Transcript
00:00:02 Speaker 1
This is an interview with Bill Brady conducted in Winnipeg in November 1988 by Phil Stone. Bill Brady began his broadcasting career with CFC O Chatham in 1949 as a transmitter operator and then a studio operator before doing some on air work in 1950.
00:00:20 Speaker 1
He moved to C Kkfi Fort Francis as the morning man. 1951 saw him in Port Arthur as the FBA, where he was the evening announcer, and he held that role with CHOK Sania to which he moved in 1952.
00:00:34 Speaker 1
In that same year, he moved to Ckoi Ottawa as morning Man. Then he took over news and special events in 1954, back to CHOK in Sarnia as the Morning Man, and in 1956 he was in Brantford CK, PC, again. Working mornings, he worked mornings at CKSEL London, to which he moved in 1959.
00:00:55 Speaker 1
And in 1961, he came to Richmond Hill, then known as CGRP. Uh, today, as CFSM and he stayed there for now.
00:01:02 Speaker 1
Months he moved in the same year to CKY Toronto as the morning Man stayed three years, and during that time did some television work, including a year in CTV in 1964, back to London, this time to CFPL as the afternoon announcer.
00:01:17 Speaker 1
Then the morning man in 1983, he became the vice president and general manager of Radio 98.
00:01:23 Speaker 1
And FM 96. You started working at a transmitter bill. What was that like?
00:01:29 Speaker 2
Well, it was terrifying.
00:01:31 Speaker 2
First of all, I was 17 years.
00:01:33 Speaker 2
Of age still going to high school at the time, Jack Beardall, who owned CFFO and Chatham, had found the most cost efficient way of running a radio station, and that was not to pay any salaries if you could avoid it.
00:01:46 Speaker 2
So rather than train the people, he would bring novices in like myself, and have the engineer tell us what not to do, most of which was don’t put your hands.
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Inside the equipment.
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And you lived at the transmitter site.
00:01:58 Speaker 2
It was.
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It was a house.
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On Hwy.
00:02:01 Speaker 2
2 outside Chatham and it was a strange life for a young guy.
00:02:05 Speaker 2
I didn’t last very long at the transmitter and did never did understand how a transmitter worked and ended up going to the studio where I worked for a while, but it was a strange existence and I it makes me feel nostalgic now when I drive in that part of Ontario and see those towers off the highway.
00:02:20 Speaker 2
I realized that that’s how this life of mine really began.
00:02:23 Speaker 1
When people asked you what you did for a living and you said transmitter operator, what was?
00:02:27 Speaker 1
Their reaction?
00:02:27 Speaker 1
Well, they didn’t know what.
00:02:28 Speaker 2
That meant, but that’s OK, neither did I.
00:02:31 Speaker 1
It was a little difficult to explain about when you became a studio operator that announcers then have operators working their shows for them.
00:02:32
That’s right.
00:02:37 Speaker 2
That’s right.
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And that’s when the bug bites you.
00:02:40 Speaker 2
See, you sit there.
00:02:42 Speaker 2
I think back now to what it was like.
00:02:44 Speaker 2
It was very magical.
00:02:45 Speaker 2
There was no television, so this was our whole image of what broadcasting was about.
00:02:51 Speaker 2
And one would sit in the control room and watch the announcers, these older guys.
00:02:55 Speaker 2
So, you know, they’d be all of 19 or 20.
00:02:57 Speaker 2
And you’d think they lived in on the in the fast lane.
00:03:00 Speaker 2
And you’d you wanted to emulate them, you’d practice, you’d make recordings and so forth.
00:03:06 Speaker 2
And that’s really all you wanted to do was be on the air.
00:03:08 Speaker 2
And eventually one.
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Day it happened. What?
00:03:10 Speaker 2
Did you do the first thing I did station brakes. In fact, my first station break was dial 630. This is CFCO in Chatham with studios in the wandless.
00:03:21 Speaker 2
Hardware building and to this day I don’t know why a station would be proud that they rented quarters above a hardware store, but at the same time, we also had a weather station because Jack Beardall got paid 100 bucks a month from the federal government and the weather station was on the roof of.
00:03:36 Speaker 2
Building and it was part of your job description I think now feel that they wouldn’t allow it to happen, but you would, you would in the in the dead of night you’d put a record on and then you’d get with the key into the back of the hardware store and up a wooden ladder to the roof.
