’60 Minutes’…The Man Behind “The Look”, Arthur Bloom

Shown below are photos of the door to the ’60 Minutes’ Studio 33, including a memorial plaque to Arthur Bloom, a major innovator of television graphics.

Arthur Bloom was the award-winning CBS News television director responsible for the distinctive on-screen look of 60 Minutes since its debut. He led the modernization of on-screen graphics at CBS News, and died in 2006, but his legacy lives on.

He was one of the last remaining original 60 Minutes founders still working for the program. Bloom also played a role in helping to train Dan Rather to succeed Walter Cronkite in the CBS News anchor chair in 1981.

Bloom spent his entire 45-year career at CBS and used his keen eye and a symphonic vision of camera work to become one of the medium’s best directors of live political event coverage. His outstanding talent was recognized with the first Lifetime Achievement Award in News Direction from the Directors Guild of America (DGA) in 1995. The same organization had honored him twice before, once for news direction of CBS News coverage of the 1976 Democratic and Republican conventions and, before that, in 1973 for his work on 60 Minutes.

Most of Bloom’s time was devoted to 60 Minutes; he helped to create and then honed the consistent, classy look of the broadcast. Each week he worked in Studio 33 in the CBS Broadcast Center monitoring the program’s studio production and directing the 60 Minutes correspondents as they taped introductions and tags for their reports. He influenced some of the broadcast’s most basic elements, starting with its famous ticking stopwatch.

The first stopwatch was Bloom’s own. The timepiece symbol began as part of 60 Minutes creator Don Hewitt’s idea for “60 minutes of reality” and came to life when Bloom filmed his own Minerva stopwatch. The concept worked well enough to be used at the beginning of the broadcast’s third edition on Oct. 22, 1968.

Soon it was shown between segments, eventually becoming the iconic logo recognized by generations. Bloom updated the logo, but only in barely noticeable ways at intervals of several years. His modernizing touches included the use of slimmer typography and the addition of subtle shading and texture to the logo’s background. He oversaw the stopwatch’s transition from a filmed image to a computer-generated one.

“Artie had an eye for what worked visually and what didn’t – he was invaluable to me,” said Hewitt. “I depended on him to make the broadcast as visually appealing as it turned out to be. He was at my side every step of the way.”

Bloom also helped Hewitt execute the graphic concept for 60 Minutes as a magazine for television, deciding on a mock-up of a magazine page to put behind the correspondent to begin each of the broadcast’s segments. Now also computer-generated, the magazine concept has essentially remained the same.

Bloom also directed and helped launch the program’s off-shoot edition, 60 Minutes II, which was broadcast from 1999 to 2005.

Every four years from 1974 to 1990, Bloom was called on to direct live political coverage, something he embraced with energy and competitiveness.

Network television political event coverage in the 1970s and ’80s reached new heights in its scope and the use of new technology. It became a three-network race to cover the events in the most dynamic way, with Bloom leading the CBS News charge with demands for more cameras and better graphics. The feisty Bloom fought hard and could be very persuading. He got an extra camera for the Republican Convention in 1984 almost by force.

A fun-loving jokester (and slightly built) he jumped from a table onto the back of the 6-foot-5-inch director of technical operations, yelling, “I want that camera!”

Bloom also ushered in new and colorful ways to punctuate the coverage with engaging animation enhanced by the computer that greatly modernized CBS News graphics capabilities. Innovative animation included red, white and blue exploding firecrackers and galloping donkeys and elephants used as “bumpers,” the visuals used between coverage and commercials. Bloom became so well known for these that CBS News staffers had bumper stickers made reading “Bloom’s Bumpers.”

Bloom’s biggest talent was bringing an event to life on the small screen through the lenses of cameras by instinctively and immediately choosing the images that worked from the many camera angles on monitors in front of him. He could orchestrate the images to convey even the subtle sights and sounds of an event.

First, he would lay his “orchestra” out, positioning cameras and selecting their operators based on the individuals’ talents. Once the event began, colleagues marveled at Bloom’s split-second decisions on which cameras to cue, watching him deftly direct up to 17, each strategically placed by him to play a pre-ordained role. Like all live event television control rooms, CBS News’ was chaotic, but as boisterous as Bloom could be, he was in control at all times. As a joke, he once stopped directing, turned his back on the monitor wall and pretended to become disinterested, drawing panicky stares from colleagues.

CBS News political events coverage directed by Bloom includes the Democratic and Republican conventions and the primaries from 1976 to 1988, the 1976 Ford-Carter and the 1984 Reagan-Mondale presidential debates, and all the election nights from 1974 to 1990. He occasionally directed coverage for special news events, such as the return of hijacked TWA Flight 847 (1985) and the Geneva Summit (1985), and “CBS News Special Report: A Celebration of Liberty” in 1986. He also directed documentaries, such as: “JFK: 1000 Days and 10 Years” (1973); “Vietnam: A War That is Finished” (1975); “CBS Reports: Energy: The Fear, The Facts, The Future” (1977); and “Nuclear Arms Debate” (1983).

Bloom saw the transformation of onscreen network reporters into highly compensated television stars beginning in the late 1970s, but never became star struck. So respected was his candor with on-air talent and his talent for television, that Bloom was asked to train rising star Dan Rather, whom he directed on 60 Minutes, to take over for Walter Cronkite in the anchor chair. Bloom coached Rather by taping him reading Cronkite’s script from the night before and then critiquing the read with him.

In another special mission, he served from 1990 to 1992 as special assistant to the president for program production, working with the entire CBS News production staff to assure the quality of its broadcasts.

Bloom joined CBS in the mailroom as a messenger in 1960 at the age of 18. He moved to the News division as a clerk and soon became a member of the DGA, receiving his first directorial assignments at the age of 21. From 1962 to 1965, he served as an associate director and director at WCBS-TV, the CBS Owned station in New York. In 1966, Bloom was named an associate director for CBS News and, in 1968, was named a director/producer when he was asked to direct the launch of 60 Minutes.

The above article is courtesy of CBS News.com.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-founder-arthur-bloom-dies-29-01-2006/

Source