’t pick who you work with, so when you get people you enjoy and respect and like, consider yourself lucky. I’m lucky.”
Many people wouldn’t be thrilled about getting up at 2:30 a.m. every day, and McEwen is no exception—in theory, anyway. “I swore when I left New York—I swore—I would never get up early again.” So much for New York oaths and wishful thinking. But having done morning radio and TV for years, he’s somewhat resigned to it and takes his morning schedule in upbeat stride.
From the professional perspective, he feels the morning allows newscasters to connect with their audience better. “People are waking up. They’re more vulnerable—they’re in their robes and bunny slippers—and looking for the news,” he says. “But they’re also looking for their friends to bring that news to them. So the more they get to know you, the more they’re familiar with you; they allow you into their lives. And that’s what I like about this slot.”
He likes it from the personal perspective, too. “I’m sure down the road I’ll work into some other time slots and I’ll get used to that. But for now, this is a perfect schedule for me, with the babies,” he says. “When they’re going to bed, I’m going to bed. I’m up long before them on the weekends, so I . . . let my wife sleep and I take them until she wakes up.”
Mark and Denise McEwen have known each other for 30 years. She’s his sister’s best friend. They went to high school together and dated on and off over the years. Then she moved away and later married someone else. So did he. Each of them had a daughter. After both marriages ended they found each other again, and fell head over heels in love. They were married two and a half years ago, and their blended family has grown. In addition to Mark’s daughter Maya, who’s almost 10, and his step-daughter Jenna, who just turned eight, are “the babies”—identical twins Miles and Griffin, 16 months.
Where does this growing family go for fun? “We like to go to the Mall at Millenia,” says McEwen. “We go to Cocoa Beach and sit on the beach. We went to the pier . . . the little boys are looking at the surfers, and it’s just good stuff. Those sorts of things are what make living in Florida special.”
As for some of the local grown-up pursuits, he says he hasn’t been to a Magic game yet, “only because it happens after dark,” which doesn’t work with his schedule. And the McEwens love art fairs. “The first thing I did was to go to the Winter Park art festival, then the Maitland art festival,” and they bought some art at the Disney festival. “The difference between here and New York is that [New York] has great art but you have to go to a gallery to see it. Here, you’re walking along with a cold drink with the kids . . . and you say ‘I’ll take that one.’”
One thing he’s still getting used to is the climate. “Christmas and New Year’s is brand new for me—I was in my pool!” he says of the warm weather. “I’ve owned convertibles my whole life that you use three or four months out of the year. And now I’m going home with the top down today.”
“I’ve seen the world. I’ve done three Olympics, one in France, one in Norway, one in Japan. I’ve been to Europe, Monte Carlo. I’ve been to Hawaii . . .” He lived in New York for 22 years, longer than anywhere else. It’s the city that feels most like home to him, and he goes back often. He misses a lot of what is New York: the Daily News, the New York Post . . . a bagel here, a slice of pizza there . . . the Yankees. But a funny thing happens when he lands at LaGuardia: he misses his new central Florida hometown. It’s not New York, but this new place is a good place.
“It’s funny—I don’t want to get too philosophical—but sometimes life leads you to places that you didn’t know you were going to, but you find out that it’s where you want to be.”
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©2005 Seminole magazine
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DINING