00:03:51 Speaker 2
And in all weather you’d climb on the roof and get the temperatures, the highs and lows.
00:03:55 Speaker 2
They even had a sunlight.
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Gauge, which was a large BLOB of glass that magnified sunlight, and it scorched the line.
00:04:03 Speaker 2
On a sort of a parabolic reflector, and you read the hours of sunlight and all this nonsense, I thought, why do the listeners care?
00:04:10 Speaker 2
Well, of course they didn’t care, but the data was collected for the government and Jack got paid for it.
00:04:14 Speaker 2
So that was an interesting part that.
00:04:15 Speaker 1
Stays in my mind when he went on air, you went on there and Fort Francis.
00:04:20 Speaker 1
What was expected of you?
00:04:21 Speaker 1
Were you supposed to be irreverent?
00:04:22 Speaker 1
You’re supposed to be very structured.
00:04:24 Speaker 2
What was expected? See, I don’t think in those days that was 1950. I think the owners could barely eke out a living and no part was as important as the whole.
00:04:33 Speaker 2
And the two men who owned the radio station were now, I think, that they were young guys.
00:04:37 Speaker 2
I was much younger, of course.
00:04:39 Speaker 2
But they didn’t have a lot of experience either, and they just wanted you to get on the air and read commercials and do whatever you had to do.
00:04:46 Speaker 2
There was never any emphasis much on quality, and I think that we were a little irresponsible and silly as kids in those days and they knew that we would work at any price.
00:04:55 Speaker 2
So we didn’t get much income, but your life was the radio station and you hung around all the time.
00:05:00 Speaker 2
And you cared enormously about your work, and you tried to hone some skills and you tried to emulate the guys you’d hear at night on the big American signals that came in.
00:05:08 Speaker 2
And from Winnipeg, it’s coincidentally, we’re doing this interview in Winnipeg and this all happened about 3 hours West of here or east of here rather and up.
00:05:16 Speaker 2
You’d listen to these guys and you’d want to be like them and you’d try.
00:05:19 Speaker 2
To copy them and so forth.
00:05:20 Speaker 1
Excuse me.
00:05:20 Speaker 1
What were they like?
00:05:21 Speaker 1
What were they?
00:05:21 Speaker 1
Were these smoothies? What were?
00:05:22 Speaker 2
Yeah, they were big voices.
00:05:23 Speaker 2
First of all, you knew you didn’t have a voice like that.
00:05:26 Speaker 2
And you know my trade off all my career has never been my voice.
00:05:29 Speaker 2
And I knew I had to have something else going for me.
00:05:32 Speaker 2
I was nasal.
00:05:33 Speaker 2
I didn’t have a big voice, so I used humour through most of my car.
00:05:36 Speaker 2
Here and and and read voraciously.
00:05:39 Speaker 2
So I’d have information, but I used humor.
00:05:41 Speaker 2
But I heard those voices and I wanted to be like them.
00:05:44 Speaker 2
And at that radio station in Fort Francis, you were sort of given a free ride, but you did everything.
00:05:48 Speaker 2
I’ve heard that cliche so many times, Phil, but it’s true.
00:05:51 Speaker 2
You’d you’d get up in the morning, go down to the radio station.
00:05:54 Speaker 2
In those winters I’d grown up in Windsor ON I I wasn’t used to the kind of weather they get out in this part of the country.
00:05:59 Speaker 2
Your feet would creak on the snow.
00:06:02 Speaker 2
It would.
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It would almost be a squeal as the snow would compact and you’d get to the radio station.
00:06:06 Speaker 2
Unlock the.
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Climb up over the drugstore.
00:06:09 Speaker 2
In this particular case, it was I I always worked at places over other places, and that you’d go into the studio and you’d you’d clean the wire and you’d hope you’d have some news.
00:06:18 Speaker 2
But the Northern Lights used to play havoc with the with the electronics in those days.
00:06:23 Speaker 2
And So what would happen was the transmission to be bad and your machine would not would jam and the static.
00:06:28 Speaker 2
Electricity would jam the paper and sometimes there was no news.
00:06:31 Speaker 2
Thank God for the Winnipeg Free Press, because that’s what you’d read for the news.
00:06:34 Speaker 2
But you’d do the news and the morning show until seven, when the manager got in to do the rest of the newscast.
