Transcript
00:00:00 Speaker 1
I’m doing some transcribing and left a mountain back at.
00:00:03 Speaker 1
Back at home.
00:00:05 Speaker 1
And some students transcribing for me and.
00:00:09 Speaker 1
The tough part comes after we did.
00:00:11 Speaker 1
This is the.
00:00:11 Speaker 2
Fun part well the the the chilling station.
00:00:17 Speaker 2
And I I presume this is where you would like me to start because where I started in broadcasting.
00:00:24 Speaker 2
But underway with this chap wells.
00:00:26 Speaker 2
Casey wells.
00:00:29 Speaker 2
And I know him only as Casey.
00:00:30 Speaker 2
I don’t.
00:00:30 Speaker 2
He had other initials, but what his full title was, I don’t know.
00:00:34 Speaker 2
And he had a younger brother, Ron.
00:00:37 Speaker 2
Who, as I say, eventually took up aviation.
00:00:42 Speaker 2
And became a flying instructor.
00:00:48 Speaker 2
He started this broadcasting station in Chilliwack, the.
00:00:52 Speaker 2
At the top of the hardware store Menchie’s hardware.
00:00:55 Speaker 1
What, what year would that be approaching?
00:00:56 Speaker 2
Where’s the?
00:00:57 Speaker 2
I would guess somewhere in between.
00:01:01 Speaker 2
28262728 and I I’m guessing only at those years, and I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t wish to be treated as an accurate, you know, you can check that. I’ve forgotten to what year the station was licensed.
00:01:10 Speaker 1
Well, we can check.
00:01:17 Speaker 2
But it it got under way as.
00:01:21 Speaker 2
A broadcasting station.
00:01:26 Speaker 2
Wells ran it by himself and then a man named killing Jack Pilling, who is still alive.
00:01:33 Speaker 2
Was a director of the BC Association of Broadcasters, was a director, I think, and I’m not positive of that of the CAB.
00:01:43 Speaker 2
And he is retired from the station, sold out his interest about 8:00 or 10 years ago, I think.
00:01:53 Speaker 2
He came in with Wells and they started to be a commercial broadcasting station in Chula, iPhone.
00:02:00 Speaker 2
Either one of them would try to sell somebody, neither one of them were really what you would call salesman.
00:02:07 Speaker 2
Wells was a technician, although Pilling himself was a very able technician.
00:02:17 Speaker 2
Filling did the news.
00:02:18 Speaker 2
He had a good voice and he did the news broadcast, which was taken from the daily papers that most of the early broadcasting stations did.
00:02:25 Speaker 2
They just took items and clipped them and put them on a clipboard and the news was due at 11:00 o’clock or 12:00 o’clock or and almost 11:00 o’clock or almost 12:00 o’clock.
00:02:35 Speaker 2
And they they got the news.
00:02:37 Speaker 2
Come here.
00:02:38 Speaker 1
And when news actually was a concept, that was.
00:02:42 Speaker 1
In news as we know it anyway was a concept that didn’t come quickly to really broadcasting.
00:02:46 Speaker 1
It was more of an entertainment.
00:02:48 Speaker 2
This is correct news in the early stages of broadcasting, with some exceptions.
00:02:55 Speaker 2
Was largely.
00:02:58 Speaker 2
Theft from the papers or the periodicals of that?
00:03:01 Speaker 1
Time, which the papers periodically resented.
00:03:05 Speaker 2
Whichever newspaper happened to be in the area, the radio stations at that time would take from the news columns of that paper whatever was happening, and they then put it together and call it the newscast.
00:03:21 Speaker 2
They had.
00:03:22 Speaker 2
None of no reporters of their own excepting.
00:03:24 Speaker 2
Guess that.
00:03:27 Speaker 2
They would have people phone in and tell them of new items of anything that happened in the district, and if you saw a barn fire, you got to the nearest phone and new phone.
00:03:37 Speaker 2
There’s a farm on fire down.
00:03:40 Speaker 1
Here and there was a great deal of public participation, and this is fascinated.
00:03:43 Speaker 2
Oh, and it was an enjoyable factor.
00:03:45 Speaker 1
That everybody really seemed to get involved with the.
00:03:48 Speaker 2
Radio station in in small towns and it was typical, I think of Canada and the United States on a summary day when screen doors were on and the windows were open, you could start down.
00:04:00 Speaker 2
Street walking slowly and you could listen to a newscast or a broadcast all the way down the street.
00:04:07 Speaker 2
People were talking all the way down, or rather, had their radios on all the way down the street.
00:04:14 Speaker 2
And it was the same station because there wasn’t a multiplicity of stations in the small town.
00:04:18 Speaker 2
Particularly at that time.
00:04:20 Speaker 2
And you could catch while strolling slowly down the street, you’d catch a full use cast or.
00:04:24 Speaker 2
Whatever it was.
00:04:26 Speaker 2
And this worship?
00:04:30 Speaker 2
They were fun days in broadcasting, too.
