Transcript
00:00:02 Speaker 1
This is Phil Stone. On this tape we are interviewing Bill Ballantine, assistant manager of CJEZ in Toronto.
00:00:10 Speaker 1
Bill Ballantine started in radio as a part timer when he was a teenager at CKWX Vancouver in 1952, doing shows like teen time and religious broadcast.
00:00:20 Speaker 1
He attended the University of British Columbia, from which he graduated, and during his time there he spent many years working for the radio station, UBC Radio and during the summer worked in Prince Rupert for CBC as an announcer.
00:00:33 Speaker 1
He also spent a year as a specialist with the UBC community.
00:00:38 Speaker 1
His first job actually in radio as a full time came about as he had met Don Jamieson, the former cabinet minister and former president of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, whose friend Jeff Sterling had opened the station in Montreal, and he suggested that Bill might be a good person for that station.
00:00:57 Speaker 1
He eventually went there as chief of copy.
00:00:59 Speaker 1
And worked there for quite a while before Mack McCurdy at CJAD Montreal approached him and asked him if you’d like to be program director for CK FM, the CFRB sister FM station in Toronto.
00:01:11 Speaker 1
He stayed with CDFM for 20 years, from program director to assistant manager and then general manager. In 1987, he became assistant manager of what was then a new Toronto station, CJ EZ, where he is today in the position that we mentioned back in those early days, Bill teen time. Those were the kind of shows that we.
00:01:30 Speaker 1
Had in radio.
00:01:31 Speaker 2
Yeah, they were still doing block programs about half an hour and an hour at a time, and this was on, of course, a Saturday afternoon.
00:01:40 Speaker 2
And we were.
00:01:43 Speaker 2
Covering the news of the local high schools and that sort of thing playing.
00:01:47 Speaker 2
The nearest things we had to to hits in those days.
00:01:51 Speaker 2
And of course, at the same time I was helping produce some religious broadcasts on CWX.
00:01:58 Speaker 2
Which also had an interesting history because originally the frequency that CWX was on.
00:02:04 Speaker 2
Had been owned by the United Church of Canada.
00:02:07 Speaker 2
And C kwax came and made an arrangement with them to take over their frequency and build proper facilities in return for giving the church 7 hours a week of free broadcasting time.
00:02:19 Speaker 2
So then there was the obligation by the church to fill it in a professional.
00:02:23 Speaker 2
Manner and so that was a good.
00:02:25 Speaker 2
Education too.
00:02:26 Speaker 1
Kind of equipment.
00:02:27 Speaker 1
Were you using gerico?
00:02:29 Speaker 2
CWX had very sophisticated equipment for its time.
00:02:34 Speaker 2
It was all custom built.
00:02:36 Speaker 2
I think the chief engineer was Charlie Smith.
00:02:41 Speaker 2
Stan Davis is one of the junior engineers at that time, and yes, now he is.
00:02:44 Speaker 1
He’s a well known name in broadcasting.
00:02:49 Speaker 2
They still had electrical transcription, cutting facilities, so the commercials could be cut on the disc.
00:02:57 Speaker 2
For playback.
00:03:01 Speaker 2
Cartridges were just about to come along. They came along just a very few years later, the tape recorders were making the quarters 7 1/2 inches per second and very effective and very reliable.
00:03:12 Speaker 1
When you think back to that time though, does it seem a less sophisticated time?
00:03:18 Speaker 2
Not really, no, no, no.
00:03:19 Speaker 2
I think people were.
00:03:21 Speaker 2
As professional and as careful as they are now.
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And certainly the competition.
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If it wasn’t.
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As total as it is now, it certainly was treated in a very serious manner.
00:03:34 Speaker 1
Do you remember what was expected of you?
00:03:35 Speaker 1
What did the program director expect of you just to get 30 minutes of our time, or did he have certain laws and rules that he laid?
00:03:42 Speaker 1
Down for you.
00:03:43 Speaker 2
Well, in many cases we would produce shows that were based on information or material out of transcription libraries.