00:06:39 Speaker 2
What was expected of you was.
00:06:40 Speaker 2
Was to to be a.
00:06:43 Speaker 2
To be witty, I suppose, but certainly to get all the commercials.
00:06:46 Speaker 2
And that was the most important thing, because the the lifeblood of of the station was to get some income, a cash flow and if and we’ll be tied you if you screwed up.
00:06:55 Speaker 1
What kind of commercials?
00:06:57 Speaker 2
They were for I remember there was one guy named Rusty, Somebody who had both the lumberyard.
00:07:03 Speaker 2
And the local flying service, I can’t remember his last name right now.
00:07:06 Speaker 2
But you do commercials for for this guy the the dry cleaner, the local restaurant, the drug store down.
00:07:12 Speaker 2
Below, very little national business and what national business there was, you’d read live.
00:07:17 Speaker 2
It wasn’t pre recorded in those days.
00:07:19 Speaker 2
I just and and also no order about the music you played.
00:07:23 Speaker 2
The library was attached to the control room in those days.
00:07:26 Speaker 2
That in that size station, there were no operators.
00:07:28 Speaker 2
You were at, you operate announced, but you’d go into the next room.
00:07:32 Speaker 2
And pick up records. Anything you liked as a matter of fact, Saturdays. They let us do a thing called announcer’s choice. Can you imagine in the 80s, letting an announcer decide what music?
00:07:43 Speaker 2
He was going to play.
00:07:45 Speaker 1
They’d be disastrous.
00:07:47 Speaker 1
Right?
00:07:47 Speaker 1
Right.
00:07:48 Speaker 1
Port Francis.
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She went along to some other small stations.
00:07:50 Speaker 2
I went to, I went to Port Arthur.
00:07:51 Speaker 2
That was a good experience.
00:07:52 Speaker 2
Ralph Parker was a good broadcaster.
00:07:54 Speaker 2
He he knew what he wanted.
00:07:56 Speaker 2
He he knew, he knew radio and while we were young, we horsed around a lot.
00:08:00 Speaker 2
He used to have to talk to us about deportment.
00:08:02 Speaker 2
That was the first time I had any real discipline.
00:08:04 Speaker 2
Did you have to wear a tie?
00:08:05 Speaker 2
Were no not in those days.
00:08:07 Speaker 2
No, never.
00:08:07 Speaker 2
In fact, I don’t think I really started to dress up for.
00:08:10 Speaker 2
For work, it’s hard to remember, but I think it’s Ckoi was really the first time because we would do some agency stuff and occasionally do a TV commercial.
00:08:17 Speaker 1
In those days, OK, sorry.
00:08:18 Speaker 2
Ralph talked about Ralph was a good broadcast.
00:08:20 Speaker 2
Yeah, and he taught us how to behave, and he expected certain standards from you.
00:08:24 Speaker 2
And there was a little more organization there, a little more emphasis on on the the the format on the music.
00:08:30 Speaker 2
We learned a little bit about formatics then.
00:08:33 Speaker 2
There was some good stuff on the air then we worked with transcription libraries and you, you hear some nondescript musicians, but you you developed a style.
00:08:40 Speaker 2
That’s when I think I developed a bit of a style and and then when the chance came to go to Sarnia, what attracted me about that was getting back to my own area.
00:08:48 Speaker 2
Because when you’re a kid, that’s a long way.
00:08:50 Speaker 2
That we’d be away from home the like.
00:08:52 Speaker 1
And, Sonia, you did much the same thing.
00:08:54 Speaker 2
I did evenings no at at at Sarnia was great experience but it but it didn’t help my career a lot.
00:08:59 Speaker 2
Sarnia was an affiliate of the Dominion Network at the time and yeah, there were two networks CBC Radio had.
00:09:02 Speaker 1
Shall we explain the Dominion network?
00:09:06 Speaker 2
Two service networks, the Dominion Network and the Trans Canada network, and I don’t remember the distinction now, except we were dominion and and what you’d do is sit in the booth.
00:09:15 Speaker 2
I I worked I went to work at to 4:00 o’clock or 3:00 o’clock or whatever.
00:09:19 Speaker 2
And I did a music show with an operator.
00:09:22 Speaker 2
I I I think back now fell to the cost efficiency of I don’t know why.
00:09:27 Speaker 2
Owners were hung up on having operators.
