00:00:00Speaker 1So he made arrangements for me to move in and have a room because they had lots of spare rooms in the summer months and pay whenever I could in the future.
00:00:11Speaker 1So this was a great deal.
00:00:13Speaker 1So I moved into the Edu house.
00:00:15Speaker 1I ran into some engineers and.
00:00:20Speaker 1I set up business with them and they allowed me to display my things in the top floor, providing that I would work for the rent in their forge.
00:00:28Speaker 1And they were where they had a big forge down there and we were making all kinds of door handles and latches and shutter holes back for the scenery club and all these rich Americans were moving up and buying property in the scenery club, you know, along the the river between Montreal and and.
00:00:46Speaker 1And we were making stuff for them.
00:00:48Speaker 1And then after we’ve made it, then we’d go and make.
00:00:50Speaker 1Sketch of it and we’d sell them on the idea of getting a lino or wood cut of their door or their entries or their gateway or something to put on their Christmas cards.
00:00:59Speaker 1And then we made these Lino cuts and have had a little pretty press.
00:01:02Speaker 1And we prayed at the Christmas guys.
00:01:04Speaker 1And this is what we lived on while I was trying to get.
00:01:07Speaker 2My business going, I keep wondering when you had any time to sleep.
00:01:11Speaker 1Oh well, I got well then I I got enough money to come to Toronto, and when I came to Toronto, I went to see my old friend John David Eaton and.
00:01:24Speaker 1Because I got to know him quite well because, Eaton said, asked Ross Jenkins tonight and meet John when he came to Winnipeg to start to work from Cambridge.
00:01:31Speaker 1And so I knew John quite well.
00:01:32Speaker 1And so he said, come on up to the house and stay there.
00:01:37Speaker 1And so I stayed in army for a couple of weeks, and then his his parents were away.
00:01:43Speaker 1And, you know, one day.
00:01:46Speaker 1I said something about a card and John said, well, go on out to grad and take one and drive down.
00:01:52Speaker 1And I went out to grads, and there was chauffeurs and mechanics and everything.
00:01:56Speaker 1And then there was fourteen cars in the grade, everything from Rolls royces and down.
00:02:01Speaker 1So I had there.
00:02:03Speaker 1So then John.
00:02:06Speaker 1And Sir John and Lady Eaton were away.
00:02:08Speaker 1And when they came back.
00:02:10Speaker 1I’ll I I stayed on for a couple of days and and and then.
00:02:15Speaker 1John said.
00:02:16Speaker 1How long are you going to be here?
00:02:18Speaker 1So I said, I don’t know, John.
00:02:20Speaker 1I’ve got a number of calls, he said.
00:02:23Speaker 1Why don’t you do this?
00:02:25Speaker 1I’ve got a nice big yacht over at the Yacht Club.
00:02:30Speaker 1Why don’t you go over and live on it?
00:02:33Speaker 1You can go and come as you see fit, and there’s all kinds of booze and there’s all kinds of beer and you’re a good mechanic and a good.
00:02:41Speaker 1And if there’s anything needs done, there’s a couple of other guys living there from Eatons and you, you know, will be on the on your system if there’s something that he’s done or some painting or some painting or some technical stuff that you can do, do it.
00:02:55Speaker 1And you can.
00:02:55Speaker 1Stay there as long as you want it.
00:02:58Speaker 2Not a bad offer.
00:03:00Speaker 1Pretty good then John.
00:03:02Speaker 1It took me around and introduced me to the Eatons buyers.
00:03:05Speaker 1He even came back to Montreal with me and introduced me to another and they were buying.
00:03:10Speaker 1That stuff for the next six years and in spite of the fact I wrote back to bank hardware and said, look, you’re sending me Commission checks.
00:03:18Speaker 1I haven’t been.
00:03:19Speaker 1I gave up my agency.
00:03:22Speaker 1When America went off the gold standard and we had a a wonderful trade arrangements.
00:03:28Speaker 1When we when when the pound was down.
00:03:30Speaker 1Yes, but when we went off the gold standard, then the pound went up and the dollar went down and I got cancellations for all the orders and my business just collapsed.
00:03:40Speaker 1So I said to bank hardware.
00:03:42Speaker 1Look, you’re sending me Commission checks, and apparently Eatons are buying these things all across Canada.
00:03:49Speaker 1I go back and said, you know, I’m not with them.
00:03:50Speaker 1And they wrote back and said, Mr.
00:03:52Speaker 1Carwell, we were so delighted to get for you to get us into the Eaton stores.
00:03:58Speaker 1We’re going to pay you a Commission as long as you live.
00:04:01Speaker 2Isn’t that fantastic?
00:04:02Speaker 1And they paid for about five years.
00:04:04Speaker 1And and.
00:04:10Speaker 1When I when I could see that the business wasn’t a big success, I went back to Winnipeg and I was.
00:04:20Speaker 1In my parents lived there and I was home when I got a phone call.
00:04:27Speaker 1Pete Elliott, who I got to know quite.
00:04:29Speaker 1Well, with the Marconi comma.
00:04:34Speaker 1Excuse me, it was regs.
00:04:35Speaker 1Listen regs, Brophy.
00:04:38Speaker 1Regrowth, reforming suspense.
00:04:42Speaker 1Well, I want you to come down to the hotel.
00:04:44Speaker 1Meant to royal Alec.
00:04:47Speaker 1And Ernie Bush was with me.
00:04:49Speaker 1We both wanted to see it.
00:04:50Speaker 1And by the way, pick up before you begin.
00:04:55Speaker 1So I went and got the Bible getting down the hotel and these fellas were hungover.
00:04:59Speaker 1Oh God.
00:05:02Speaker 1It turned out that Reg Brophy was supposed to get off at Regina and make arrangements with Peacock powder for a warehouse.
00:05:11Speaker 1To they were going to store sets and tubes and and now the airlines were coming up and there was a lot of commercial tubes and transmitter tubes and all that.
00:05:21Speaker 1They wanted to have a place in the West.
00:05:23Speaker 1So Reg said to me.
00:05:25Speaker 1Spence, what are you doing?
00:05:27Speaker 1So I told him about my English business and how it had collapsed when we went off the gold standard.
00:05:32Speaker 1And so he said, well, how would you like to?
00:05:37Speaker 1Work for Marconi?
00:05:38Speaker 1I said.
00:05:39Speaker 1You love it.
00:05:40Speaker 1Nothing would please me more, he said I can’t pay you very much money.
00:05:43Speaker 1But you have a pretty good expense account.
00:05:46Speaker 1So he hired me and told me to go to Regina and see Peacock pounded, that he’d made arrangements and seen them on the way West, but he didn’t get off there plastered.
00:05:56Speaker 1That’s why and so I went out and I wanted to see Peacock Pounders.
00:06:02Speaker 1They’d never heard of Brophy.
00:06:04Speaker 1They barely had heard of Marconi.
00:06:06Speaker 1And they couldn’t remember anybody coming in to talk about the thing.
00:06:09Speaker 1But he said we got space.
00:06:11Speaker 1Here and we’d be.
00:06:12Speaker 1To to supply you with an office or in heated area and supply you with space in the in the unheated in the warehouse, and we’ll put a wire netting around it, because tubes and and radios and things that are valuable and we’ll put we we can’t go any further than chicken.
00:06:32Speaker 1If someone wants to cut it, at least we’ll know that.
00:06:35Speaker 1Somebody’s feeling.
00:06:36Speaker 1And you can have the key to it.
00:06:38Speaker 1Or if you want to leave the key with the our chief shipper, then he can ship it when you’re away.
00:06:43Speaker 1So I went back to the hotel.
00:06:47Speaker 1The Saskatchewan Hotel and I phoned her Reg Brophy.
00:06:51Speaker 1To ask them, first of all, how about some expense money?
00:06:55Speaker 1How about some a check or something that I, you know, I had about 10 bucks in my jeans.
00:07:02Speaker 1And yeah, I’m in the whole Saskatchewan Hotel and Reg Brophy is in New York.
00:07:08Speaker 1Well, I said give me pee.
00:07:08Speaker 1Daddy, wait a minute.
00:07:10Speaker 1So I phoned Pete and I told him that Reg had hired me.
