How Lee Pitts comes alive
As Lee Pitts entered the cold, bright television studio Monday morning, a few of his guests were arriving. An hour earlier, at one of his favorite restaurants, The Cracker Barrel, he talked about how he would spend the day taping a month's worth of shows for his weekly television program, "Lee Pitts Live."
"It usually takes me about two days after being in the studio to come down, to detox, to just kind of shhhhh…" He makes a motion with his hands like a balloon deflating.
Each segment's done in one take and unedited, so Mr. Pitts puts a premium on staying energized throughout the day. Even off-camera he's all the things you expect a talk show host to be: gregarious, funny and personable, with a disarming smile that puts people at ease.
The shows are broadcast to 500,000 households in Southwest Florida every weekend: Saturday at 9:30 a.m. on MY-TV Channel 8 and Sunday at 6:30 p.m. on Comcast Channel 14.
Mr. Pitts put on his game face along with his jacket and tie as soon as he arrived in the studio at the Comcast building in Naples. He took phone calls from guests to give them directions and instructed the ones who'd arrived on what to do while waiting to be interviewed, or how to use their Lee Pitts Live coffee mugs as a prop.
Three big cameras sat in front of the stage, unmanned. The cameraman wired the first round of guests for sound.
Some of the interviewees, like Broadway Palm theater owner Will Prather, who was there to talk about his role as chairman of the Democratic Party in Lee County, remembered how long Mr. Pitts has been around.
"(Lee) has been a trooper with this program," Mr. Prather said. "How many years has it been?"
For the record, Mr. Pitts has been on the air 17 years. He was also the first, and is still the only, African American television talk-show host in the region. The year the show went on the air, critics were skeptical of "a lot of things," Mr. Pitts said. "The fact that I was an African American, that this was going to be a show that focuses on issues and people that impact the minority community."
But he insists, "My show is not the 'black' show. One of the things I want people to understand is that everyone is welcome on my show."
His diversity of guests generates interest year after year. Interviewees have included the football player Deion Sanders, before his career took off; Fort Myers Mayor Jim Humphrey; and Florida Gulf Coast University President William Bradshaw. He also interviews entertainers — sometimes rappers and, in an upcoming show, a belly dancer.
The show all got started by mistake, sort of. "I stumbled into television," Mr. Pitts said.
He grew up in the poverty stricken projects of Birmingham, Ala., one of seven siblings raised by a single mother. The family was poor "by material standards," Mr. Pitts said. "But in all senses, I wouldn't change the way I grew up for anything. I grew up with a lot of love."
It was his own first love, swimming, that drew him to the world of television. He collected and sold bottles for the pocket change necessary to get into the public pool in Birmingham.
Later, after escaping the projects and earning a master's in economics from Clark Atlanta University, he started aquatics programs in inner city and low income areas in the United States, Haiti, South Africa and South America.
Mr. Pitts moved to Fort Myers in 1989 to pursue a career at First Florida Bank after being an executive at Wachovia Bank. But he had also started doing TV and radio spots.
"I became known as the swim tip guy," he said, "Like Richard Simmons was in aerobics. People recognized me."
In the early '90s, Mr. Pitts filled in as a guest host for a show on the old WBRTV, which was absorbed by WNFM-TV, and the ratings soared that day. The general manager, Hugh Boyd, insisted he should have his own show, because it would be a chance to have an African- American host.
"I think he was interested in changing the face of Southwest Florida," Mr. Pitts said. "I think he thought if I didn't host the show it wouldn't happen."
Mr. Pitts finally agreed, and the show was his own. "That's rare," he said. "I just went from zero to 100 in five seconds." And it's been that way ever since.
As Mr. Pitts began to tape the first segment of the day, the quiet chatter among the other waiting guests turned to a silence. The cameraman counted down,
Two, one…" "Hello, Southwest Florida," he said in that smooth, recognizable voice, before turning to ask Gary Trippe, president of Oswald Trippe Insurance Company, a question. The day had finally begun.