00:09:29 Speaker 2
I guess they thought announcers couldn’t do both, but but there’d be there’d be people in the control room running your show.
00:09:34 Speaker 2
Oh, and and you’d be a big shot.
00:09:36 Speaker 2
You know, you’re 20 years old and you’ve got some kid in the control room you can boss around.
00:09:40 Speaker 2
It was wonderful, but then at 6:00 o’clock, we joined the network for the national news and from 6 until 11, all you did was station breaks and and you did the the the network would sign off at at 5940.
00:09:54 Speaker 2
Was at one time 5930 and and the guy would say this is the Dominion network of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and you’d hop in and you’d have your the sweet pen.
00:10:04 Speaker 2
Watch it dial 1070. This is CHOK Sarnia. Be sure to listen to her whenever and you try to.
00:10:11 Speaker 2
The greatest thing to do, Phil, was to hit not a vocal, but in the same in the same milieu you’d try to hit the first word of the CBC announcer and and and.
00:10:24 Speaker 2
What he always used to say was.
00:10:26 Speaker 2
Even tide, which was I think I’ve forgotten at 10:30 or whatever. So you’d say you’d do the station break and you’d say and now stay tuned to CBC four and the guy would say even time.
00:10:36 Speaker 2
And of course, you’d think that was the greatest thing you could do.
00:10:39 Speaker 2
That and hitting vocals and and having clever run ups.
00:10:43 Speaker 2
And so for things that announcers or air personalities, as they’re called, don’t bother with now, but but that was a discipline to sit there in that booth and find something to do.
00:10:53 Speaker 2
What it was was write commercials for the next day.
00:10:55 Speaker 2
You, you, you did both and read a few newscast and sportscasts and so forth, and that lasted for a year.
00:11:01 Speaker 2
And then I had a chance.
00:11:02 Speaker 2
My big break came and it really was a big break and and I and I like to say that I really blew that opportunity.
00:11:10 Speaker 2
Partly my fault, partly I wasn’t ready for it.
00:11:12 Speaker 2
I was 20 at the time.
00:11:14 Speaker 2
And there was a young guy named Al Rowe who did news at our station and was on with me in the evening.
00:11:21 Speaker 2
And I don’t even know what happened to him.
00:11:22 Speaker 2
He’s long disappeared, but he had a chance to go to Ottawa to see Ko Y, which was Jack Kemp Cook Station at the time to do news.
00:11:30 Speaker 2
And when he went there, they were looking for a morning man, and he persuaded them to hire me.
00:11:36 Speaker 2
I don’t know why they listened to him.
00:11:38 Speaker 2
I I frankly wasn’t good enough for that size market.
00:11:42 Speaker 2
I was only 20, I was inexperienced.
00:11:44 Speaker 2
But I went and they promoted me like crazy.
00:11:47 Speaker 2
And that was a big deal.
00:11:48 Speaker 2
I was very flattered.
00:11:49 Speaker 2
I there were ads in the Ottawa Journal and the and the citizen teaser ads, some sketches.
00:11:55 Speaker 2
And I remember cutting them all out.
00:11:57 Speaker 2
I wish I’d saved them.
00:11:58 Speaker 2
I didn’t.
00:11:59 Speaker 2
I wish I’d saved my first.
00:12:00 Speaker 2
Show and I didn’t, but I wasn’t very good.
00:12:03 Speaker 2
But and the other guys were all older.
00:12:05 Speaker 2
The announcers on the air were all older.
00:12:06 Speaker 2
I don’t know what’s ever happened to most of them either Jack Daley was there.
00:12:09 Speaker 2
Jack Daley was in charge of sports, and I did my very.
00:12:14 Speaker 2
But I managed to survive about nine months and I think we all.
00:12:18 Speaker 2
Knew that it wasn’t coming together.
00:12:21 Speaker 2
I wasn’t as good as the guy down the street and the guy down the street was less lie.
00:12:24 Speaker 2
Who was a legend in our business, and they eased me off the morning show.
00:12:29 Speaker 2
Put me in the news.
00:12:31 Speaker 2
Gave me a tape machine in the early days of tape and sent me out to pick up stuff.
00:12:35 Speaker 2
Pick up stories and it was a relief in a way, Phil, because because I needed to get off the morning show.
00:12:41 Speaker 2
But it was a valuable experience and it taught me that you should really work at things.