00:07:14Speaker 1And I’m sure that regs told him all about it.
00:07:16Speaker 1This was a great event and the history.
00:07:17Speaker 1Of Marconi, he laughed like he said.
00:07:20Speaker 1Hide you Christ, he.
00:07:23Speaker 1Nobody in Marconi, we’re.
00:07:25Speaker 1Cutting back, he wouldn’t hire you.
00:07:28Speaker 1Saul, you’re just giving me a linespace.
00:07:29Speaker 1No, sirree.
00:07:31Speaker 1And I said Pete.
00:07:33Speaker 1Please my friend.
00:07:35Speaker 1I’ve got 10 bucks.
00:07:37Speaker 1I paid my own fare out here because Reg hired me in the Royal Oak in Winnipeg and.
00:07:43Speaker 1I’m already started to work and I want some advance expenses and I want a salary check now so I can have some money and I’ll get going for you, he says.
00:07:54Speaker 1Spencer is not a chance.
00:07:55Speaker 1I couldn’t send you an expensive anything.
00:07:58Speaker 1Regs never mentioned to me and I know very well he wouldn’t do it unless he was corny.
00:08:03Speaker 1No, no, no.
00:08:03Speaker 1Perfect and so.
00:08:08Speaker 1Reggie was down in New York.
00:08:10Speaker 1Making arrangements to join NBC.
00:08:12Speaker 1Remember, he went down to NBC as a vice president.
00:08:14Speaker 2Yes, yes.
00:08:16Speaker 1So I said, well, please phone him wherever he is and find out and phone me back.
00:08:21Speaker 1So he phoned me back and he said, my God, Spence, you’re right.
00:08:25Speaker 1He did hire.
00:08:27Speaker 1And good God bless you.
00:08:29Speaker 1We need somebody out there.
00:08:30Speaker 1And I’m sorry that I was laughing at you, but I thought you were just giving me a line and he said to go to work and I’ll put all kinds of stuff in the mail for you.
00:08:40Speaker 1And you made the deal with Peacock Ponder.
00:08:43Speaker 1And we’ll send some sets out and some samples.
00:08:46Speaker 1Let’s see what you can do.
00:08:47Speaker 1And you get all straightened up.
00:08:50Speaker 1And then fool me.
00:08:51Speaker 1And then I want you to come down here and.
00:08:55Speaker 1You know, meet the guys and and find out what’s doing and we’re thinking we’re having a sales meeting in about a month of of all of our reps and had all kinds of reps in the East, but none out.
00:09:04Speaker 1West cause they had distributors out West.
00:09:07Speaker 1Mackenzie auto equipment electrical supplies Winnipeg Mayor Jack Wheatcroft and then teleports and Carson, Alberta and Mackenzie Ottawa and.
00:09:08Speaker 2Yes, yes.
00:09:17Speaker 1Somebody else.
00:09:18Speaker 1So I started with Marconi and I that was in 19.
00:09:29Speaker 1Where is that Roger’s majestic? In 33, I started with Marconi in 34, at least by these travelers certificate.
00:09:37Speaker 1That’s the first time I got to travel January the 2nd 1934 and I was with them for 3536.
00:09:49Speaker 137.
00:09:52Speaker 1Got 2 for 303839.
00:09:59Speaker 1And that must be 41. Yeah, 1941. That was with my coding longer than I suppose.
00:10:05Speaker 2Anyway, I’ll bring that.
00:10:06Speaker 2That bridges the time that it will end up to the point where you would join and CWX in Vancouver.
00:10:12Speaker 1Well, yes, but founders warehouse in Regina for Marconi and then they asked me to go to Winnipeg and open up an office and I got a second store place, just a little bit right in the corner of 4th and main only, but a little bit South.
00:10:27Speaker 1On the West side of Maine and that club was right next door.
00:10:33Speaker 1No, the Manitoba club was down by the Fort Garry.
00:10:35Speaker 1Wasn’t it?
00:10:36Speaker 1Well, it was just.
00:10:36Speaker 2South of 40 John Main.
00:10:39Speaker 1Was it?
00:10:40Speaker 1I didn’t think it was.
00:10:41Speaker 1I thought the Manitoba club.
00:10:42Speaker 1Was always down. Ah yes.
00:10:44Speaker 1The Carlton Carlton club.
00:10:45Speaker 1That’s it.
00:10:46Speaker 1Carlton club.
00:10:47Speaker 1It was right next to the Cotton Club, which I eventually joined.
00:10:50Speaker 1And so I was working out of Winnipeg, then working Western Canada and Nancy and.
00:10:54Speaker 1I moved there.
00:10:56Speaker 1And uhm.
00:10:58Speaker 1Ross Jenkins is now with Eatons and they just lived up the street, so we were very pleased with the whole thing.
00:11:03Speaker 1And so I worked from Port Arthur to the BC, Alberta border and.
00:11:11Speaker 1Then after a couple of years in Winnipeg.
00:11:15Speaker 1They had a fella and I forget his name now down in Montreal, that they had to do something to, so they asked me if I would go out to Vancouver.
00:11:25Speaker 1And work on not only sets and tubes and, but specializing in marine equipment.
00:11:35Speaker 1And broadcast equipment.
00:11:37Speaker 1That that they had a big office there.
00:11:40Speaker 1I think there was about 30 technicians in I think because they were servicing all the tramp steamers and all the ships.
00:11:44Speaker 2Yes, yes, for sure.
00:11:45Speaker 1That came there.
00:11:46Speaker 1But there was a less Hawkins the managers.
00:11:49Speaker 1Yes, he couldn’t sell anything to anybody and they decided they weren’t getting their.
00:11:54Speaker 1Share of the business and they said.
00:11:56Speaker 1Go out there, spend.
00:11:57Speaker 1She won’t be there too long, but.
00:12:01Speaker 1We want you to work out of the office there and just Rev up some sales, so I did and more than doubled their business and and and just radio sets and tubes by getting some agencies and doing little selling.
00:12:14Speaker 1And then I was able to get the little aluminum two wave.
00:12:21Speaker 1Voice just come out a little.
00:12:23Speaker 1We voice set.
00:12:25Speaker 1We pinched the design from Bill Lear, which is Lear.
00:12:29Speaker 1Bill Lear came up to see me and wanted me to go to Kansas City and work for him because I sold more of his Lear sets.
00:12:34Speaker 1Anybody else?
00:12:36Speaker 1And so we then we started to make him and put Marconi on them.
00:12:39Speaker 1I guess they paid him a royalty for it.
00:12:41Speaker 1We were importing the leader sets and then it came up my cook and we made this thing for the frontier and we we’d go up.
00:12:47Speaker 1To the end of the telephone line.
00:12:49Speaker 1And put in one of these sets, usually in a lady’s house, is where the telephone exchange was. The town would be 100 people or something like that, 200, and we would.
00:12:58Speaker 1Put two wave voice radio from the end of the telephone line into the forest patrol airplane.
00:13:07Speaker 1Into the pulp and paper plant into the mine, into prospective camp or.
00:13:12Speaker 1Something like that maybe?
00:13:13Speaker 1Installed five or six of these things were businesses and then these guys could phone New York their phones around phone anywhere in the world because we we fixed it.
00:13:21Speaker 1So under these sets was a patching arrangement which would so they could patch it in to their regular.
00:13:27Speaker 2Radio telephone service.
00:13:28Speaker 1It’s radio telephone.
00:13:29Speaker 1We put those all in along the front there then.
00:13:31Speaker 1We changed the.
00:13:33Speaker 1To work on.
00:13:36Speaker 1Marine frequencies, which was higher because the coils are bigger, the frequencies lower the and the marine frequencies we we have to do a little twisting and and and I quite a bit to do with that and then this is one of the things.
00:13:48Speaker 1I supposed to do.
00:13:49Speaker 1Well, God, I got every tugboat.
00:13:51Speaker 1There’s more tugboats in BC than there’s and all the rest of Canada, you know.
00:13:54Speaker 1Bring in the log book.
00:13:55Speaker 1So I would go to the captains and I’d say now the safety of sea factories, if you get a headwind or something that you can phone and tell the so and so and you can give your position to the head office.
00:14:07Speaker 1If you lose your toe.
00:14:08Speaker 1And the logs break.
