LOW PROFILE Chris Knows Sports

“LET’S ROCK,” SAYS KKDA-FM sports director Chris Arnold, ripping the paper from his old electric typewriter. Just a few seconds remain before Arnold gives the morning sports wrap-up to K104’s 50,000 morning-show listeners, but he certainly doesn’t appear hurried. A longtime staple in DJ Tom Joyner’s posse, Arnold makes this job look easy. He didn’t even start typing his update until news director Norman Hall began his four-minute segment. Arnold selects two audio interviews, strides into the news booth, inserts the tapes and slips on his headphones just as Hall delivers the cue: “Time for sports-here’s Chris.”

Watching Arnold casually and methodically relay yesterday’s highlights (“And the Cowboys shake it up again, cutting Danny Stubbs…”), it’s hard to believe he is one of the media’s rising stars. Arnold’s easygoing manner belies the fact that he’s one of the best sports reporters around; that his comedic writing and interplay are an integral part of the city’s liveliest morning show; that he co-produced and hosted a nationally syndicated entertainment program. “On the Beam,” which may soon be reborn on cable. But the best-kept secret in local sports media is now out of the bag: In early November, Arnold joined WFAA-TV Channel 8s top-rated sports staff.

And Arnold, 31, isn’t planning on slowing down. “Eddie Murphy told me that he always knew he wanted to be a movie star.” Arnold says, “and that he just didn’t let himself be distracted. Well, I won’t let myself get distracted, either.”

Time is Chris Arnold’s greatest obstacle. His day is filled with demands that most people can’t meet in a week. “I wish there were two of me,” he says. “I know what needs to be done, but there aren’t enough hours in the day to do it.”

His alarm buzzes at 4 a.m. so he can make it to the KKDA studios in Grand Prairie from his home in far North Piano for the 5:30 to 9 morning show. Arnold, Joyner and Hall discuss what’s in the news; Arnold writes the copy for his four sports updates and dishes out some between-songs banter to supplement the other personalities. Afterwards it’s a workout at the downtown YMCA. Then, for the past three years, it was on to Las Colinas, where “On the Beam’-which used to appear on Channel 8 at noon on Saturdays-was produced and videotaped. That’s when he would crank out scripts, call advertisers, round up stars to interview-whatever needed to be done to put together the hour-long mix of music videos and celebrity interviews. “Sometimes you’d see fictitious names when the show’s credits rolled,” he says, “because I didn’t want my name all through the credits.”

Now, with “On the Beam” in limbo after a recent sale, Arnold is juggling his time, using his afternoons and evenings to kill two birds with one quote. Since he’s already busy covering SMU football. Cowboys games, the Mavericks, etc., for K104, it is relatively easy for him to tape reports for Channel 8-while remaining full time at KI04. Arnold will initially be a “part timer” in that he’ll cover events for Channel 8 as he’s covering them for K104, but he’ll have as much air time as any other Channel 8 sports reporter. “They [Channel 8) have a fear of burning me out,” Arnold says, “and I’ve assured them that won’t happen.”

Tough to do both but, Arnold says, not impossible. He has been more than a sports reporter for his 11 years in Dallas. He’s proven a tenacity and creativity that go beyond reporting the latest scores. “He’s completely unique in what he does,” says Joyner, who has worked with him for eight years. “I’ve never heard of a reporter at a music station that does what he does. Most of those guys just read the news, but they don’t know [the players].”

Yes, Arnold often fraternizes with the enemy. Most pro athletes distrust reporters, but Arnold counts among his friends sports stars such as Tony Dorsett, Spud Webb, Ro Blackman, Derek Harper, Mike Saxon, Nate Newton, Dominique Wilkins. Magic Johnson and a fellow University of Oklahoma grad whom Arnold always refers to on the air as “my man Bobby Witt.” Says Witt: “He [Arnold] is the type of guy who’s easy to talk to, a regular guy. Now he’s a ’big television star,’ but he still jokes around in the clubhouse.”

After leaving the game’s site, Arnold usually heads back to Piano, often arriving after midnight. Some nights he doesn’t make it home at all.

“A few times when the Rangers play late, he’ll sleep at the station,” Hall says. “He does put an awful lot of effort into his job. I’ve seen him when he was barely awake. Once he nodded off during a newscast. Well, he didn’t actually go to sleep. He just had a little meltdown.”