00:12:46 Speaker 2
And I was young and I was very laissez-faire about it.
00:12:48 Speaker 2
And so forth and and after.
00:12:50 Speaker 2
After that experience it gave me a new reverence for preparation and planning.
00:12:55 Speaker 1
Did you work on some big stories?
00:12:57 Speaker 1
That you recall.
00:12:58 Speaker 2
Oh, sure.
00:12:58 Speaker 2
I I think I was reminiscing about this one day not long ago.
00:13:03 Speaker 2
You tended to to generate your own schedule.
00:13:05 Speaker 2
And the news director would send you to various places and the radio stations didn’t have a lot of reporters on the street then.
00:13:11 Speaker 2
And we tended to call it special events because you’d take the machine out and record something and bring it back.
00:13:17 Speaker 2
And then they write copy around it.
00:13:19 Speaker 2
I guess that’s what they do now.
00:13:20 Speaker 2
But there weren’t beats.
00:13:21 Speaker 2
If you like in those.
00:13:22 Speaker 2
Most of the news came off the wire and Charlotte Whitten was mayor then, and she would always generate good copy.
00:13:29 Speaker 2
But there was a Catholic Youth Organization breakfast one day somewhere.
00:13:32 Speaker 2
I wish I could remember.
00:13:33 Speaker 2
It’s Bronson Street, or somewhere in Ottawa, and the boss thought I should cover it.
00:13:38 Speaker 2
And so I went and I didn’t want to go.
00:13:40 Speaker 2
It was a Sunday morning, and I went and this guest speaker.
00:13:42 Speaker 2
As Prime Minister Luis Sankaran, but nobody else covered it.
00:13:46 Speaker 2
And I was the only quote media person there, and I was treated like a guest.
00:13:50 Speaker 2
And I was seated near the head table and and while I didn’t record his speech, I asked if I could talk to him later.
00:13:55 Speaker 2
And in those days, the staff didn’t.
00:13:56 Speaker 2
His staff didn’t interfere, and Mr.
00:13:58 Speaker 2
Syndrome was affectionately called Uncle Louie.
00:14:01 Speaker 2
And and the media sort of named him that.
00:14:03 Speaker 2
And I remember him sitting down and we started to talk and I’ve got about 40 minute interview with him while his staff.
00:14:08 Speaker 2
Waiting to get him away and he said some things that were very important he talked about.
00:14:13 Speaker 2
Our relationships with the Soviet Union and so forth, and as a result that goes into my memory book as one of the more important and innovative things that had happened to me.
00:14:23 Speaker 2
But but news wasn’t my field, and I was glad when that part.
00:14:26 Speaker 2
Of my life was over.
00:14:27 Speaker 2
You went back to Sonia.
00:14:28 Speaker 2
I went back to Sarnia because they.
00:14:30 Speaker 2
Offered me the morning show.
00:14:32 Speaker 2
And I did mornings there and that’s when I began to develop a style. I found that I knew how to make people laugh. I realized that I was now 22. I.
00:14:44 Speaker 2
I had listened to other morning men.
00:14:47 Speaker 2
I realized that the greatest humor that touched people and and made them laugh was sometimes the most obvious thing under our nose.
00:14:58 Speaker 2
I found fun in municipal politics.
00:15:00 Speaker 2
I found fun in federal politics and in our lifestyle.
00:15:04 Speaker 2
And I started to do stuff.
00:15:05 Speaker 2
I invented characters.
00:15:06 Speaker 2
I started to do, and then in the afternoon I’d come back and do a children’s half hour where I would ad Lib a a story I would actually write notes on.
00:15:15 Speaker 2
In those days I smoked I’d use the open the cigarette package and make some notes and we’d with sound effects.
00:15:20 Speaker 2
I’d call for the sound effects.
00:15:21 Speaker 2
Over the top back while the.
00:15:22 Speaker 2
Music played and I remember that as an important part of my development and but more morning shows became my genre and that’s really what I wanted to do the rest.
00:15:30 Speaker 2
Of my days.
00:15:31 Speaker 1
We both know, Bill, that the morning show is the gate to people listening to the station for the rest of the day.
00:15:37 Speaker 1
That’s that’s why the morning man is usually very special on the.
00:15:41 Speaker 1
Oh, I agree with that.