00:04:32 Speaker 1
Well, how did you come to get involved with this?
00:04:35 Speaker 2
Well, I had been. I had no intention of being involved in the broadcasting business in 1929 when the.
00:04:44 Speaker 2
Crash came.
00:04:45 Speaker 2
I was at that time, and assistant manager of a jewelry repair department at Henry Birks and Sons.
00:04:53 Speaker 2
And Mr.
00:04:54 Speaker 2
Walter Carson, who was the then manager of Brooks, came to me and said, John, he said me.
00:05:02 Speaker 2
I’m sorry to tell you we’re going to have to cut staff, he says.
00:05:05 Speaker 2
We’re going to work on the principle of last in, first out and he says, and you are very happy with what you’re doing in the air.
00:05:11 Speaker 2
There’s no complaint and they gave me a nice letter of recommendation and a fountain pen presentation and the staff wished me happy, but I was in the depression years.
00:05:22 Speaker 2
And I was about to hook up with a young man whom I knew in Vancouver, who was starting to sell the receivers, the radio receivers, and as you remember, they were as big then the small.
00:05:33 Speaker 2
Receiver then was as.
00:05:34 Speaker 2
Big as your small portable 10 television set is today.
00:05:40 Speaker 1
OK, they were terrible.
00:05:41 Speaker 1
They were big things.
00:05:42 Speaker 1
Well, they were terrible price.
00:05:44 Speaker 1
Too much precision.
00:05:44 Speaker 2
And they were an awful.
00:05:45 Speaker 1
Do you get?
00:05:46 Speaker 1
We’re collect the seems to me they were running between 150.
00:05:49 Speaker 1
And $300.
00:05:50 Speaker 2
Ohh yes, $400 was not unusual $500.00 not unusual.
00:05:54 Speaker 2
For a radio receiver.
00:05:57 Speaker 2
And they were great, cumbersome things, all filled with tubes.
00:06:01 Speaker 2
The transistor had not been invented.
00:06:04 Speaker 2
This chat said John’s.
00:06:06 Speaker 2
I think we could do well.
00:06:07 Speaker 2
This radio is going to catch on.
00:06:10 Speaker 2
My brother had taken on a resort activity up in Cultus Lake.
00:06:16 Speaker 2
Where I’m going today as a matter of fact.
00:06:19 Speaker 2
And he said, John, I said, I think you’re starved to death.
00:06:22 Speaker 2
You’re not a salesman.
00:06:23 Speaker 2
You haven’t been a salesman.
00:06:26 Speaker 2
People don’t have much money.
00:06:28 Speaker 2
Come on up and help me workout the resort your hands with your hands and tools and so forth.
00:06:32 Speaker 2
And so I went.
00:06:33 Speaker 2
Up there with my mother and.
00:06:37 Speaker 2
I worked around with him.
00:06:38 Speaker 2
Things were very thin and on two or three occasions, Casey Wells or Jack Benny was sent to me.
00:06:43 Speaker 2
Where would I come in and be a salesman for them with brass casting?
00:06:48 Speaker 2
I said no, I’m not really a salesman. But things got kind of desperate when in the 1920 thirties, 31.
00:06:56 Speaker 2
And I had tried to sell some savings certificates to.
00:06:59 Speaker 2
Eke out some money.
00:07:01 Speaker 2
I eventually said yes, I would start.
00:07:04 Speaker 2
What was the deal? Well, the deal was $10 a week.
00:07:08 Speaker 2
Which would be my salary and when possible, Ron Wells would loan me his car.
00:07:12 Speaker 2
I could go out to other areas and they felt that there was business to be obtained from around the whole upper Fraser Valley and it was a case of.
00:07:23 Speaker 2
Scratch it out.
00:07:24 Speaker 1
Well, you heard educate people too.
00:07:26 Speaker 1
And the fact that radio was an advertising medium.
00:07:29 Speaker 2
Well, of course they were starting to come into the circumstances where radios were at home on this Pacific Coast.
00:07:36 Speaker 2
Good receivers could pick up broadcasting stations down the coast.
00:07:41 Speaker 2
We got good reception from Oakland and Los Angeles and Salt Lake City had KNX Salt Lake City was very strong station.
00:07:51 Speaker 2
There was a little station at Belling.
00:07:53 Speaker 2
Ma’am, which was the forerunner?
00:07:56 Speaker 2
As a matter of fact, of Kvos TV, it was run by a man named Rogan Jones, and it was an amateur.
00:08:02 Speaker 2
It was hit, had become a commercial enterprise.
00:08:06 Speaker 2
That have moved from amateur stages into being a good commercial enterprise in Bellingham, and Robin Jones was most helpful for the Chilliwack station as a matter of fact.
00:08:15 Speaker 2
In getting tubes and various things, you know that were put together in a haphazard way.
00:08:19 Speaker 2
I won’t mention customs or anything else like that, but somehow they would find their way on track.
00:08:27 Speaker 2
And I started selling for the station.