00:14:09Speaker 1Up you can.
00:14:10Speaker 1They’ll know where it is and you can get people out there before they’re all stolen.
00:14:14Speaker 1You know these guys.
00:14:15Speaker 1Up down the coast, stealing the logs.
00:14:18Speaker 1If they break out of a boom.
00:14:20Speaker 1So the captain would say to me.
00:14:23Speaker 1Can I phone the missus?
00:14:25Speaker 1I got a headwind and I told her I was gonna be home Saturday night for supper and I got a headwind and I’m.
00:14:29Speaker 1Not gonna make it till Sunday morning. Can iPhone her and tell her? And I said sure you can.
00:14:34Speaker 1My daughter lives up the Fraser Valley.
00:14:36Speaker 1And she’s pregnant.
00:14:37Speaker 1Can I fall and see how the baby’s gonna run this? It’s certainly for anywhere in the world once you get.
00:14:43Speaker 1I say I got big antenna on top of the BC telephone that’s plugged right into their board and you can phone your head office.
00:14:49Speaker 1You can phone home, you can run it now.
00:14:51Speaker 1You might have to pay for these calls.
00:14:52Speaker 1I don’t know.
00:14:53Speaker 1Whatever deal you make with the captain.
00:14:55Speaker 1What’s the owners?
00:14:56Speaker 1And of course, the owners.
00:14:57Speaker 1Just give a damn $0.50 or something, you know.
00:15:01Speaker 1And so they let the captains go anywhere they wanted to.
00:15:04Speaker 1So I was putting putting these things in and then we Pete Elliott had sent me out some more by now.
00:15:12Speaker 1Reg Brophy is down in New York with NBC and they Pete sent me out some.
00:15:17Speaker 1New fresh literature on new broadcasting station equipment.
00:15:21Speaker 1We also had Collins and two, we’re getting the Collins design and we brought in a few of their transmitters.
00:15:27Speaker 1So I went to see spikes holes.
00:15:28Speaker 1He said.
00:15:30Speaker 1To and I gave him about a 3 hour pitch and all the wonderful limiting amplifiers and grid bias modulators and all these other things and one.
00:15:39Speaker 2Just for the records, as far as Halstead was at that time, the President of CWA.
00:15:44Speaker 1Yes, right. That’s right.
00:15:46Speaker 1You do ****, ****.
00:15:47Speaker 1You sparks all said.
00:15:48Speaker 1Was president of CK.
00:15:49Speaker 1That would actually, I’m the owner, as a matter of fact, he still had the transmitter.
00:15:54Speaker 1He used to be in the battery business with a partner and a nono, and they had a fight.
00:15:59Speaker 1So he told the partner to take the batteries and stick them up his ***, and he took the transmitter and put it in the back of his car and went to Vancouver and he said.
00:16:06Speaker 3It up.
00:16:07Speaker 1And the licensing was so.
00:16:09Speaker 1Lacks in those days that the Department of Marine and Fishery Man came to see him and said sparks.
00:16:16Speaker 1You’re not supposed to move from city to city, you know, and that’s against the rules.
00:16:22Speaker 1And he said, well, I don’t know anything about the rules.
00:16:24Speaker 1I don’t give a damn.
00:16:24Speaker 1It’s up and it’s working, and we’re going to leave it there.
00:16:27Speaker 1And it was an old Marconi angle iron.
00:16:29Speaker 1Chips transmitter.
00:16:31Speaker 1There is no crystal in it.
00:16:33Speaker 1There was no modulation control and it it went ten points on each side of.
00:16:40Speaker 1It’s a lot of frequency back and forth and you could pack it in the suitcase and well, just.
00:16:45Speaker 1Well, not quite.
00:16:46Speaker 1You can put it in the trunk of a car.
00:16:48Speaker 1You left the lid open so.
00:16:53Speaker 1I gave him the best sales pitch I’ve ever made in my life on transmitter equipment, and I had all the photographs and all this new equipment.
00:16:59Speaker 1I was really sold myself on all this news.
00:17:02Speaker 1And when I got through, he said Spence.
00:17:04Speaker 1That’s the most interesting story I have.
00:17:07Speaker 1No one ever calls on me.
00:17:08Speaker 1No one ever tries to sell me anything because they’re afraid they won’t get paid, he says.
00:17:13Speaker 1To tell you the truth, Spence, I couldn’t buy any of that equipment.
00:17:16Speaker 1As a matter of fact, I couldn’t buy a screwdriver.
00:17:20Speaker 1So I said to them.
00:17:21Speaker 1Would you like to have a partner?
00:17:25Speaker 1And he said, yeah, so I said, well, I think I can get one for you.
00:17:28Speaker 1So I phoned Harold Carson and Harold came up the next day and.
00:17:32Speaker 1Made a deal with sparks and the idea was that sparks would they’d buy 50% of the stock as I recall it now.
00:17:41Speaker 1And sparks would be the chairman of the board.
00:17:44Speaker 1You’d have the biggest office.
00:17:46Speaker 1And he’d get a salary and he’d sign the checks, but he wouldn’t have a *** **** thing to do with the running of the station.
00:17:54Speaker 2And it was legendary, as you will recall at WX.
00:17:58Speaker 2That that era was still is referred to as the time the Gold Train rolled over the.
00:18:05Speaker 2Mountain. Ohh yeah.
00:18:07Speaker 1Well, I was there then, you know, and we’re out of money.
00:18:12Speaker 1This is when we’re building up audience and shows and everything else.
00:18:18Speaker 1Lindsey and tiny alfing.
00:18:19Speaker 1God, we had more, more talent out there.
00:18:23Speaker 1But we had to spend a lot of money on advertising and salesman and programs and stuff to announcers to make it a success.
00:18:33Speaker 1And of course, we did.
00:18:35Speaker 1It went from the very bottom station to the very top.
00:18:38Speaker 2You were there at that time as.
00:18:40Speaker 2Sales manager, yes.
00:18:43Speaker 1And I had one or two other.
00:18:46Speaker 1Things, minor things.
00:18:48Speaker 1I had a lot to do with the accounting department.
00:18:50Speaker 1I had a lot to do with scheduling and because we used to get copy of all that because I’ll tell the salesman what?
00:19:01Speaker 1Periods were available.
00:19:03Speaker 1And we were selling a lot of programs in those days.
00:19:05Speaker 2Two which you have.
00:19:05Speaker 1We were buying from all Canada and.
00:19:12Speaker 2Do you have mutual network at that time?
00:19:13Speaker 2No, that was.
00:19:15Speaker 1I was calling on mutual network.
00:19:16Speaker 1Quite a bit.
00:19:17Speaker 1Matter of fact, I when I was coming back from the states once I told him I was down on a mutual network business.
00:19:23Speaker 1But I wasn’t.
00:19:24Speaker 1And the guy said when I was showing him my thing, I brought out your picture was on your.
00:19:32Speaker 1Identification card and on the back it was stamped with gas masks and everything else you had drawn and.
00:19:42Speaker 1Anyway, this thing fell out and the guy said, oh, you’re in the army.
00:19:47Speaker 1And I said, well, no, I’m in the reserve and I’m in the.
00:19:51Speaker 1And the artillery.
00:19:53Speaker 1He said. Where’s your pass?
00:19:55Speaker 1To be down the states, I said I don’t need a pass, he says to you.
00:20:02Speaker 1Every soldier needs a pass when he goes across the border, but and they get back here.
00:20:07Speaker 1So so.
00:20:09Speaker 1We had a system then where the stations all down the coast were tied up on a telex where we could change frequency.
00:20:18Speaker 1And change the call letters.
00:20:20Speaker 2This against the possibility working across the Pacific.
00:20:22Speaker 1Of yeah.
00:20:24Speaker 1So the *** airplanes couldn’t, couldn’t home on.
00:20:29Speaker 1They didn’t want to hit Vancouver, particularly because at that time, there’s too many traps living there.
00:20:33Speaker 1But they wanted to hit Bremen in Washington, the naval base, so they could, you know, take a fix on.
00:20:40Speaker 1And I stay CKW take it fixed on Spokane.
00:20:44Speaker 1Take it fixed on Prince Rupert and they know exactly where they were.