00:15:42 Speaker 2
Well, I I think that we still feel that way.
00:15:45 Speaker 2
I know that in our our own operation I have two very gifted morning men in our two stations and I I feel strongly about their contribution.
00:15:53 Speaker 2
It tends to be, as you say, the introduction to the whole day, and you need people that have that right combination of.
00:16:00 Speaker 2
Of the responsibility, the, the, the, the, the knowledge of what’s appropriate, what makes people smile.
00:16:06 Speaker 2
Not everybody can be a comic.
00:16:08 Speaker 2
I don’t mean that at all.
00:16:08 Speaker 2
I remember Jack Kent Cook saying to me one day, failing you, someone you knew well, I tried to be very funny on CKY and he and he was in visiting Ottawa at the time and he opened the studio door and he said if we if we.
00:16:21 Speaker 2
Wanted a comic up here.
00:16:22 Speaker 2
We’ve brought Mickey Lester up but but I think you tend to to overdo the humor when you’re younger, but all those ingredients, the the elements of humor and service and road information and whether all come together in a morning show and you become a friend of the listener and they can tend to come on, you look at people.
00:16:39 Speaker 2
Crowder, for example, who’s 40 years on that station.
00:16:42 Speaker 2
He is a he’s an institution.
00:16:44 Speaker 2
I think he’ll survive in spite of the slates.
00:16:46 Speaker 1
You came to CKY.
00:16:48 Speaker 1
I’d like to move to that because that’s when I really got to know you and and your work very well.
00:16:53 Speaker 1
How did you feel about the the Big city?
00:16:55 Speaker 1
Was that a lot different kind of broadcasting?
00:16:56 Speaker 2
Sure it was, it was intimidating, but there was so much going on at the same time.
00:17:00 Speaker 2
I really wasn’t ready.
00:17:02 Speaker 2
For that activity, because I was doing television at night and and CDKEY in the morning and it’s it’s another world people who who denigrate Toronto and a lot, a lot of broadcasters do.
00:17:11 Speaker 2
There’s there’s a level of resentment, I suppose.
00:17:14 Speaker 2
You guys in Toronto started that because in in a way there was an arrogance about Toronto radio and television that.
00:17:23 Speaker 2
Kind of made the rest of the country look unimportant, and I’ve often said sometimes Torontonians think there’s no life West of 427. But.
00:17:31 Speaker 2
People who denigrate Toronto have to live there, to feel the magic and and be part of the broadcasting scene in Toronto is very, very exciting.
00:17:37 Speaker 2
I’m sure it is now too, just like it was then.
00:17:40 Speaker 2
And so it was intimidating.
00:17:41 Speaker 2
It was a a very exciting part of my life to have those kinds of audiences available to you.
00:17:46 Speaker 2
It was really a great part of my life.
00:17:48 Speaker 2
You feel the pressure or you you feel pressure because the competition.
00:17:51 Speaker 2
I was up against Crowder, Al Boliska and these other people.
00:17:55 Speaker 2
It was it was tough.
00:17:55 Speaker 2
It was.
00:17:56 Speaker 2
Really tough sledding.
00:17:57 Speaker 1
How did you find the attitude of people off there to you?
00:18:00 Speaker 1
I’m talking about Lehman, as you did, perhaps in Ottawa sannia it was a different.
00:18:05 Speaker 2
In Toronto, you tended to be, quote, a celebrity.
00:18:10 Speaker 2
That, of course, hasn’t changed.
00:18:12 Speaker 2
I think there are more radio groupies in a big city.
00:18:14 Speaker 2
There’s there are more people that understand radio and and as a result, you became a known entity.
00:18:19 Speaker 2
And then with television, of course, even though Toronto’s an enormous market, if you had any profile at all, you had great visibility and people. Everybody knew you and.
00:18:30 Speaker 2
Sure, the the public’s attitude, the lay public’s attitude towards you was one of respect and that you were treated like somebody special.
00:18:37 Speaker 1
You mentioned people like Leslie and Jack Daley, others that you crossed swords with along the way or became friends with.
00:18:43 Speaker 2
Yeah, that’s right.
00:18:44 Speaker 2
In Toronto especially, Villisca was a particularly good friend of mine, a tragic waste of an enormous talent.
00:18:50 Speaker 2
I think about him often now. He and I were pretty good friends. He worked at CHUM and I worked at CKY and later he was to come to EY and I was to be relieved of the morning.