Arnold’s reporting palette is full by choice. He fought for the budget and the authority to cover whatever he wanted, no matter where it was. “I used to go to everything” he says. Now, even though he could probably get away without going, he makes almost everything, paying respect to one of his many credos: Kick butt and take nothing for granted. That’s why he can be seen at the NBA Finals, Mike Tyson fights, the Super Bowl, the NCAA championships, the World Series.. . If it’s big, he’s there.

That wasn’t always so. In 1981, Arnold wanted to cover his first event outside of Dallas, the Sugar Ray Leonard-Thomas Hearns fight in Las Vegas. His boss. Chuck Smith, said sorry, not in the budget. But three days before the fight, Coca-Cola offered to sponsor round-by-round updates of the match. Smith, as bosses are wont to do, changed his mind. Arnold, who hadn’t gotten a press pass or booked a place to stay, was told to find a way to do it.

He finally got a flight out at midnight the night before the fight, then found a room at a sleazy dive behind the MGM Grand. Four hours before the bout, he found the promoter and asked for press credentials. The promoter told him to wait. Arnold did. And did some more. Then he couldn’t find the promoter. Then the fight started.

“I ran up to a security guard and gave him $20, and he let me in,” Arnold recalls. “Then I ran back out to a telephone to do my round-by-round updates. Each time I went back in, I had to give him another $20. By the end of the fight, I was out of money.” He smiles. “Chuck was.. .amused. But from then on, I could cover any event.”

It’s this characteristic diligence-and occasional luck-that makes Arnold good. For years he was able to interview quarterbacks of teams playing on Monday Night Football just a few hours before game time simply by calling their hotel rooms. Seconds after Mavericks forward Randy White was drafted, Arnold was several steps ahead of most other reporters and Mavericks personnel trying to contact White; he already had White on the phone (from White’s home in Louisiana) and was relaying his comments to the Reunion Arena crowd gathered there to watch the draft. When the San Francisco earthquake halted the 1989 World Series, Arnold was the first radio personality in the nation to report what happened, as he was calling on the only press-box phone that worked.

But his Big Scoop was Herschel Walker’s trade to Minnesota. The move had been a topic of speculation for days, and the local as well as national media had converged at a D/FW airport hotel where the NFL owners were meeting. Although the trade wasn’t announced until noon, Arnold told his listeners the details of the deal at 7:50 a.m. He says the source wasn’t Walker, but he says nothing else.

Voice of the Cowboys and KVIL morning sports anchor Brad Sham, who also has worked as a one-man sports department before, says the Walker story was a noteworthy achievement, “If you were going to make a list of the news outlets that would get that story, Chris and that station would not be in the top five,” he says. “What he’s doing is hard work, but he’s real ambitious.”

ARNOLD LEARNED THE VALUE OF HARD WORK and ambition from two strong role models: his mom and dad. His mother, Anita, was at one time the highest-ranking black female at AT&T. His father, Bill, retired from the Air Force and went to work for the postal service soon after Chris was born in South Carolina. His father’s job kept the family on the move-Chris went to grade school in Oklahoma City and high school in Memphis. Throughout, his parents stressed two things: hard work and education.

“They always told me I could be anything I wanted to be, but that I’d have to work for it,” he says. “Summertime (to them] meant that there was time for a summer job. I’d build houses with my grandpa, or cut people’s yards for $3. I had a leathercraft business, sold lightbulbs… I was very active.”

It was in Memphis in 1973 that Arnold first got a job in radio, simply by being a pest. “I was listening to this lady do the weekend news on WLOK, and after she was done the DJ said that she was leaving for college. So I talked my dad into taking me there.” Although the 14-year-old wasn’t immediately hired to replace her, Arnold started hanging out at the station, which led to his taping a few commercials, which led to the weekend news reader job, which led to a DJ license while still in high school.

But despite his budding career, there was no question he would go to college. The only question was which one.