00:20:47Speaker 1And then they had the little meter that showed them when they’re on the line and they’d come in the line in our frequency and then they knew they made.
00:20:57Speaker 1Starboard. Turn at the.
00:21:01Speaker 1Where their maximum signal they could go so many miles and they would be over Brandon and they dropped their bombs.
00:21:07Speaker 1So this was organized by the American Navy.
00:21:09Speaker 1And actually I had been down at San Diego.
00:21:13Speaker 1At one of these meetings, George Chandler, CJR and I were the Canadian representatives on this.
00:21:20Speaker 1So I when I I had been going down to school, came to see the the mutual network.
00:21:25Speaker 1And this time I wasn’t.
00:21:26Speaker 1I was on this communication thing, which is all hush, hush and very secret.
00:21:32Speaker 1And then so.
00:21:36Speaker 2Let me take you forwards paths to.
00:21:40Speaker 2I don’t mean to.
00:21:42Speaker 2To undervalue the.
00:21:44Speaker 2Approximately 2 1/2 years. I guess you were at CQWW.
00:21:49Speaker 2You went with the to the station when the skin Squires.
00:21:54Speaker 2Was the first manager under the new regime, followed by Tiny Elfick.
00:22:00Speaker 2And we’re there.
00:22:00Speaker 1I think we knew at the time that.
00:22:01Speaker 2I think.
00:22:02Speaker 1Tiny was coming.
00:22:03Speaker 1And that that skin was only there temporary.
00:22:07Speaker 1Because he had this station back in Stratford and.
00:22:12Speaker 1I I always thought no, I’m not sure of this.
00:22:15Speaker 1I always thought that Harold and skin were in the Air Force together and they were both skinny and the reason skin got the name of skin and he wasn’t a fat man that we know he was about as thick as your fingers.
00:22:29Speaker 1And here these 18 year old kids that have seen pictures of them in their.
00:22:33Speaker 1Look, there are pencils, both of them.
00:22:36Speaker 1And so they were good friends and and skin being a lawyer and had some broadcast experience.
00:22:42Speaker 1Harold got sent him out there as the first manager.
00:22:45Speaker 1They clean up the deal.
00:22:47Speaker 1Certain number of hours were owned by Uncle Billy Hassell, a certain number of hours were owned by the Son.
00:22:53Speaker 1The Catholic Church had opened so the Protestants had to be in there.
00:22:56Speaker 1The province had a piece of it and and he had all kinds of this.
00:23:00Speaker 1What do they call it?
00:23:01Speaker 1Bulk programming, that where you give a salesman an hour and he can go and sell it out.
00:23:07Speaker 1And give the spikes half of it or something like that.
00:23:11Speaker 1So they have to get rid of all of these these deals.
00:23:14Speaker 1And this is what skin did more than broadcasting because he he.
00:23:18Speaker 1An awful lot of guys, except me.
00:23:20Speaker 1I didn’t know that.
00:23:21Speaker 1Casting, except I had been in every broadcasting station because I was calling on, you know, I sold.
00:23:28Speaker 1A Murphy CQC in Saskatoon, his first commercial transmitter?
00:23:33Speaker 2There you go.
00:23:34Speaker 1Lloyd Moffett.
00:23:35Speaker 1I put him in the broadcasting business.
00:23:37Speaker 1Eddie Rollinson all these guys are big shots.
00:23:40Speaker 1Today I had something to do with their beginning.
00:23:44Speaker 2You put the Lloyd Moffett into business.
00:23:46Speaker 1Work Lloyd Moffett was nanci’s father’s projectionist, assistant projectionist in Regina.
00:23:54Speaker 1And the Grand Theatre in Regina. Major Graham, Nancy’s father.
00:23:59Speaker 1Had a friend who ran the Capitol Theatre and Prince Albert.
00:24:04Speaker 1The man died his projectionist.
00:24:07Speaker 1And he phoned.
00:24:09Speaker 1To his friend.
00:24:10Speaker 1Major Graham and said help me get a guy up here right away if he has to drive all night but.
00:24:17Speaker 1I have to have a projectionist and so.
00:24:21Speaker 1Major game says well, I’ve got 2.
00:24:23Speaker 1I’ll send you my my assistants.
00:24:25Speaker 1A very good fellow.
00:24:26Speaker 1He’s well trained.
00:24:27Speaker 1So that was Lloyd Moffett.
00:24:28Speaker 1Lloyd Moffett went up to be the projectionist in the in the Capital Theatre in Prince Albert.
00:24:34Speaker 1And when I started to go there.
00:24:36Speaker 1To see him.
00:24:37Speaker 1I would walk from machine to machine as he was feeding the film and he’d hand me the reels they spent.
00:24:43Speaker 1Rewind that.
00:24:44Speaker 1For me and I said OK and I’d have my book out and said, well, look at here, the new transmitter, what you do and and.
00:24:51Speaker 1Station in town.
00:24:54Speaker 1He didn’t own it then he was just thinking of getting it, and it was called 10 AB.
00:24:59Speaker 1And it was one of those things where each citizen put up a dollar and they put in an amateur station there.
00:25:05Speaker 1And now Lloyd was Lloyd and his partner, and Mr.
00:25:09Speaker 1Brown, who was the caretaker and their biggest apartment building, which was two stories high and about 12.
00:25:16Speaker 1And I’d have to go.
00:25:16Speaker 1And when he was sweeping the hall, I’d walk up and down.
00:25:19Speaker 1In my.
00:25:20Speaker 1They look at here, this guy, the very latest grid bias and amplifiers and all the rest of them so.
00:25:27Speaker 1They changed it to CBI and Lloyd got that station, then when Lloyd.
00:25:36Speaker 1Wanted to move into bigger things and move to Winnipeg.
00:25:39Speaker 1He asked that he Rollins.
00:26:58Speaker 1Then who was working for a Regina auditing firm and he was the Prince Albert representative getting about $75.00 a month.
00:27:09Speaker 1Lloyd asked Eddie.
00:27:11Speaker 1To take off a statement of what?
00:27:15Speaker 1The station was worse because he was going to sell it and move to Winnipeg.
00:27:22Speaker 1So Eddie did.
00:27:25Speaker 1And while he was working on it at home to figure this thing out.
00:27:28Speaker 1He said, jeez, well, I buy your thing.
00:27:32Speaker 1And he had absolutely no money.
00:27:34Speaker 1So he went to a nice old cellar and I can’t remember his name now, but I met him who had a large contract for a number of years, making ties with the CPR.
00:27:43Speaker 1And he had a creosoting plant up there and the, you know, the the trees in northern Saskatchewan are just ripe for tides.
00:27:48Speaker 3Yeah, yeah, sizes, that’s all.
00:27:50Speaker 1That’s the size of the tree.
00:27:53SpeakerThat’s all they’re good.
00:27:54Speaker 1And so this guy had a big business and he made a lot of money and he did his books.
00:27:59Speaker 1So Eddie went over to see this man at home and told him the whole story and said, would you back me and this?
00:28:04Speaker 1Guy said. Certainly good.
00:28:06Speaker 1Deal for this fellow.
00:28:07Speaker 1Loaning the money.
00:28:08Speaker 1And he went back and saw Lloyd and said.
00:28:10Speaker 1This is what your station is worth, and I’ll buy it.
00:28:13Speaker 1And that’s how they got into the body.
00:28:16Speaker 2Well then, after having put WX.
00:28:19Speaker 2Well, turn WX around a.
00:28:21Speaker 1Little bit you know, but.
00:28:23Speaker 1CJ WX went from the bottom station to the top.
00:28:27Speaker 1And we all had a large part to do with it.
00:28:30Speaker 1Stewie was absolutely terrific.
00:28:33Speaker 1And I’ve got pictures I don’t want to put him in there where he’s.
00:28:35Speaker 1On the stage.
00:28:36Speaker 2I’ve got those by first, yes.
00:28:37Speaker 1And we we got to you know.
00:28:40Speaker 2You’ll find them in the book.
00:28:41Speaker 1Treasure trust, Treasure Trail Treasure Trail moved to Vancouver and Stewie was the emcee on it, and we put all kinds of shows we had a we had a studio with an audience.