00:03:53 Speaker 2
So if you had four turntables, they were all going and there was a written.
00:03:58 Speaker 2
And you were doing your own announce operating?
00:04:01 Speaker 2
And so it demanded a a pretty solid level of.
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Proficiency with all kinds of equipment.
00:04:11 Speaker 1
Shall we say strict worthy about a mistake as compared to the the present time for the more upset or less upset upset were they?
00:04:18 Speaker 2
Well, I think more, yeah.
00:04:20 Speaker 1
I think today’s a lecture.
00:04:22 Speaker 2
I think it’s a loser situation today and I remember in those days it was.
00:04:27 Speaker 2
Absolutely imperative that a record end right at the.
00:04:32 Speaker 2
Break before the top of the hour, so the news started precisely on time.
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There was no room for being 15 seconds.
00:04:39 Speaker 2
Off you had to.
00:04:40 Speaker 1
Be right on to him, just like.
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The CBC generally.
00:04:42 Speaker 2
Yes, right. Yes. Yeah.
00:04:43 Speaker 1
What about the commercial bill?
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What kind of commercials were you dealing with?
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Do you recall that?
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With the.
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Local there were a large number of national commercials.
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And a fair number of local ones, car dealers, furniture dealers, that sort.
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Of thing.
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What about the writing in in?
00:05:01 Speaker 1
In those commercials, how does it compare?
00:05:04 Speaker 2
They had very extensive rating departments and they had quite mature people.
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In charge of these departments, they were very creative people.
00:05:16 Speaker 2
It wasn’t uncommon to have 567 writers in a.
00:05:19 Speaker 2
In a station in Vancouver.
00:05:21 Speaker 1
In your early career, as I mentioned in the opening of this interview, we talked about you as being a person on air, then at university you also were on air, where you’re not.
00:05:31 Speaker 1
So when you got into radio, per say, you were not.
00:05:34 Speaker 2
On there, no.
00:05:37 Speaker 2
If had, I stayed on the air in Radio, I might have wound up being a news reader at the CBC or something like that.
00:05:42 Speaker 2
I definitely knew that I was not about to become a commercial personality.
00:05:47 Speaker 2
Or to get rich doing commercials for that matter.
00:05:51 Speaker 2
So I decided that administration was.
00:05:54 Speaker 2
The better route for me to go and I think I was generally speaking wise than that decision.
00:06:01 Speaker 1
When you think of this moment of starting out as a coffee person at the at CGM Rosa dot CGM CGM.
00:06:11 Speaker 1
Writing copy then and writing copy 2530 years later. What about that bill? Is it a lot different?
00:06:17 Speaker 2
No, it isn’t really any different.
00:06:19 Speaker 2
I think it’s the same.
00:06:21 Speaker 1
Same feel, same.
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Still have to sell the same way.
00:06:26 Speaker 2
You know, you take advantage of.
00:06:29 Speaker 2
The trends of the time were, I think the consumers are more aware today than they were then of.
00:06:35 Speaker 2
Of the hypes and the come ONS that maybe we got away with too many of those in the.
00:06:40 Speaker 1
Old days you’ve been in administration for a while now.
00:06:44 Speaker 1
You know, a number of years and there’s a there’s a different kind of person, I think in broadcasting is not than there was when when you started that.
00:06:52 Speaker 2
Yes, I think so.
00:06:53 Speaker 2
In which way?
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I think the people in.
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Senior people in broadcasting now have to be.
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Much more aware of.
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The role of the.
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The public.
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PRTSC in this case.
00:07:11 Speaker 2
In the old days, there was a clear demarcation.
00:07:16 Speaker 2
The CBC controlled private broadcasting as well, and they were the bad guys and we were the good guys and that was just an undisputed fact that any convention you went to.
00:07:28 Speaker 2
CRDC comes along and they find different ways of.
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Of describing public expectations under broadcasting.
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So I think the more successful broadcasters today have to.
00:07:40 Speaker 2
Have a clearer understanding.
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Of the public nature of the airwaves and what the responsibilities of broadcasters have to be.