00:08:31 Speaker 2
Now, no, I shall never forget the end of my first week.
00:08:40 Speaker 2
Time came for the ghost to lock and.
00:08:41 Speaker 2
I walked into.
00:08:42 Speaker 2
The wells and this was as I say, above this hardware.
00:08:44 Speaker 2
Store into the factory.
00:08:46 Speaker 2
Suggested that we have time to get my salary for the week.
00:08:49 Speaker 1
And only $10.
00:08:52 Speaker 2
Well, as it happened, they didn’t have $10.
00:08:55 Speaker 2
He had $3.40 in the till and I got the 3:40 while this was all the money they had and it was a hand to mouth existence.
00:09:02 Speaker 2
So this went on for some oh.
00:09:05 Speaker 2
Year you’re in a bit and I eventually.
00:09:07 Speaker 1
Left the broadcasting station.
00:09:09 Speaker 1
Who are some of the people you sold advertising to?
00:09:12 Speaker 2
I sold to I think.
00:09:16 Speaker 2
I know I sold to what was then David Spencer’s department store up there.
00:09:22 Speaker 2
A Christmas broadcast, a Santa Claus broadcast.
00:09:26 Speaker 1
So you actually instead of selling them an ad, you sold them a program.
00:09:29 Speaker 1
You sold them?
00:09:29 Speaker 2
I showed him the program and then I said to him, now who’s going to be your sanitized and man named Jameson?
00:09:34 Speaker 2
Was the manager of Spencers at the time, he says.
00:09:36 Speaker 2
Well, I guess you are.
00:09:39 Speaker 2
That wasn’t the part of the deal.
00:09:40 Speaker 2
He says, well, if you want to make the sale and you.
00:09:41 Speaker 2
Want the program you’re going to have to have a Santa Claus.
00:09:45 Speaker 2
So I I was considered to be younger in those days and I embraced being in the program.
00:09:52 Speaker 2
Guy on the Santa Claus thing and I became Santa Claus.
00:09:55 Speaker 1
Did you have to write the program as well?
00:09:57 Speaker 2
I had to write the program such writing as was done, and then I solicited letters I had, and I’ve always regretted.
00:10:04 Speaker 2
I never saved the letters.
00:10:05 Speaker 2
I had letters from children and I have since had children of my own and now have grandchildren.
00:10:11 Speaker 2
And I regretted I never saved those early letters from those kids.
00:10:15 Speaker 2
Dear Santa, I want because I don’t know my own children and I suppose children write the same letter all over the world to Santa Claus.
00:10:22 Speaker 2
But it was a kind of a touching thing.
00:10:26 Speaker 2
I lived about 15 miles out of the Chilliwack city I lived.
00:10:31 Speaker 2
Out at this lake.
00:10:33 Speaker 2
And I had an old Model T Ford by this time or models, not model TI had a star open touring star with the hard tires and the wooden wheels.
00:10:47 Speaker 2
And the top blew off the thing and I would drive in and you know, you just put the stickers over you to keep yourself dry and.
00:10:55 Speaker 2
By pressure now you get up to about 45 miles an hour, but that was.
00:10:58 Speaker 1
Its top speed and downhill with the tailwind.
00:11:04 Speaker 2
After Christmas program went over very well, I.
00:11:06 Speaker 1
How much would you would be charged?
00:11:08 Speaker 1
I realized in those days they weren’t really rate cards and we sort of charged would.
00:11:11 Speaker 1
You get away with the card, actually.
00:11:12 Speaker 2
Well, we had rate if we did, we had a typed rate rate card, but the rate card was a guide, really more than a than a firm thing.
00:11:22 Speaker 2
And I think that still.
00:11:23 Speaker 2
Goes on in broadcasting.
00:11:25 Speaker 2
I don’t think there’s much change in that I think.
00:11:28 Speaker 2
Negotiations with people for.
00:11:31 Speaker 2
For goods, is still bartering to a large degree because they say we never break rates, but they make up packages and they do all manner of things, but are literally a device for.
00:11:41 Speaker 1
Getting around it, do you have any recollection of what that Christmas program cost you before?
00:11:42
Great. Great.
00:11:49 Speaker 2
I can give you two or three instances of what the program cost, I think.
00:11:53 Speaker 2
Spencer’s for 10 days on the air, or 15 days.
00:11:58 Speaker 2
Santa Claus came by the air and then he had to make his appearance.
00:12:01 Speaker 2
I had to do this.
00:12:02 Speaker 2
They provided me the Santa Claus outfit.
00:12:04 Speaker 2
I didn’t get a fee for being a Santa Claus.
00:12:06 Speaker 2
I got the program sale, which the station.
00:12:10 Speaker 2
And I think the total cost to Spencers was somewhere something under $100, including the 15 minutes a day on the air.
00:12:18 Speaker 2
For the two weeks.
00:12:20 Speaker 2
And the appearance of Santa Claus and Spencers provided a sack full of candy, and they gave those hard candy.
00:12:27 Speaker 2
I don’t know if your memory.
