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"The WORLD TOMORROW"
A WORLDWIDE BROADCAST
HERBERT W. ARMSTRONG
Proclaims to the World the
GOOD NEWS OF THE WORLD TOMORROW
BOX 111, Pasadena, California
Publishing:
The PLAIN TRUTH
a Magazine of UNDERSTANDING
June 3, 1955
Dear Co-Workers with Christ:
The first television programs have been produced!
But when I wrote you, in my last letter, that I was going to
have to go thru a gruelling ordeal, impossible without YOUR PRAYERS
and divine help from God, little did I then know WHAT an ordeal
awaited me! It was the most terrible experience I have had to go
thru since the founding of the college.
Going on television has been an entirely new experience.
It's nothing like radio. Everyone has a little "mike-fright" the
first time on radio. I did---22 years ago. But it lasted only the
first three or four minutes of the first broadcast. All there was
to it was that suddenly, without warning, the first ten seconds or
so after I began to speak into a microphone, I found my heart
pounding, and I was being forced to breathe hard, as if I'd been
running a race. But it was all over in a few moments, and it
didn't harm the program.
But when I first came down the steps, onto the rostrum and
to the speaker's stand in our TV set, and began to speak, suddenly
I was in a new, strange, frightening world---and my mind went
blank, and I found I couldn't speak. I was standing in front of
powerful lights like many suns brought down close---blinding
lights---and behind them all was total DARKNESS. I knew that in
front of me, and around me, were 14 men of the TV crew---camera
men, sound men, electricians, technicians, assistants, the director
and producer. But I couldn't see them---only those blinding
lights, with the script-girl sitting on a camp-chair far enough in
front of the lights that I couLd see her taking down every word I
was trying to say (but not saying) in shorthand.
Those terrific lights seemed to cook my brain. Under the
intense heat, believe it or not, my mind FROZE! Then I felt I'd
made a fool of myself in front of that Hollywood TV crew. Of
course I've been accustomed to speaking to audiences, or into a
microphone, for many years. It has grown easy and natural to look
down into the faces of an audience, whether small or large---to
gain immediate audience-contact---to become instantly aware of just
TWO THINGS---with nothing else on my mind---the AUDIENCE, and my
MESSAGE, and the relation of one to the other. Under these
circumstances I can THINK on my feet, become completely and