00:28:51Speaker 1And people would line up an hour before the show to get into the dancing, and we used to have to go to the regulars who would always come and ask them not to come for a few weeks because we wanted to get the variety of people coming down to see those great productions.
00:29:07Speaker 1And I used to going back east all the time because Walter Holden was in Winnipeg by now, and Waldo and I didn’t think we used to have.
00:29:17Speaker 1Sales managers meetings out there and we didn’t think that all Canada Toronto was doing a good enough job for us.
00:29:23Speaker 1So we like to come down ourselves and go around and call on the agencies and the and the manufacturers.
00:29:28Speaker 1And I used to go to Cincinnati.
00:29:30Speaker 1I took took five.
00:29:33Speaker 1And packed and gravel shows away from CJ Oraya.
00:29:36Speaker 1I thought that Don Larsen and.
00:29:40Speaker 1George would kill me.
00:29:44Speaker 1Well, the thing went up and up and up.
00:29:48Speaker 1And I was down in the states one day.
00:29:51Speaker 1And I was coming back and I was traveling to the east and down the States and all around the country so much that nobody ever went to see me off.
00:29:59Speaker 1And nobody ever met me.
00:30:01Speaker 1And I got off this plane.
00:30:04Speaker 1And I walk through the gate and there’s Nancy and I look up and there’s Lena and I look up and there’s tiny.
00:30:10Speaker 2This will be in our 1943.
00:30:14Speaker 1Yes, 1943. The water was on right. And and I think I was down there on on, on on this communication or or tell you to take our guns down the states too.
00:30:26Speaker 1You know, there’s a little peninsula there where you have to come into Canada to get down to the States and say, oh, hey, Roberts point.
00:30:30Speaker 2Yes, Brian Roberts from.
00:30:35Speaker 2Robert, I guess.
00:30:36Speaker 1Point Roberts.
00:30:37Speaker 1Well, we used to run our guns down there.
00:30:39Speaker 1We had the only mobile in the West Coast of Canada, and Allan Mcgavin was that it was the battery that was his assist.
00:30:50Speaker 1Roll around and cheat and go. When we moved from out of Vernon over to Courtney and Comox, where we could fire the guns, we used to go up to Campbell River to fish and in the evenings when we’re too. Allen was a wonderful guy’s bakery.
00:31:06Speaker 1And so.
00:31:08Speaker 1I got off the plane and I said, what in the world is up there?
00:31:12Speaker 1And they said, oh, we just thought it was a nice evening and we would come out and pick you up.
00:31:16Speaker 1And Nancy was always visiting me.
00:31:18Speaker 1And we’ll go to Shaughnessy and.
00:31:20Speaker 1Have dinner.
00:31:22Speaker 1So I get in the car and throw my bags in.
00:31:25Speaker 1The back and and and and.
00:31:27SpeakerI look at my.
00:31:28Speaker 1Wife and she’s grinning and I look at leaning and she’s kind of looking at the.
00:31:31Speaker 1Ground and that I said, you know, there’s something going on here that I don’t know, but now this is not a surprise party because this is my birthday.
00:31:40Speaker 1I haven’t done anything.
00:31:42Speaker 1But it’s.
00:31:42Speaker 1I just feel there’s something Chinese as there is, but just wait.
00:31:46Speaker 1Wait till we get a drink in there.
00:31:49Speaker 1So when we got a drink in the hand, he said to me, he said to Spence, Dr.
00:31:54Speaker 1free gun is in town from the CBC.
00:31:57Speaker 1He’s come out to see you.
00:32:00Speaker 1He has stopped in in Calgary and talked to Harold Carson and had Harold’s permission to talk to.
00:32:06Speaker 1And so I said.
00:32:07Speaker 1Well, if you want to talk to me.
00:32:08Speaker 1About says.
00:32:09Speaker 1They want you to go with the CBC.
00:32:12Speaker 1Well, you know, we thought the CDC was about the ******* of the world.
00:32:17Speaker 1And I said, not a producer.
00:32:20Speaker 1I’m not an announcer.
00:32:22Speaker 1I’m not a writer.
00:32:24Speaker 1I did two things.
00:32:25Speaker 1I’m a technician and a salesman, and I’m not technically good enough for the CBC because I know a lot of those engineers down there and they’re clever.
00:32:35Speaker 1Right, Howard here and all these other guys, they were terrific.
00:32:39Speaker 1These guys at Montreal, well, how we met the engineering department.
00:32:46Speaker 1I went down.
00:32:47Speaker 1To see him and he told me the story that.
00:32:52Speaker 1That there was too many commercials on the Trans Canada network and television was a.
00:32:56Speaker 1Number of years off.
00:32:58Speaker 1And they wanted to set up another network.
00:33:01Speaker 1It would be light music.
00:33:03Speaker 1And and take the commercials.
00:33:05Speaker 1You’re going to try and take a lot of the commercials off.
00:33:12Speaker 1The CBC’s present network, because they wanted to clear all the commercials out of things like Wednesday.
00:33:18Speaker 1Remember, they made Wednesday night into the highbrow thing where they put the Symphony and Andrew Allen.
00:33:23Speaker 1’s plays.
00:33:24Speaker 2See you Wednesday night.
00:33:25Speaker 1Yeah, and and so.
00:33:28Speaker 1They said you come down and build up and we have a frequency there and build it into a decent station and get studio facilities and.
00:33:39Speaker 1And then travel across the country and call on the stations because every station wanted on the network.
00:33:46Speaker 1So then I went and sometimes I Walter Powell or EA Weir would go or Bud Walker and we would go out to the stations and ask the ones we wanted to join.
00:34:00Speaker 1And there was a lot of politics got in the thing too.
00:34:02Speaker 1And we got, you know, who did I give it to in Vancouver so CKW.
00:34:06Speaker 1Rex or CJR, which was the first in line for the thinking and oh it was just terrible job. But anyway we got that and we we got our own staff and we got young people and we put on, you know, Gordon Keeble announced the 10:10.
00:34:22Speaker 1Swing club and.
00:34:24Speaker 1We put the lisarow beef from Montreal on a special program and we had.
00:34:33Speaker 1Persian horn.
00:34:37Speaker 1Sammy Hirschhorn, we give him about four different names.
00:34:41Speaker 1He used to make more money than the.
00:34:43Speaker 1President of the CBC.
00:34:45Speaker 1And so did the other guy that’s over in London now.
00:34:50Speaker 1I married a creep.
00:34:53Speaker 1And he’s not playing anymore.
00:34:55Speaker 1And now he doesn’t need to do anything.
00:35:00Speaker 1We had him and we.
00:35:01Speaker 1Did the the.
00:35:03Speaker 1Latin American serenade.
00:35:06Speaker 1And we barely show around Bert and Iosi.
00:35:12Speaker 1And we we did.
00:35:13Speaker 2You were the first manager then of the Dominion network.
00:35:16Speaker 1Well, they didn’t have a manager.
00:35:18Speaker 1If that wasn’t my title, although I was.
00:35:22Speaker 1But Mr.
00:35:23Speaker 1Weir thought he was running the Dominion network.
00:35:27Speaker 1Bud Walker thought he was running the Dominion network.
00:35:30Speaker 1Ernie Bushnell thought he was running the network.
00:35:32Speaker 1Charles Jennings thought he was running the network.
00:35:34Speaker 1Ottawa thought there running it and Montreal was getting in every now and then because that’s where free gun lived. And so it was a real dog’s breakfast. But anyway, I was running the only CBC station.
00:35:47Speaker 1We had a CBC station in Toronto and 35 affiliates. The affiliates all loved the programs and all.
00:35:55Speaker 1Got high high.
00:35:56Speaker 1Radians and CJ BC wasn’t in the rating book at this stage.
00:36:01Speaker 1So we had to start from scratch and I ran.
00:36:04Speaker 1My own billboard signs newspaper ads and called on and on.
00:36:09Speaker 1And did I did more selling than I did programming because I Gordon Keeble was there and he was just an announcer and I made him the chief announcer and I made **** guns.
00:36:19Speaker 1The program director and Hartley Mcvicker.
00:36:22Speaker 1And those guys, and they ran the programming.
00:36:24Speaker 1With it, while I spent my time selling and calling on customers.