00:12:28 Speaker 2
Embraces those hard.
00:12:29 Speaker 2
Curly candy they used to have almost like Christmas decorations, and it was a hard candy.
00:12:35 Speaker 2
And they sold pounds of it at Christmastime, but they gave me a sack of this to give out to these children.
00:12:40 Speaker 2
Well, of course I got into the store with the Santa Claus outfit.
00:12:42 Speaker 2
I got hot.
00:12:43 Speaker 2
The store was hot, the children’s hand.
00:12:45 Speaker 2
And I’d reach into this sack, and the candy would be sticking to my finger, and her mother would have the most horrified look on her face.
00:12:53 Speaker 2
We eventually got wrapped candy, but I think the total program cost was under $100.
00:12:59 Speaker 2
I recall that I.
00:13:01 Speaker 2
Would go out and sell to what was then the model dry cleaning and pressing outfit in Chilliwack.
00:13:09 Speaker 2
I think that was their name or the economy.
00:13:12 Speaker 2
Dry cleaning and pressing one or the other modern day model.
00:13:17 Speaker 2
And I could sell them a package of three announcements for $2.00.
00:13:22 Speaker 2
And when I.
00:13:24 Speaker 2
That made the sale of the three announcements and then went back to the studio and I rode up the three announcements studio of course, being a sort of the shell above this hardware store.
00:13:35 Speaker 2
I wrote up the three announcements, went back to the dry cleaning establishment, had them approve the copy and change and ifs and buts.
00:13:43 Speaker 2
If their grammar were better than mine, which was quite like.
00:13:44
OK.
00:13:46 Speaker 2
Then quite frequently.
00:13:47 Speaker 2
We’ll go back to broadcasting station.
00:13:49 Speaker 2
Time was to be aired and do the announcements yourself.
00:13:52 Speaker 2
And you wrote you you sold the copy.
00:13:54 Speaker 2
You sold the commercial.
00:13:58 Speaker 2
He then wrote the copy and if it happened in your shift, you then ran the.
00:14:03 Speaker 1
Copy, but it would horrify an advertising entity would.
00:14:07 Speaker 2
I I’ve changed the first piece of national business that.
00:14:11 Speaker 2
CHW. OK, chill.
00:14:12 Speaker 2
Like it ever had.
00:14:15 Speaker 2
And I got it.
00:14:15 Speaker 2
It was from an iron gazed teast, yeast, tablets, iron, iron eyes, yeast, tablets and they were running and Rogan Jones has put us on to as he said, these people buy farm markets.
00:14:26 Speaker 2
He said good after.
00:14:28 Speaker 2
I was down there on some occasion rather than.
00:14:32 Speaker 2
I did. I entered.
00:14:33 Speaker 2
Into a correspondence with the man who was handling this stuff.
00:14:38 Speaker 2
And by golly, the letter came in. I was I was at the lake at the time when I got what then cost $0.25 for a phone call for the station.
00:14:46 Speaker 2
We were very careful about making my phone calls.
00:14:48 Speaker 2
I got a long distance phone calls congratulating me on the first piece of national broadcasting, and we had that account for about two or three years and it.
00:14:58 Speaker 2
Stayed in the station somewhere in the neighborhood of.
00:15:01 Speaker 2
60 or $70 a year for a series of announcements.
00:15:06 Speaker 2
Which we made-up as a pack.
00:15:09 Speaker 2
And we’ve got another odd *****.
00:15:10 Speaker 2
And from there I moved off into.
00:15:13 Speaker 2
At that time in 193031.
00:15:18 Speaker 2
There were.
00:15:20 Speaker 2
Of CDJR Vancouver.
00:15:23 Speaker 2
There was the Daily Province station, which shared its channel with.
Part 2
Transcript
00:00:02 Speaker 1
You’re saying they looked at it as a single they?
00:00:04 Speaker 2
Look as a single unit, it was either the newspapers, the billboards.
00:00:11 Speaker 2
Or some other known advertising device.
00:00:14 Speaker 2
We’re going to get all or a portion of that unit when broadcast came along, they still considered the dollar as being a unit.
00:00:23 Speaker 2
Or the advertising dollar as being a unit and they felt that this was going to further impair, but what actually took place was.
00:00:32 Speaker 2
But advertising revenues increased to take care of the changing market scene on this broadcasting turned out to create.
00:00:39 Speaker 1
Turned out not to be anyone.
00:00:43 Speaker 2
Advertising dollars rather than than divide them.
00:00:48 Speaker 2
And campaigns, Kelly, Douglas and company.
00:00:54 Speaker 2
Bot I think the first half hour program from.
00:00:58 Speaker 2
From the West.
00:01:00 Speaker 2
Ran on Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary, Westbridge, Grand Ferry, Vancouver and Kelowna.
00:01:09 Speaker 2
Program a transcribe program which I sold them.
00:01:14 Speaker 2
And they ran.
00:01:15 Speaker 2
It to it was called ports of call.