00:07:49 Speaker 2
One of the most interesting projects.
00:07:52 Speaker 2
That I was involved in over the years.
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Was the cat’s FM committee.
00:07:59 Speaker 2
Which over a period of 10 years while it’s still goes on, of course, negotiated with the PRTSC.
00:08:08 Speaker 2
From the initial FM policy paper.
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Which was such.
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An ambitious and lofty document, a translated into the realities of what it really means day-to-day and hour by hour in programming.
00:08:22 Speaker 2
And that was a fascinating experience.
00:08:24 Speaker 1
It must have been fascinating, too, to be a part of the early days of FM, was it not?
00:08:28 Speaker 2
Yes, it was.
00:08:29 Speaker 1
What are you trying to do then?
00:08:30 Speaker 1
What did you?
00:08:31 Speaker 1
Think you should do with.
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FM in those days, nobody really knew.
00:08:39 Speaker 2
They knew only that it was.
00:08:42 Speaker 2
Primarily going to be a music medium.
00:08:46 Speaker 2
They did not.
00:08:49 Speaker 2
In the early days, anticipate that the CRDC would in fact require significant verbal content.
00:08:55 Speaker 2
Which most broadcasters felt was contrary to the general nature of FM.
00:09:02 Speaker 2
FM was in the initial stages was something that the owners hoped wouldn’t lose too much money because someday it was going to be a good thing.
00:09:12 Speaker 2
And that.
00:09:12 Speaker 1
So then they were trying to break even.
00:09:13 Speaker 2
Until then, you’re just hoping to break even, yeah.
00:09:16 Speaker 1
Do you like what?
00:09:16 Speaker 2
Happened to it.
00:09:17 Speaker 2
Oh, yes, I think so.
00:09:18 Speaker 1
Yes, it’s a lot different.
00:09:20 Speaker 1
Doesn’t that do you remember that?
00:09:20 Speaker 2
Yes. Yeah.
00:09:22 Speaker 1
Time magazine said that AM was American Music and FM was foreign music.
00:09:26 Speaker 2
No, that’s great though.
00:09:28 Speaker 1
As the early days, yeah, that was partially true.
00:09:32 Speaker 2
Yes, it probably was.
00:09:34 Speaker 2
Yeah, yes, yeah.
00:09:34 Speaker 1
This time.
00:09:36 Speaker 1
What about the kind of people that they’ve worked on the air at F on FM in the earliest time?
00:09:41 Speaker 1
Were you looking for a different kind of man than the AM man?
00:09:46 Speaker 2
Yes, primarily we’re looking for and use the example that I was involved in, CFRB and CPFM.
00:09:52 Speaker 2
CFRB, of course was the.
00:09:55 Speaker 2
Powerhouse AM station of Toronto and.
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The on air people were personalities.
00:10:01 Speaker 2
They were household names.
00:10:03 Speaker 2
On FM, we didn’t want the personalities to over shadow the music.
00:10:08 Speaker 2
Music on CFRB was almost secondary to the other kinds of communication that were going on.
00:10:15 Speaker 2
We wanted people that would go with the flow of the music and sort of.
00:10:21 Speaker 2
Advance the format, not themselves.
00:10:25 Speaker 1
When they’re not FM stations, it almost rolled music.
00:10:28 Speaker 2
Though Oh yes.
00:10:29 Speaker 1
So the announcer wasn’t that happy, was.
00:10:31 Speaker 2
He no, no.
00:10:33 Speaker 1
No, he didn’t get a chance to display his personality, no.
00:10:37 Speaker 1
Did you like that?
00:10:40 Speaker 2
Yeah, because they were the really good ones.
00:10:44 Speaker 2
The personality came through somehow, I think, yeah.
00:10:47 Speaker 1
Even with a few words.
00:10:50 Speaker 2
Carl Bannis, for example.
00:10:51 Speaker 2
Personality comes through a great example would.
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And be Don Parish at Chfi.
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It was, in fact, voice track.
00:11:00 Speaker 2
But had such a distinctive sound to him.
00:11:03 Speaker 2
That he became a well known personality.