00:36:28Speaker 1And then customers and the agencies would laugh at me because they say, yeah, in the audience in Toronto and we don’t want to buy a network that hasn’t got Canada’s biggest market.
00:36:38Speaker 1Figures in this market.
00:36:40Speaker 1So it was a hell of a job.
00:36:41Speaker 1However, Bill Biles, I must say, started to give me some shows he.
00:36:45Speaker 1Was young and moving at the time.
00:36:47Speaker 1And he brought in, gave me Bob Hope and got out. And he did A2 terrific selling job for the network.
00:36:54Speaker 1No, he would force me to run ads in the paper and run the picture of his show in the first top position in the streetcar cards.
00:37:02Speaker 1And then I had printed my own stationery.
00:37:04Speaker 1I was a real rebel in there because I was mad when I came down there because the staff had got together.
00:37:09Speaker 1And when I walked into the station and was pointing out my office, there was a notice of the we opposed the appointment of Spence, cobble, really, and the staff opposed it.
00:37:18Speaker 1And so I have to solve that.
00:37:19Speaker 1Problem at the beginning.
00:37:22Speaker 1And and I got them.
00:37:23Speaker 1You know, the best way to solve the problem, which has to face up to it and and say and.
00:37:29Speaker 1Just a minute.
00:37:30Speaker 1I didn’t ask for this job.
00:37:32Speaker 1I was doing quite well out in Vancouver. I took a $2000 cut in salary to leave my thing to come here to try and help this.
00:37:41Speaker 1Because Ira Dilworth and Doctor Free gone and my.
00:37:46Speaker 1Friends in the.
00:37:47Speaker 1CBC and Don Manson asked me to.
00:37:51Speaker 1Now, I’m sorry that one of you didn’t get the management, but it’s not me.
00:37:56Speaker 1I didn’t do it.
00:37:57Speaker 1Go and kick free gun in the ***** if you if.
00:38:00Speaker 1If you don’t like what they’re doing or declaring bull, or he pushed them well, he ain’t weird.
00:38:07Speaker 1These are the men I talked to.
00:38:09Speaker 1And I didn’t particularly want to.
00:38:12Speaker 1I’m here and I don’t like working in a God.
00:38:14Speaker 1Damn battery factory.
00:38:17Speaker 1I came from the best studio in Canada.
00:38:19Speaker 1To the worst.
00:38:21Speaker 1And I’m sweating my asss up and you people are complaining about this thing you’re all going to get.
00:38:25Speaker 1You know, if we make a success of this, this is going to be a great thing.
00:38:28Speaker 1So instead of beef, you think don’t tear that *** **** notice down on the border.
00:38:32Speaker 1I will and get to work.
00:38:34Speaker 1I took it down and went to work.
00:38:36Speaker 1I mean good sense.
00:38:41Speaker 1I travel an.
00:38:42Speaker 1Awful lot and I was going to New York.
00:38:45Speaker 1And I was talking to all the agencies and and I went to Cincinnati parking down and called on the big American agencies down there and especially I got to know ABC, NBC and CBS, all the top brass and all those guys, which was one of the things I wanted.
00:38:59Speaker 1I wanted to come to Toronto not so much to make a hero of myself with the CBC as to meet.
00:39:05Speaker 1The advertisers, the agencies, and because the big businesses in Canada is Toronto and new.
00:39:13Speaker 1York and that’s what I do and.
00:39:18Speaker 1So I was there and we we moved out of the Canadian National carbon battery plant and got the the Havergal College on Jarvis St. in trade for the CBC office at 55 York.
00:39:34Speaker 1We just moved in and got things going.
00:39:39Speaker 1I was happy in there and everybody was good to me.
00:39:42Speaker 1I didn’t leave because of anything.
00:39:44Speaker 1Oh, I there’s a solid in charge of supplies.
00:39:47Speaker 1I printed my own stationery.
00:39:49Speaker 1And he got a copy of it.
00:39:51Speaker 1He wrote to me and says you can’t do that.
00:39:53Speaker 1It’s a horrible looking letterhead.
00:39:54Speaker 1So I said.
00:39:55Speaker 1Look, Mr.
00:39:56Speaker 1I don’t know you, but I’m going to be in Montreal in two days from now.
00:39:59Speaker 1And so I’ll go and see you and I’ll talk to you about this face to face.
00:40:07Speaker 1Instead of doing that, I went in to see Doctor Fregon.
00:40:10Speaker 1I said doctor free gun.
00:40:12Speaker 1You asked me to make this station different.
00:40:14Speaker 1Make him into a private state.
00:40:17Speaker 1And let all the advertisers know, because we want to advertise and we need the money.
00:40:20Speaker 1This is what you said to me, doesn’t it?
00:40:22Speaker 1I said yeah.
00:40:23Speaker 1So I said, well, a private station doesn’t have a black on white, dull looking government letterhead.
00:40:31Speaker 1And I designed my own.
00:40:33SpeakerI mean like.
00:40:36Speaker 1Last, sit down said how much of the Nice.
00:40:40SpeakerShe said she.
00:40:41Speaker 1Just let me have.
00:40:42Speaker 1Some of it.
00:40:42SpeakerRight.
00:40:43Speaker 1So I said, phone down to your man.
00:40:45Speaker 1He’s giving me help and have him come up here.
00:40:48Speaker 1So he came up here and Doctor Fagan says.
00:40:50Speaker 1And he says this is beautiful looking stationary.
00:40:52Speaker 1Why don’t you order stuff like that?
00:40:54Speaker 1So that horrible stuff that you give me the and what the station’s got is worse than mine.
00:40:59Speaker 1And I think this is wonderful and we’re trying to make this, you know, live when the thing happened.
00:41:05Speaker 1This is what Mr.
00:41:06Speaker 1Carl was for.
00:41:06Speaker 1And he’s doing it.
00:41:08Speaker 2I didn’t know.
00:41:17Speaker 1While I was at the CBC, I gave I.
00:41:20Speaker 1Gave the CBC.
00:41:21Speaker 1Story and I I liked it very much and everybody was very good to me.
00:41:27Speaker 1But I thought after a year or two years plus two years and 1/2 or something that I had.
00:41:35Speaker 1Have met the American networks and the advertising people, and I’d learned a lot from the CBC and I felt that it was time for me to move on.
00:41:46Speaker 1Because I had in my mind.
00:41:51Speaker 1And wealth.
00:41:53Speaker 1And I didn’t want to be a producer at the CBC, and I didn’t want to be manager of a radio station at the of the CBC because they paid far less than the private broadcaster and I wanted to get on.
00:42:05Speaker 1And in into most likely my own business sometime.
00:42:12Speaker 1Just then with Mcquillan.
00:42:16Speaker 1Who lived in this apartment block as a matter of fact.
00:42:21Speaker 1Where’s Macron phoned me up and asked me to if I’d have lunch with him and I was doing a lot of business with Kofi Brown, so I thought it was something to do with Canada Packers or something.
00:42:33Speaker 1He said to me. Spence.
00:42:36Speaker 1I like what you’re doing here, and I’ve made inquiries at Vancouver and you did a good job out there.
00:42:43Speaker 1And he said.
00:42:45Speaker 1Do you know who recommended you to the CBC?
00:42:49Speaker 1And I said no, I I, I I’ve never been able to figure it out.
00:42:52Speaker 1I thought it was all EA wear.
00:42:53Speaker 1Walter Powell, a commercial man or something there.
00:42:56Speaker 1He says no.
00:42:56Speaker 1The main thing was Ira Diller.
00:42:59Speaker 1Who was in charge of the CDC in Vancouver and he watched you take that station from nothing.
00:43:01SpeakerRight.
00:43:05Speaker 1Me and Stuart and Norm Bottrell and, you know, Tiny Elphick.
00:43:11Speaker 1And God save us.
00:43:12Speaker 1There was Norris Mackenzie.
00:43:14Speaker 1And there’s more talent than that, said he.
00:43:18Speaker 1He watched that station.
00:43:19Speaker 1Go from the bottom to the top and he told them at.
00:43:23Speaker 1At a management meeting when they were discussing in Ottawa, they had an executive meeting that all came down and talked about it and they were talking about setting up a second network and he said there’s there’s a guy in Vancouver, you you don’t need a program man down here, you don’t need a.