00:01:17 Speaker 2
And they ran this program for about three years, 26 half hours or 52 half hour programs.
00:01:27 Speaker 2
Had the opening, the middle break and the closing break and it was before television, of course.
00:01:34 Speaker 2
And from there, Kelly Douglas moved into.
00:01:39 Speaker 2
The live show and they hired an orchestra and they had the Harmony house, which ran for a number of years out of Western Canada on the network.
00:01:48 Speaker 2
And it was a very successful series of shows and Lovick who is now dead, who was handling their advertising said to me, said Johnny says.
00:01:56 Speaker 2
We’re going to have to go network for this with a live show.
00:01:59 Speaker 2
He said.
00:02:00 Speaker 2
Can you face the network time?
00:02:01 Speaker 2
And I said no, I.
00:02:02 Speaker 2
Can’t give you that the CBC.
00:02:05 Speaker 1
They’re doing.
00:02:05 Speaker 2
You came to their own.
00:02:08 Speaker 2
It doesn’t seem fair.
00:02:09 Speaker 2
You got Kelly.
00:02:10 Speaker 2
Douglas started.
00:02:11 Speaker 2
Well, the original start of the Kelly Bentley show.
00:02:15 Speaker 2
And it’s hilarious.
00:02:16 Speaker 2
Instant if you can, because you can wipe this anyway, concerning with the sale of this porch of carshall.
00:02:25 Speaker 2
Kelly Douglas had.
00:02:26 Speaker 2
Their offices down on the corner of water and Richard St.
00:02:30 Speaker 2
In Vancouver.
00:02:32 Speaker 2
And I had a coffee, uh, chilling up in there and they grated their coffee and with a big building when they had their directors offices in there.
00:02:42 Speaker 2
And their sales officers and so forth and they were a quite an important.
00:02:47 Speaker 2
Food distributing distributing outfit in particularly.
00:02:51 Speaker 2
British Columbia.
00:02:53 Speaker 2
And they had.
00:02:53 Speaker 2
Made Bob Coffee, of course, throughout the West.
00:02:57 Speaker 2
And their advertising had been handled by outfit called Benwil Atkins, and the accounts had been taken over by.
00:03:05 Speaker 2
A man who is now dead, named Pinky Stewart.
00:03:08 Speaker 2
And Pinky Stewart and another young man whose father at one time was with Kelly Devers.
00:03:14 Speaker 2
As a senior executive.
00:03:18 Speaker 2
Thank you, Stuart.
00:03:19 Speaker 2
Got Kelly Douglas account and I went to him with his porch of call show, which was was part of our stable of programs which we could sell to broadcasting stations for filling the time with or sign to customers and so forth, and suggested that this would be a first class show for them to take for Western Canada.
00:03:38 Speaker 2
And Stewart was an entrepreneur of some.
00:03:42 Speaker 2
Considerable stature of very successful salesman.
00:03:48 Speaker 2
He listened to the program.
00:03:49 Speaker 2
He thought the idea was right.
00:03:51 Speaker 2
So he said.
00:03:52 Speaker 2
Now, he says, I finally came to me, said John.
00:03:55 Speaker 2
He says I’ve arranged for Kelly Douglas to hear this program.
00:03:58 Speaker 2
They’re going to consider taking this on for Western Canada and I said OK and I had all the costs figured out for him was about $7800 total cost.
00:04:06
Thank you.
00:04:07 Speaker 2
They said we’ve got to take it down to their boardroom and demonstrate what the program is like.
00:04:12 Speaker 2
Can you do that?
00:04:13 Speaker 2
And I said sure and I had this portable equipment, one was a amplifier and the other was a big speaker and they were in suitcases and they were, they were big suitcases.
00:04:25 Speaker 2
They’d be about.
00:04:27 Speaker 2
Or 10 inches thick.
00:04:30 Speaker 2
And about 24 by 24, and they weighed heavily and.
00:04:34 Speaker 1
They’re only portable in name if.
00:04:36 Speaker 2
They were portable only in name.
00:04:38 Speaker 2
And we got this down to the boardroom.
00:04:40 Speaker 2
And it was.
00:04:41 Speaker 2
Quite an impressive boardroom there were about.
00:04:44 Speaker 2
15 chairs around the long semicircular table.
00:04:49 Speaker 2
And there were pictures of our founders on the.
00:04:52 Speaker 2
Wall, you know?
00:04:53 Speaker 2
Oh, all very proper.
00:04:56 Speaker 2
And we’ve actually had scripts and I put on when Pinky said no.
00:05:02 Speaker 2
Bolin will show you what we mean by this program and the fruit of the steamship whistle came on and then this value, this voice, came on ship, ship call.
00:05:13 Speaker 2
We take you now to adventurous and Matra.
00:05:16 Speaker 2
And the wonders of this.
00:05:17 Speaker 2
You know, and so on.
00:05:19 Speaker 2
Ports are called me in various places in the world where the ship traveled.
00:05:21 Speaker 1
Or were you?