00:11:07 Speaker 1
What about the music itself, Bill? The kind of music in the olden days of FM? Was it popular music, or was it just cuts that you picked up of LP’s?
00:11:19 Speaker 2
It was.
00:11:21 Speaker 2
And I’m going back now to the early 60s.
00:11:25 Speaker 2
Instrumental music was.
00:11:28 Speaker 2
A big seller.
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There was a.
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You know the big orchestras, the cost alignments and lot of anties and.
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And these huge sound production sound orchestras sold extremely well.
00:11:43 Speaker 2
They were top selling albums.
00:11:45 Speaker 2
So it was popular.
00:11:48 Speaker 2
It was not not hit parade, but very, very popular but.
00:11:52 Speaker 1
It a lot of it was music that wouldn’t be played.
00:11:54 Speaker 1
On AM and I right.
00:11:55 Speaker 2
That’s right, yeah.
00:11:56 Speaker 2
Why would that be?
00:11:59 Speaker 2
Well, but it just wasn’t hot enough.
00:12:01 Speaker 2
I think was, you know, the feeling.
00:12:02 Speaker 1
Wasn’t contemporary and.
00:12:03 Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah.
00:12:05 Speaker 1
So that.
00:12:05 Speaker 2
The other thing you have to go back to is in the early 60s and this is really before the.
00:12:10 Speaker 2
The Beatles.
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Came along and.
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Gave popular music a real degree of respectability.
00:12:18 Speaker 2
That the hit parade was for a period of time.
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Pretty noisy, immature stuff.
00:12:25 Speaker 2
So the adult was looking for an alternative.
00:12:29 Speaker 2
As I say that that tended to change during the 70s.
00:12:33 Speaker 2
Because the.
00:12:35 Speaker 2
Most popular music of the day did gain a greater degree of acceptance among other.
00:12:40 Speaker 2
Broader population.
00:12:42 Speaker 1
What do you think the demographic was for FM in the earliest times?
00:12:46 Speaker 1
Was that a more mature audience or?
00:12:47 Speaker 2
It was a mature audience because the early sets were big living room sets.
00:12:53 Speaker 2
The FM car radio was very late in becoming a reality.
00:12:57 Speaker 2
So primarily we were battling TV because the big.
00:13:02 Speaker 2
Radio console was in the living room, right beside the TV.
00:13:09 Speaker 2
Prime time was still evening, but they had very little mobility.
00:13:17 Speaker 1
I remember the Bon Pierre, who was one of the first at HF I when I asked him how he thought FM would ever succeed, he said.
00:13:25 Speaker 1
All I want is the majority of the minority.
00:13:27 Speaker 1
Do you subscribe to that?
00:13:28 Speaker 2
That’s right. Yes, yes.
00:13:30 Speaker 1
How how do you how do you feel about it?
00:13:33 Speaker 2
I think the key to survival right now is to pick out the target audience.
00:13:38 Speaker 2
That you want to.
00:13:40 Speaker 2
Which is going to have to be a minority just by the very nature of a number of stations and services around.
00:13:45 Speaker 2
And get your lion’s share of that target audience.
00:13:49 Speaker 2
Where you want to call it 35 to 4435 to 49 or whatever.
00:13:55 Speaker 1
What about the spoken word in the early FM and today, aside from introducing or signing up a record news, for example, of public affairs, was it different in the beginning?
00:14:08 Speaker 2
I think probably CPFM was the first station to.
00:14:12 Speaker 2
Run a full service morning show.
00:14:14 Speaker 2
For example, when we felt that.
00:14:17 Speaker 2
Traffic reports are just as important on FM as they are on AM.
00:14:22 Speaker 2
If not, while people are driving the car before they leave for work, they should know what’s going on.
00:14:27 Speaker 2
So we.
00:14:29 Speaker 2
Introduced that very early in the game.
00:14:32 Speaker 2
News I think is is important on FM.
00:14:36 Speaker 1
Was it written different than it was written for 8:00 AM?
00:14:44 Speaker 2
Not really.