00:43:43Speaker 1The technician, although he is technically my money, you want a good salesman and a good.
00:43:48Speaker 1Whistling in this as it fell out in the seated would not manager, but sales manager or something like that of the thing.
00:43:55Speaker 1But as far as I’m concerned, he he is the one that’s known around things.
00:43:59Speaker 1See, I was on the street all the time.
00:44:01Speaker 1The other guys were working in the street and I was the one in the Board of Trade and belong to the clubs.
00:44:06Speaker 1And and I got the most thinking.
00:44:08Speaker 1So and so it was through our Adil was mentioning this as a management meeting when they’re talking about the network.
00:44:18Speaker 1Then they, Ernie says, I know Spence Carl very well, and I think the world of him and he told.
00:44:23Speaker 1Him about Reggie?
00:44:24Speaker 1Brophy and we asked like only thing and and and then and then.
00:44:34Speaker 1Arnie’s assistant.
00:44:36Speaker 1The big fella now, announcer Charlie, Johnny, Charlie Jennings.
00:44:40Speaker 1Charlie Jennings says, oh, I’ve no one spent for a long time and I like him very much.
00:44:43Speaker 1And then of course, Howard Hilliard now is various people.
00:44:46Speaker 1And now we met, who I’ve met.
00:44:47Speaker 1They all spoke up.
00:44:49Speaker 1How we met was in charge of engineering in Montreal time and.
00:44:58Speaker 1The I felt that I’d had enough of the CBC and Winks, not winks, Liz, but Quillan.
00:45:08Speaker 1Said that.
00:45:11Speaker 1Company Cofi Brown needed a radio manager.
00:45:16Speaker 1In Montreal.
00:45:18Speaker 1Someone that knew.
00:45:24Speaker 1Technical to understand the technical because television was coming, which is going to be far more technical.
00:45:30Speaker 1And he said, I understand you’ve made it quite a study of television.
00:45:33Speaker 1And I said, well, I read everything I can get a hold of it and go to anything that’s going on, you know, in England and in the states.
00:45:41Speaker 1So he said.
00:45:44Speaker 1I would like you to go down and talk to the manager of Kofi Brown in Montreal.
00:45:50Speaker 1And I can’t think of.
00:45:50Speaker 2His name?
00:45:51Speaker 2But he’s John mcrobie.
00:45:55Speaker 1So he says we’ll pay your expenses and.
00:45:57Speaker 1You can go on the weekend.
00:45:59Speaker 1So you see in the weekend.
00:46:00Speaker 1So I went down Saddam Mccubbin.
00:46:03Speaker 1Talked to them and it was a pretty good deal.
00:46:04Speaker 1And she’s about twice as much money as as getting at the CBC, and you have a rights to buy shares in the company.
00:46:11Speaker 1You can have it on a payroll deduction and all kinds of things like that.
00:46:15Speaker 1And as we said, you know.
00:46:19Speaker 1You might get to be inside the radio and television for all of Canada.
00:46:24Speaker 1If you’re gone.
00:46:26Speaker 1And the seller that was in charge of radio here, savage.
00:46:30Speaker 1Wasn’t dog savage?
00:46:31Speaker 1No, Alan said.
00:46:33Speaker 1No, Alan, was it Alan I.
00:46:36Speaker 1Think he was?
00:46:38Speaker 1Under Wiz McClellan entitled Radio anyway, it looked like a pretty good deal and I went down to see them.
00:46:45Speaker 1Two days later, I got a phone call from.
00:46:47Speaker 1New York from Harold Carson.
00:46:50Speaker 1He says you *** ** * *****, he said.
00:46:53Speaker 1We loaned you to the CDC.
00:46:56Speaker 1We loaned you to the CBC because we wanted the Dominion network to go in because we’ve seen a lot of our stations give us a lot of network programs and network news and everything else, and it was, you know, it.
00:47:07Speaker 1It was great now.
00:47:10Speaker 1You’re thinking of leaving and and and taking another job.
00:47:14Speaker 1So I said how the?
00:47:15Speaker 1Hell, do you know?
00:47:15Speaker 1All this, nobody, even my wife, doesn’t know.
00:47:19Speaker 1That I’m thinking, he says.
00:47:21Speaker 1I got a telephone call from some ******* in Montreal I want.
00:47:25Speaker 1To know if.
00:47:25Speaker 1Recommend you. I found this all tender offers in in Toronto and they said that I was at the ambassador’s my throne. I just got off.
00:47:33Speaker 1The phone room? Some *******.
00:47:38Speaker 1Sorry, says you’re not going to go.
00:47:41Speaker 1You’re coming back home.
00:47:45Speaker 1I said.
00:47:45Speaker 1Now, look, Carol Carson.
00:47:46Speaker 1I’m not going to go as this station manager in trail.
00:47:51Speaker 1Or something like that.
00:47:52Speaker 1No, Sir.
00:47:54Speaker 1I’m not going to move out of Toronto.
00:47:57Speaker 1I don’t care whether if you want to go with Kofi Brown, I’ll go with somebody else or I’ll set up business for myself, but I’m not going to go out into some bushwacking station that you’ve got.
00:48:09Speaker 1And so.
00:48:10Speaker 1He said you wanna stay in Toronto, he said. And I said yeah. And he said, well, that’s just fine because we just got our E Mcguire’s resignation.
00:48:17Speaker 1You can move into the victory building and be in charge of programming for all Canadian coast to coast.
00:48:23Speaker 1Big deal.
00:48:24Speaker 1More money than the CBC because you had to take a cut.
00:48:28Speaker 1If I remember when you went with them so.
00:48:29Speaker 1I could be pretty generous.
00:48:32Speaker 1So I said, well, that’s pretty good, Patty.
00:48:34Speaker 1I didn’t know that you loved me that much.
00:48:36Speaker 1And I would sure be interested.
00:48:38Speaker 1So Harold hired me on the telephone and he said I’ll be up there.
00:48:41Speaker 1Don’t talk to anybody.
00:48:42Speaker 1I’ll be up there in about 3 or 4 days.
00:48:45Speaker 1So he came up and we had a lot of conversation.
00:48:47Speaker 1Of course I left them and went with.
00:48:49Speaker 1With all Canada and we were on the third floor of the victory building in Adelaide Street and I.
00:48:55Speaker 2Now you’re talking approximately 194849 no.
00:49:01Speaker 1I came down well, maybe I came down at the end.
00:49:06Speaker 1Of I I started in 44. Yeah. And I was there, I guess 4445 and into 46.
00:49:17Speaker 1So it would have been 40-6. Yeah, I I’ve. I’ve got 46 done and I can look in this book and see this exactly.
00:49:26Speaker 1When it was and we can get those exact dates out of here later on, it says here.
00:49:33Speaker 1Harold Carson with all this, all of this stuff back in 474849, we can get all those dates for the details but.
00:49:43Speaker 1So I started and Fred Cannon was there, and then I hired Norris Mackenzie, who was with Hamilton, and I hired a number of other people and we didn’t have enough room. So he moved out and I built up the and all Canada’s program department and of course.
00:50:03Speaker 1Ed Ziv was big in the transcription Zen and I was going down to Seattle and not.
00:50:11Speaker 1Cincinnati to see Fred and.
00:50:15Speaker 1And all the other suppliers.
00:50:17Speaker 1And then we started to make shows down at RCA studios, reflections and reflections.
00:50:24Speaker 2Yes, household for us.
00:50:26Speaker 1And we had to end BC and we had some pretty good things.
00:50:29Speaker 1So anyway, I was going along.
00:50:32Speaker 1And everything was fine.
00:50:34Speaker 1I paid no attention to John Trestrail.
00:50:37Speaker 1For GAIL to GAIL, to GAIL and.
00:50:43Speaker 1The time salesman and I concentrate on the program and Fred Cannon was a great real great help.
00:50:50Speaker 1And Norris was doing a great job on selling.
00:50:53Speaker 1And I had Bill Steckel.
00:50:58Speaker 1Oh, quite a few names that I think of.
00:51:00Speaker 1They’ll be in my book where I just can’t recall now.
00:51:03Speaker 1But anyway, we built up a good crew and we were selling programs like Mad.
00:51:08Speaker 1Never did I get along with Guy Herbert.