00:05:22 Speaker 1
Were you hooked up to the studio and?
00:05:24 Speaker 1
Was this a?
00:05:25 Speaker 1
No, no.
00:05:25 Speaker 1
This was a transcription.
00:05:26 Speaker 2
This was a I never great big thick things about 1/4 of an.
00:05:29 Speaker 2
Inch thick at that time.
00:05:32 Speaker 2
And there were two of these with 15 minutes on each side that you had for the program.
00:05:38 Speaker 2
So I started the needle and this, as I say, introduction to the program came on and I faded down the.
00:05:46 Speaker 2
The volume and just spoke to my voice, I said.
00:05:50 Speaker 2
This is what you announced.
00:05:50 Speaker 2
It was sound like kind of and right out a commercial ports of call brought to you by Kelly Douglas makers and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on.
00:05:59 Speaker 2
And Pinky and myself had devised this.
00:06:02 Speaker 2
Pinky Stewart was his.
00:06:05 Speaker 2
Device this commercial you see which we read and then we started the program and we ran the program for a moment or so.
00:06:12 Speaker 2
And the.
00:06:14 Speaker 2
The chairman of the board is in the room, the sales manager for Kelly Douglas in the room, their coffee taster, all our directors.
00:06:22 Speaker 2
And there were.
00:06:23 Speaker 2
Eight of them in there.
00:06:24 Speaker 2
And this advertising man and myself signing this promo.
00:06:28 Speaker 2
And then I showed how the program would fade out in the middle and their central bank commercial for Kelly Douglas would come on or nay bavis it was one of you referred to and then to close out and the final name Bob Commercial.
00:06:43 Speaker 2
So the moment the program and I said that’s the way it would handle gentlemen, you have to understand of course I limited this to about four minutes rather than take up your.
00:06:51 Speaker 2
Time to listen.
00:06:52 Speaker 2
To the whole program, they understood that thoroughly, but then they start to nitpick about.
00:06:57 Speaker 2
All the things that were or were not right about radio, we’re not right about.
00:07:01 Speaker 2
Could we rely on the announce you’re in?
00:07:04 Speaker 2
Where is it Regina doing this as well as you’ve done it here, for example.
00:07:07 Speaker 2
Or can he would what did we do here?
00:07:10 Speaker 2
Do we do there?
00:07:11 Speaker 2
And they were nitpicking, right, left and center.
00:07:13 Speaker 2
About the.
00:07:15 Speaker 2
Small mechanics of the programming.
00:07:18 Speaker 2
And I shall never forget Stuart.
00:07:19 Speaker 2
He looked down and he said, gentlemen, gentlemen, gentlemen, he said honestly.
00:07:23 Speaker 2
He says this has to be ridiculous.
00:07:26 Speaker 2
He says you’re nitpicking and arguing about little bits and things on this program where you’re not conceiving the idea at all.
00:07:32 Speaker 2
Honest about if.
00:07:32 Speaker 2
I came in here with a dog that.
00:07:34 Speaker 2
I had trained to.
00:07:35 Speaker 2
Fart NA Bob running up and down Granville St.
00:07:38 Speaker 2
You’d buy it like.
00:07:39 Speaker 2
A dance?
00:07:40 Speaker 2
He says.
00:07:40 Speaker 2
You’re silly ***** around.
00:07:44 Speaker 2
And I was appalled.
00:07:46
You know.
00:07:46 Speaker 1
You talk to directors like that.
00:07:47
Come up with these.
00:07:47 Speaker 2
Further restraints, but the way he went and.
00:07:51 Speaker 2
I got they bought the show.
00:07:53 Speaker 2
Highly successful and it was very successful for a couple of three years, but I shall never forget Stuart.
00:07:59 Speaker 2
I had brought in a.
00:08:00 Speaker 2
Dog who tried trained to fart.
00:08:07 Speaker 1
Things have changed now, of course.
00:08:08 Speaker 1
You, you, the advertising agencies no longer really package programs and they buy spots, particularly on television because of the expense of it, but also in radio, you don’t.
00:08:18 Speaker 1
Have you know you don’t have the jello hour and the chase and Sanborn hour?
00:08:21 Speaker 2
Oh, no, no, no.
00:08:22 Speaker 2
You don’t have the programming in in broadcasting.
00:08:25 Speaker 2
At least I don’t.
00:08:27 Speaker 2
I don’t think you have today.
00:08:28 Speaker 2
Now, mind you, I’ve been out of broadcasting for 10 years.
00:08:31 Speaker 2
I’m not an active broadcaster any longer.
00:08:34 Speaker 2
I’m a vineyard dish now.
00:08:35 Speaker 2
I I grow a grape.
00:08:37 Speaker 2
And make a little wine.
00:08:38 Speaker 1
But the whole thing is packaged differently.
00:08:40 Speaker 1
I was just trying trying to relate.
00:08:42 Speaker 1
You were telling the story about taking this program to nabob now, who put the program together?
00:08:48 Speaker 2
There were a number of people.