00:14:45 Speaker 2
We used to have.
00:14:47 Speaker 2
In the early days, we had Jack Dennett doing that.
00:14:50 Speaker 2
630 News on CFRB for 10 minutes.
00:14:53 Speaker 2
And the 7:00 PM news on CDFM for 20 minutes.
00:14:57 Speaker 2
And all it was was twice as many stories.
00:14:59 Speaker 2
You know, we called it the news in depth, but there was no really no more.
00:15:02 Speaker 1
Is it a feeling that the FM listener would be more apt to listen?
00:15:06 Speaker 1
That long?
00:15:08 Speaker 1
Excuse me?
00:15:10 Speaker 2
More relaxed.
00:15:11 Speaker 2
Not on the.
00:15:12 Speaker 2
Go probably sitting in his living room.
00:15:15 Speaker 1
More interested in what was.
00:15:16 Speaker 1
Going on.
00:15:17 Speaker 1
That was part of.
00:15:19 Speaker 1
And the commercial was different, was that?
00:15:21 Speaker 1
What did you do with those and?
00:15:24 Speaker 2
We used to.
00:15:26 Speaker 2
Have separate commercials produced the news in depth on CFM?
00:15:30 Speaker 2
Was sponsored by the Ford Motor Co.
00:15:33 Speaker 2
And they had Bill Walker do special commercials just for that feature.
00:15:39 Speaker 1
And again, it was targeting an audience was.
00:15:42 Speaker 1
Upper upper level audience.
00:15:44 Speaker 1
Higher income.
00:15:45 Speaker 1
Umm, higher.
00:15:46 Speaker 2
So as commercials for example, would not make use of any jingles or whatever that might appear on the AM station.
00:15:53 Speaker 2
Was strictly as voice only.
00:15:55 Speaker 2
Bill Walker sort of executive cell, you know.
00:15:58 Speaker 1
You had to live under the what, then?
00:16:00 Speaker 1
The BBG wasn’t when you.
00:16:02 Speaker 1
When you first came into FM, how did you feel about their?
00:16:06 Speaker 1
Supervision. The regulation.
00:16:09 Speaker 2
I had no real problem with the.
00:16:13 Speaker 1
BBG, that’s a board of broadcast government.
00:16:15 Speaker 1
That’s right, yeah.
00:16:17 Speaker 2
The difference?
00:16:21 Speaker 2
I guess in their attitude was that FM was to be for culture.
00:16:28 Speaker 2
So that I believe it was 20% of your music had to be the classical.
00:16:34 Speaker 2
Variety or opera or authentic jazz.
00:16:40 Speaker 2
I’ll take that back.
00:16:41 Speaker 2
Not jazz classics, the real stuff and.
00:16:49 Speaker 2
That was really about the only stipulation we had.
00:16:52 Speaker 2
PRTSC came along and said that you had to do a whole lot of different things.
00:16:56 Speaker 2
And at the same time they took the.
00:17:00 Speaker 2
The intrinsic merit of classical music and said no, not necessarily.
00:17:05 Speaker 2
You got to do foreground programming and we don’t care if you use country music to do foreground programming with.
00:17:11 Speaker 2
But uh.
00:17:12 Speaker 2
They said we’re taking this false value off the classics, which of course they never really did because they.
00:17:20 Speaker 2
Bureaucrats being what they are, they’re they’re always seems to be an additional value to classical music.
00:17:28 Speaker 1
What you did you think about initially, as I recall it, some stations were simulcasting whether or not, yes, and then then that was changed.
00:17:35 Speaker 1
Yes, what about that?
00:17:36 Speaker 2
Bill, that was just as I said, the initial desire not to lose money.
00:17:40 Speaker 2
Let’s get the license in case.
00:17:41 Speaker 2
FM becomes important.
00:17:46 Speaker 2
And let’s simulcast just as much as we can because it doesn’t cost anymore to do it that.
00:17:50 Speaker 1
Way. Did you like it?
00:17:51 Speaker 1
As a programmer.
00:17:52 Speaker 2
No, I didn’t.