“Dartmouth rushed me, but I didn’t want to go there,” he recalls. “My parents told me, ’If you go there, you’ll be set for life.”’ Arnold, however, liked OU-or, more precisely, the OU football team. He moved to Norman, majored in print journalism and minored in sociology, and graduated in 1980. While there, he worked for two radio stations and interned at a local TV station. Realizing he wouldn’t make a living as a basketball star (former SMU basketball coach Dave Bliss cut Arnold from the OU junior varsity team), Arnold figured his fortunes were at the end of the yellow-lined road, I-35E South, which led to Dallas. He soon got work as a sports reporter for K104.

After three years, Arnold decided he was ready to make the switch to TV, to be a sports anchor. “I went to [Channel 8 sports director] Dale Hansen and asked him what I need to do to work in TV. He said, ’You’ve got to start out in Midland.”’ Arnold was dumbstruck. “I just kept thinking that if it didn’t work out, I’d be stuck in Midland.”

Arnold’s creative salvation came later that year when Tom “Flyjock” Joyner arrived at K104. Joyner, who’s famous for commuting to Chicago three days a week to do his No. I-rated drive-time radio show, immediately encouraged Arnold to contribute more than updates to the morning show. “Chris is a guy who knows comedy and music,” Joyner says. “He’s more than a sports hound. Norm Hitzges is probably a great guy, but I’d bet Norm couldn’t cany on a conversation about Prince.”

Besides throwing in improvised barbs and comments, Arnold scripts much of the humor found in the show, Joyner says he often writes down jokes from both Arnold and the drier-witted Hall to use on the show; Arnold was doing top-10 lists before David Letterman was; and before Dana Carvey ever unleashed The Church Lady, K104 had the soft, matronly voice of Sister ErrUhh, who’s sometimes heard with another sectarian character, comedian Doug Starks as The Reverend Brother Pastor Deacon Dr. Doug (as in “Why Rev, you’re certainly, err, uhhh, lookin’ fine today”).

It often seems that Arnold is everywhere and that everything he wants, he gets. In 1983 he wanted to meet a particularly gorgeous Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader. So he did. Then he married her.

“I told Nadajalah [his wife] that I’d quit and be with her 24 hours a day,” Arnold says, adding that without her, he couldn’t have the kind of success he now does. He holds up her picture.

’”She’s really great,” he says. “But that’s an old picture.”

Hall, ever mischievous, leans over and takes a look. He’s been taunting Arnold with Jungle Fever jokes the entire morning. “Yeah, that is an old picture,” Hall says, straight-faced, “She even looks black there.”

IF ARNOLD HAS AN ALBATROSS, A BURDENSOME venture that failed expectations, it’s “On the Beam.” It began innocently enough when he co-hosted a show called “The Beam” (Black Entertainment and Music) off and on for a few years, but when that went under, he decided to try for a show of his own, keeping only a new version of the name.

Through mutual friend Spud Webb, Arnold met former Park Cities People publisher Reid Slaughter in the summer of 1988 and pitched the idea of a locally produced, nationally syndicated show. Slaughter, who had just sold his paper for $1,2 million, agreed. “On the Beam” began that fall.

Both knew that success with the show wouldn’t be easy. “If I had known the odds before I had done it, I wouldn’t have started,” Arnold says. “A syndicated television show-out of Dallas? It’s unheard of. And a black television show?”

Arnold is proud that “On the Beam” had relatively great ratings in major markets, but it’s not the play, it’s the money that’s the thing.

Although it moved closer to profitability each season, the show couldn’t get over the hump. After losing a huge sum of his own money. Slaughter decided to sell to Pyramid Productions in Garland in late September of this year. He says Pyramid can give the show the capital and resources it needs to be revived, such as a cable deal. “We just ran out of money,” Slaughter says.

Slaughter finds no fault with Arnold’s work or TV performance, even though Arnold is better on the radio than on the small screen (syndication producers have described his TV presence as “fair”). He’s noticeably stiffer on the tube, but that hasn’t kept him from other high-profile gigs. He recently hosted a TV entertainment special taped in Czechoslovakia and seen throughout Europe and Canada, and he says he’s turned down other TV offers because he hasn’t had the time.

To Arnold, juggling jobs is a given. “Sometimes I think it’s too hard,” Arnold admits, sounding a bit weary. “But it’s like that Tom Cruise movie. Sometimes you’ve just got to say, ’What the f-.’” He pauses, leans forward and smiles. “And I couldn’t possibly work harder than I already do.”