00:08:50 Speaker 2
Around the world, as a matter of fact, who did this largely in the United States?
00:08:55 Speaker 2
They had transcription services, they were standard radio.
00:09:00 Speaker 2
Or a palm dairies outfit in Calgary.
00:09:02 Speaker 2
I brought in just during the shortly after the war.
00:09:08 Speaker 2
A series of transcriptions called Sons of.
00:09:11 Speaker 2
The Pioneers and I.
00:09:12 Speaker 2
Bought it from the people in Kansas City.
00:09:15 Speaker 2
And I arranged a contract with them to buy the library for, I think it was eleven stations in Western Canada, and I bought the library and I took the financial responsibility myself.
00:09:27 Speaker 2
I brought in this library.
00:09:29 Speaker 2
And the library had.
00:09:31 Speaker 2
Musical numbers on it by the Sons of pioneers, which as you can.
00:09:34 Speaker 1
Imagine were what we call country and Western, you know.
00:09:38 Speaker 2
Country western night.
00:09:40 Speaker 2
And they sang.
00:09:41 Speaker 2
They sang very appealingly, and we actually had people in the Prairie stations come in and want to meet the sons of The Pioneers because, you know.
00:09:49 Speaker 2
We’re telling us there’s a transcribe.
00:09:50 Speaker 2
Program you know.
00:09:51 Speaker 2
In the early days, we were doing Spanish.
00:09:53 Speaker 2
And I thought, where do people who packaged programs?
00:09:58 Speaker 1
One of the laws was you had to tell them was.
00:10:00 Speaker 2
Well, I think I’ve got forgotten occasionally.
00:10:05 Speaker 2
I I had another program that I can recall again a transcribe service that had come up from.
00:10:13 Speaker 2
Somewhere in Los Angeles, we had to think.
00:10:17 Speaker 2
And they had some very excellent musical.
00:10:21 Speaker 2
People on the show.
00:10:26 Speaker 2
Stewarts associate Lubbock.
00:10:29 Speaker 2
Had attempted to sell his program to a man who?
00:10:37 Speaker 2
Foodstuffs and coffees and things in Western Canada and he wanted to put on a program in Vancouver and he was.
00:10:44 Speaker 2
Going to use.
00:10:45 Speaker 2
The CBC station, to put it on, and one of the artists in this series I had prior to her acquiring great fame, was Vivian del Chiesa, which you may know the name of.
00:10:57 Speaker 2
He was an operatic star.
00:10:59 Speaker 2
With the Metropolitan Opera as matter of fact, the chapter we’re going to sell the program to came down to hear it.
00:11:06 Speaker 2
And again I did the bit of putting on the program and auction and so forth.
00:11:11 Speaker 2
And CBC had made their studios available because they were going to sell the time it was going to be filled with this program if it was suitable to this chap.
00:11:18 Speaker 2
And he bought his.
00:11:21 Speaker 2
Wife Sister who was a.
00:11:24 Speaker 2
Some sort of a solo artist herself or a piano teacher, or she had some phase in in, in music circles here in the program, and which just Vivian occasion was singing.
00:11:48 Speaker 2
Was turned down by this potential sponsor on the virtue that Dale Cage didn’t know how to sing.
00:11:56 Speaker 2
And I said, well, she’s she’s become a very famous artist in the United States, maybe, but she doesn’t breathe properly.
00:12:03 Speaker 2
She doesn’t sing properly.
00:12:04 Speaker 2
But this singing teacher.
00:12:06 Speaker 2
So it was turned down on that basis million delcueto.
00:12:10 Speaker 2
Eventually became, as you will discover, one of the outstanding stars of the Metropolitan Opera.
00:12:16 Speaker 1
Which somebody who didn’t think she could sing well.
00:12:17 Speaker 2
We’ve got somebody in Vancouver didn’t think she had seen, but these programs were available and there were a great many services provided these transcribed programs in the early stages, the disk.
00:12:28 Speaker 2
Oh, I would guess would be 1516 inches across in diameter.
00:12:34 Speaker 2
And the very early ones were sick. They were almost 1/4 inch sick of this plastic. Subsequently they got thinner and thinner and thinner. And then.
00:12:41 Speaker 2
NBC came up with their Thesaurus library service.
00:12:44 Speaker 2
You may.
00:12:44 Speaker 2
Have heard of that one.
00:12:46 Speaker 2
That was a recording service and they had almost transparent little way free recording such as you get today.
00:12:54 Speaker 2
And they had queued selections, libraries that told you what number was where and what then you got.
00:13:02 Speaker 2
Filing cabinet for it and it was a whole service and you could then build programs and NBC sent along with this authority service suggested program formats for making up.
00:13:14 Speaker 2
And we had their art directors, as they called them, and production managers make up a program which could be put together from this.
00:13:22 Speaker 2
Or 50 minutes of songs or of violin playing or whatever.
00:13:26 Speaker 2
And the days I’m talking about before television.
00:13:31 Speaker 2
Creating this sort of a programming.