00:17:53 Speaker 2
I think some stations had a good reason to do it.
00:17:56 Speaker 2
If they had a difficult AM pattern.
00:17:59 Speaker 2
Or a difficult night time pattern.
00:18:01 Speaker 2
The FM could help offset that.
00:18:04 Speaker 2
That difficulty for them.
00:18:07 Speaker 2
For the most part, no.
00:18:08 Speaker 2
It’s it’s better to have a variety of.
00:18:10 Speaker 1
Programming OK, back in 1952, you were a teenager doing things like teen time and religious programming, which is pretty well gone now, isn’t it? Yes. Yeah, you don’t hear it. You think you could hear.
00:18:20 Speaker 1
It today you think it would work?
00:18:23 Speaker 2
I don’t really think so because I think.
00:18:28 Speaker 2
You get now entire radio stations devoted to that target audience, you know, so I I doubt whether you could make that work or not.
00:18:34 Speaker 1
You don’t.
00:18:34 Speaker 1
You don’t have the black block programming that tries to get every.
00:18:36 Speaker 2
No, no.
00:18:38 Speaker 1
Part of the.
00:18:38 Speaker 1
Audience all through the day, changing all the time, are you?
00:18:41 Speaker 1
Happy about that.
00:18:45 Speaker 2
Basically, yes, yes.
00:18:47 Speaker 1
You’re like A1 stream.
00:18:48 Speaker 1
Station, yes, yeah.
00:18:50 Speaker 2
And but with a lot of variety within that stream.
00:18:54 Speaker 2
You know, you can’t assume that the person in your target audience is a narrow person.
00:18:59 Speaker 2
You got to say, OK, how far can we?
00:19:02 Speaker 2
Stretch this person and talking about theater reviews on this side and last night’s sports activity on the other side.
00:19:10 Speaker 2
You know what is the range of interest for this?
00:19:13 Speaker 1
Person I I keep thinking of the audiences though. Back in 1952 when you began.
00:19:18 Speaker 1
Television was just starting.
00:19:20 Speaker 1
Just started to come into CBC, but really it was radio and the audience was attuned.
00:19:24 Speaker 1
The young people.
00:19:25 Speaker 1
Of teeners were attuned to radio, the teener of the time when we’re talking is attuned to video and television, and it’s, yeah, it’s a different situation entirely.
00:19:35 Speaker 1
Isn’t it? Yes.
00:19:35 Speaker 2
You know, how do you deal with that?
00:19:37 Speaker 2
I I think we just put up with those things as being one.
00:19:41 Speaker 2
More source of the.
00:19:43 Speaker 2
The diversity of things available to to the audience.
00:19:46 Speaker 1
And I talked to veterans of the industry.
00:19:48 Speaker 1
They tell me back then radio was theater of the mind.
00:19:51 Speaker 1
And we had dramas and we had all kind of programming the long range and the shadow and the different things.
00:19:58 Speaker 1
Do you think they again asked you, do you think they could work now?
00:20:03 Speaker 2
They probably could.
00:20:04 Speaker 2
The economy of scale isn’t there, I don’t think.
00:20:10 Speaker 2
CBC’s still doing fine dramas.
00:20:13 Speaker 2
Our version of that as a it’s a short feature, 2 minutes a day called Radio Heartbeat, which won the National Radio Awards for the best program in Private Radio that has the same effect.
00:20:24 Speaker 2
It doesn’t in 2 minutes though.
00:20:26 Speaker 1
That’s one of the biggest things, isn’t it used to be half hour shows I’m on our shows and back.
00:20:29 Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah.
00:20:30 Speaker 1
When you started, they’re gone.
00:20:32 Speaker 1
Yeah, and.
00:20:33 Speaker 1
Are you sad about that?
00:20:35 Speaker 2
Yeah, in a way, because they were fun to do, you know.
00:20:38 Speaker 1
But it’s been fun being in the business. Oh, yes. Yes, thank you, Bill. Thank you. This has been an interview with Bill Ballantyne, recorded in Toronto, April 1988.