00:18:59 Speaker 2
Because Doug Trowell, who ran CKY, had a great resource in burlesque and he finally pushed out slate hard too hard one day and said if you don’t do this this and I’m going to leave and I think Alan had had it.
00:19:10 Speaker 2
But then with it said goodbye.
00:19:12 Speaker 2
So he came to CKY immediately and Trowell couldn’t resist hiring him.
00:19:16 Speaker 2
So I was unseated and I was hurt by it at first and then I realized that’s what I’d do too.
00:19:21 Speaker 2
That’s what the business is all, but you get much audience as you can.
00:19:24 Speaker 2
And so Boliska was on from 9 till or from 6 to.
00:19:26 Speaker 2
Nine and I did.
00:19:27 Speaker 2
9 to noon for a for a year before I.
00:19:29 Speaker 2
To London, but I had enormous respect for Boliska.
00:19:32 Speaker 2
He was one of those created, innovative, joyful.
00:19:35 Speaker 2
He was imbued with joy.
00:19:36 Speaker 2
He could find fun in everything.
00:19:38 Speaker 2
He was a great morning man and being up against him was difficult.
00:19:42 Speaker 2
I haven’t.
00:19:42 Speaker 2
I haven’t had a grudging regard for Crowder.
00:19:44 Speaker 2
I still think a lot.
00:19:46 Speaker 2
And I I saw him not long ago in Toronto.
00:19:48 Speaker 2
He looks terrific.
00:19:48 Speaker 2
He endures.
00:19:50 Speaker 2
Through it all, because he’s he’s the the, the consummate morning, the quintessential incentral morning man.
00:19:57 Speaker 2
He’s got all the qualities that it takes and he wears well on you like a pair of gloves or an old hat.
00:20:02 Speaker 2
But radio in Canada has been filled.
00:20:05 Speaker 2
Cactus Jack here in Winnipeg.
00:20:09 Speaker 2
People like Webster on the West Coast and dozens of people in between in our country, balston in in Montreal, Balkan in Montreal.
00:20:17 Speaker 2
People who have become household names in various cities of Canada because they’re their own people, they’re there’s quality.
00:20:23 Speaker 2
They’re responsible, interesting, colorful broadcasters who never take themselves too seriously.
00:20:29 Speaker 1
What’s your overview for the archives of when you started and today, what do you see?
00:20:33 Speaker 1
What do you?
00:20:35 Speaker 2
I say that radio has gotten better.
00:20:37 Speaker 2
I’m not one of those people that lives in the past.
00:20:40 Speaker 2
I had a wonderful life and I don’t think I’d change much of anything.
00:20:44 Speaker 2
I stayed in Canada when I had many opportunities to go to the US.
00:20:48 Speaker 2
I’m not sure it was a matter of patriotism, as it was a lack of confidence.
00:20:52 Speaker 2
I was afraid to to leave what I already had.
00:20:55 Speaker 2
It was, but I believe that Canada has been the cradle of some great broadcasting.
00:21:01 Speaker 2
I think we’ve developed some clever, innovative people.
00:21:05 Speaker 2
They’re that large number who made the transition from radio to television with great equanimity and did it well.
00:21:12 Speaker 2
Others who weren’t able to make the transition.
00:21:14 Speaker 2
Some broadcasters.
00:21:15 Speaker 2
Who have been giants?
00:21:16 Speaker 2
And I think that the the system is a good one.
00:21:19 Speaker 2
I wish the CR TC was a little more realistic about certain things, but generally speaking, there are an honourable group of men and women who must not be tampered with by the political process.
00:21:31 Speaker 2
I think they do a good job, they’re good, fair regulator for the.
00:21:34 Speaker 2
Most part I think that Canadian radio is is in pretty good shape I think AM will find its way whether am stereo is the answer or not, I don’t know.
00:21:44 Speaker 2
But good, responsible broadcasters will hold this thing together, and the glue that holds the fabric together is commitment that comes from from responsible.
00:21:54 Speaker 2
Broadcasters who care deeply about this profession.
00:21:57 Speaker 2
Thank you, bill.
00:21:58 Speaker 2
Thank you, Phil.
00:21:59 Speaker 1
This has been an interview with Bill Brady conducted in Winnipeg in November 1988 by Phil Stone.