00:13:34 Speaker 2
In areas like Kamloops, Kelowna.
00:13:38 Speaker 2
The hinterlands was very, very valuable to a station because they could suddenly start to bring a professional.
00:13:47 Speaker 2
Atmosphere to their broadcasting rather than rely.
00:13:49 Speaker 2
On what was.
00:13:50 Speaker 2
Coming through the CBC and fiddling through.
00:13:52 Speaker 1
Or or on the on the local talent to the.
00:13:54 Speaker 1
Don’t know the Lord or what have you.
00:13:54 Speaker 2
Isle Beach house tour.
00:13:55 Speaker 2
With, well, they did have one year.
00:13:58 Speaker 2
The CBC came in here and put on they were going to encourage the artists and this was from the.
00:14:07 Speaker 2
Constant plea that all the art was held in Toronto and Ottawa and Vancouver.
00:14:13 Speaker 2
And they put on a series of.
00:14:17 Speaker 2
Programs from the BBC, each radio station in British Columbia.
00:14:21 Speaker 2
That was on this network. The BBC network was to provide 1/2 hour musical program a week and it would be from trail this week and from Kelowna next week and from camp it was the following week. And then from Chilliwack.
00:14:35 Speaker 2
And then from Victoria and from the various stations in the BC network.
00:14:41 Speaker 2
And to say some of it was simply awful would be an understatement.
00:14:44 Speaker 2
It was simply appalling.
00:14:46 Speaker 2
Some of the the programs were put on because the talent wasn’t in these centers.
00:14:53 Speaker 2
Well, you might have somebody who could declaim from the stage.
00:14:58 Speaker 2
And he might have some local piano teacher who felt that Jimmy should be recognized for his budding talents.
00:15:07 Speaker 2
The virtual facts are that talent will almost invariably.
00:15:14 Speaker 2
Move from the small centers into the big centers because there they are in touch and in contact with the things that make their art live and breathe.
00:15:22 Speaker 2
They must be in contact with other artists.
00:15:25 Speaker 2
Most art.
00:15:29 Speaker 2
By living upon itself with other artists, I think this is.
00:15:32 Speaker 2
True, you know well it.
00:15:34 Speaker 1
It it does gravity as you get as your level of perfection if you like gets greater gravitation.
00:15:35 Speaker 2
With gravitation.
00:15:41 Speaker 1
That’s why you get to Montreal clan and then all the next obvious.
00:15:44 Speaker 1
Step in New York.
00:15:44 Speaker 2
So I.
00:15:44 Speaker 2
Actually got to go to the bigger center is.
00:15:46 Speaker 1
New York and California.
00:15:51 Speaker 1
So in effect, what you did, what you would do would be to have a a program or a program format available which you would try to.
00:16:00 Speaker 2
We sold them.
00:16:01 Speaker 2
We sold them to radio stations.
00:16:06 Speaker 2
As a service, they could buy it so much program and they could then go out and sell it to the advertisers themselves.
00:16:12 Speaker 2
As a whole program.
00:16:14 Speaker 2
And we we sold to radio stations I sold to British Columbia radio stations.
00:16:19 Speaker 2
These transcribed programs for their library services.
00:16:22 Speaker 2
We tried to retain two or three of the better programs for sale to a national advertiser so that we could go to.
00:16:30 Speaker 2
Somebody like napon?
00:16:32 Speaker 2
Or somebody who had distribution over a number of stations.
00:16:35 Speaker 2
Offer him a program.
00:16:38 Speaker 2
Which he could have as a first run, you may say program for his own use as identified with as his program, which we did with ports of call as the.
00:16:47 Speaker 1
One I mentioned earlier and then you would buy the time on.
00:16:49 Speaker 1
The various stations that you would.
00:16:51 Speaker 2
Well, end the stations.
00:16:52 Speaker 2
We would have thought.
00:16:54 Speaker 2
Where we were selling this program under the name of Volcano Radio, we had the program, series and libraries.
00:17:03 Speaker 2
We would attempt to sell a.
00:17:04 Speaker 2
National advertiser this program.
00:17:07 Speaker 2
And would attempt also to have him use our station in most markets, which we represented.
00:17:13 Speaker 2
For example, we represented the.
00:17:14 Speaker 2
Station in Winnipeg.
00:17:16 Speaker 2
Edmonton, Calgary, Regina and so on.
00:17:19 Speaker 2
Now we didn’t have a representation operation in Saskatoon, so we would recommend the use of the station in Saskatoon and negotiate for time there or the agency would.
00:17:30 Speaker 2
And we would try to.
00:17:32 Speaker 2
Have the program on our own.
00:17:34 Speaker 2
But if the advertiser would buy the program, it is his privilege to run it.
00:17:38 Speaker 2
But sometimes the program was available to the advertiser only if he bought our stations too.
00:17:43 Speaker 2
There’s all sorts of little problems gone.
00:17:47 Speaker 2
Sprangers, I’m going to have to go.