John Edward Cross Country

Keeping the Faith


Thanks for checking in. This episode of John Edward Cross Country is called "Keeping the Faith." In his opening chat, John reminds the audience that he wants "to simply leave people better off then when you find them." I’ve heard him say that a hundred times if not more. So as EP of his show, these are our marching orders as well. This episode will add to your life experience, and in no way will waste your time. If so, you might want to stop reading now. There are a lot of mysterious elements and energies merging to put these shows together. Now with just two more episodes to deliver this season, I want to recognize some people behind the scenes, whose names roll by too fast at the end of the show and how they are connected to it. David Siegel, for instance, is our (EIC) Executive-In-Charge by day, mad drummer and poet by night. David has to account for every dollar spent on our production—line by line. For a talk show, we spend a lot of time and money on the road telling the back stories of the people read by John. Every one of those stories is attached to at least 30 line items that rarely are repeated. So every report is customized to accommodate: plane fares, equipment rentals, insurance riders, releases and heck of a lot more. But being an experienced pro, affable and a spiritual artist at heart, David has been able to make sure that our shows are delivered on time and on budget. Thanks, David. How ironic, that close to nine years ago, before this production phase was even thought about; I bumped into David on a train. We had not seen each other in years. David and I had worked together at FOX. In his very hyper way he was going on and on about an HBO special he had just seen that Saturday, about a psychic named Jack/Jim/John or something like that. I politely told him I would check it out. Just as coincidentally (I don’t really think so) within weeks other friends of friends asked me to look at tapes of John’s readings. So I went to a production office in NYC to view the tapes. On one tape, there was this guy in glasses and a suit doing great psychic readings. I probably overstayed my welcome. When I looked around I had found that everyone had left. There I was alone in the office of someone I had just met...then the phone rang. What do I do? Because no one was there to answer, it kept ringing and ringing. Anyway, very uncharacteristically I picked up the phone…it was John. I started to explain who I was, but he already knew all about me, why I was there and more. Wow! It turns out he knows a lot about television producers. He told me what shows I worked on, and that I wasn’t very receptive to him pitching psychic segments to me, back when I ran a morning show. I joked that maybe neither of us was ready…he didn’t laugh. He did invite me to go to a retreat in the Caribbean that he happened to be running the next weekend. I laughed. Hearing my skepticism, he emphatically said the network would send me…they did. Five years later, we hired David to be our EIC. I know keeping the faith and leaving people better off then how you found them might sound like a cliché…but not around here. In fact it is one in the same. Thanks for tuning in, Paul