“To tell a story and tell it well is more fun to me than just about anything. Whatever I’m doing, I want to do the best I can and do it better than the day before.” —David Carter
But wait (as the infomercial spokesperson says), there’s more. In 1981, Carter created the Telly Awards to honor outstanding television advertising that wasn’t necessarily big budget, and was more of a local and regional level. Some two decades later, when he sold the company, it was generating more than 14,000 entries per year (this writer has won a few in his career for the record).
Yet among all his accomplishments and accolades, the story that really puts a smile on David Carter’s face includes the name: Johnny Carson. In the late 1980s, a writers strike essentially put the television industry on hold. Carson, in an effort to protect the jobs of the dozens of others who worked on his show, returned with material he had written. One fateful Friday night, while David Carter watched, Carson’s skit bombed — and, as he recalls, “Johnny challenged anybody out there who could do better
16 COASTE | ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
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