00:51:11Speaker 1And he hated my guts because I was getting too much attention from the people and the.
00:51:18Speaker 1Time sales were.
00:51:20Speaker 1Growing, but they were growing because we were selling.
00:51:22Speaker 1The program.
00:51:24Speaker 1And he did everything in his power to make my life miserable.
00:51:31Speaker 1And he was telling Harold the wildest stories because Harold, when he gets in his cups, you know, he said, what’s this I hear about you going down to New York and spending $100 a.
00:51:40Speaker 1Day or something like that.
00:51:41Speaker 1And I said what?
00:51:44Speaker 1You spend $1000 a day and you go down there and I do. I do work. You just sit around the God and clubs drinking.
00:51:49Speaker 1And so I said, I don’t think you $100 today as much in New York. Of course that’s about $300.00 no more. So I said if you want me to stay at the YMCA, fine, I’ll do that, OK.
00:52:04Speaker 1So this is, I says as a matter of fact, how if you don’t want.
00:52:06Speaker 1Me to go to New York at all say so, and I won’t go anymore.
00:52:10Speaker 1But you know, I’ve this.
00:52:11Speaker 1Is where I’ve been getting.
00:52:13Speaker 1And customers in the top agency though.
00:52:17Speaker 1A lot of these guys I’m dealing with your time salesman couldn’t even talk to them.
00:52:23Speaker 1And if you don’t believe me, ask Walter Holden or any of the other sales managers in this station what they think of the Toronto office about.
00:52:31Speaker 1Hall in Montreal is 10 times as good as the Toronto.
00:52:38Speaker 1I told this to Harold Card.
00:52:40Speaker 1I said I I go to Montreal on programs Bert Hall or Jerry Percy Gaynor.
00:52:46Speaker 1They welcomed me with open arms and say Spence go to itself.
00:52:50Speaker 1I can see Mr.
00:52:52Speaker 1so and so with Berks, go and so and so on the Hudson Bay.
00:52:54Speaker 1And they said they they wanna program and you don’t and they get the time sales.
00:52:58Speaker 1So I said I get great cooperation.
00:53:00Speaker 1Everywhere except.
00:53:05Speaker 1Toronto, where Guy Herbert’s got his.
00:53:06Speaker 1Foot out triple.
00:53:09Speaker 1Of course, the fact that Harold was telling me.
00:53:13Speaker 1What God had said about me, I knew also that Harold was telling guy when I said about him.
00:53:21Speaker 1And I didn’t give a ****.
00:53:22Speaker 1At this stage of the deal so.
00:53:29Speaker 12 1/2 years or whatever it.
00:53:31Speaker 1Was at all count.
00:53:33Speaker 1I gave my resignation and said I’m going.
00:53:35Speaker 1Into business for myself.
00:53:40Speaker 1Guy was delighted.
00:53:42Speaker 1The guys that were working for me weren’t.
00:53:45Speaker 1And Harold Carson came down to see me.
00:53:49Speaker 1Joe Sedgwick.
00:53:51Speaker 1Heard about it through Harry because Harry was a good friend and Joe phoned me and said.
00:53:57Speaker 1I’ve got the.
00:53:58Speaker 1Penthouse and the victory building.
00:53:59Speaker 1And I got a not private office and an outer office that I’m not using.
00:54:02Speaker 1It you can.
00:54:02Speaker 1Move in and you can pay me anytime in the future.
00:54:07Speaker 1And so I said, boy, that’s great, you know.
00:54:10Speaker 1And so I moved up into the penthouse of the Victor building.
00:54:13Speaker 1And they all Canada through how Carson gave through wasn’t down there.
00:54:21Speaker 1Gave me desk chair.
00:54:24Speaker 1Filing cabinet typewriter.
00:54:27Speaker 1And always to set up as a competitor.
00:54:31Speaker 1And then I set up my office and what I didn’t.
00:54:36Speaker 1I sold my house and sold my car to get some money to finance this thing.
00:54:40Speaker 2But it really wasn’t as a competitor, just stopped to think of it.
00:54:45Speaker 1It was a man selling programs to help them continue selling time.
00:54:48Speaker 1Sure, sure, it was.
00:54:50Speaker 1And so then what he was doing and he invited me down to the hotel and bought me dinner.
00:54:58Speaker 1And we chatted for a while.
00:54:59Speaker 1He said.
00:54:59Speaker 1How you doing?
00:55:03Speaker 1I can sell.
00:55:04Speaker 1I know the business.
00:55:06Speaker 1I know the people.
00:55:07Speaker 1I know the stations.
00:55:08Speaker 1I know the advertisers.
00:55:09Speaker 1I know the agencies.
00:55:10Speaker 1But I’ve got no product.
00:55:13Speaker 1I can’t get in.
00:55:16Speaker 1I went to down and call on him.
00:55:17Speaker 1I didn’t ask him for his agency and and then he got obsessed here because he said Spence.
00:55:22Speaker 1I know you’ve gone into business for yourself, but don’t look to us for programming because our Canada have been so wonderful and have done such a good job and you were partially responsible for it.
00:55:34Speaker 1I’m not going to leave them.
00:55:36Speaker 1I tell you what I’ve got.
00:55:38Speaker 1I’ve brought the World Library and Northern Electric.
00:55:41Speaker 1I’ve got a whole bunch of crummy shows down there.
00:55:44Speaker 1You could have those.
00:55:46Speaker 1So I got it six shows from Northern Electric and they’re glad to get rid of the discs.
00:55:51Speaker 1And remember there were ones that took the special head lateral or something.
00:55:58Speaker 1So I got those and then.
00:56:03Speaker 1The first thing.
00:56:06Speaker 1When I’m, you know, got my letterhead and all the rest of it, the first thing that that I was starving to death, Nancy, we had to give up our we sold the House and Nancy went to Simpsons and took a a order office training course for a number of months.
00:56:25Speaker 1And they sent her to Wellen.
00:56:28Speaker 1And so she went and worked in Rolla.
00:56:30Speaker 1For about a year and she was very good or something like that.
00:56:34Speaker 1And then they made her manager.
00:56:35Speaker 1Of Niagara Falls.
00:56:37Speaker 1We used to meet halfway between or.
00:56:39Speaker 1I’d sold my car, so I had to take the train down or she’d have to try and get a ride up here.
00:56:45Speaker 1We only saw each other about every second weekend.
00:56:49Speaker 1And and she was very good at it too.
00:56:51Speaker 1They loved, they loved it.
00:56:53Speaker 1Well, they.
00:56:56Speaker 1The first thing.
00:56:58Speaker 1That really.
00:57:00Speaker 1Got me going was that?
00:57:04Speaker 1I called on West.
00:57:07Speaker 1I’d set up in the.
00:57:11Speaker 1Victor Billing and Joe Sedgwick’s penthouse.
00:57:15Speaker 1And in the next few years, I was advertising.
00:57:20Speaker 1And talking.
00:57:23Speaker 1Television and on my letterhead, it said.
00:57:26Speaker 1Radio and television advertising, and everybody laughed at me.
00:57:31Speaker 1Because there was number television in Canada.
00:57:33Speaker 1And guy Herbert.
00:57:35Speaker 1Was absolutely convinced.
00:57:38Speaker 1And this is one of the big arguments that we had because I was trying to convince Harold Carson to start in television now because it was going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread and we could see from England and from the United States, there was going to be a booming business and that as soon as the Canadian government.
00:57:59Speaker 1Allowed them in here and antennas were growing up around Toronto like mad, tuned to Buffalo.
00:58:08Speaker 1I went down and saw all the Buffalo stations and all the rest of.
00:58:11Speaker 1It so they.
00:58:13Speaker 1The first thing that I did was to.
00:58:18Speaker 1Go to. Talk to Westinghouse.
00:58:22Speaker 1During a show.
00:58:23Speaker 1And I made I wanted to have a connection with him because of Herb Roggy.
00:58:28Speaker 1The president used to be whether or not Westinghouse broadcaster.
00:58:33Speaker 1So I built a show.
00:58:37Speaker 1Around the downright course.
00:58:40Speaker 1And John Fisher, Mr. Canada.
00:58:43Speaker 1And I saw it as a Sunday night early Sunday night show.
00:58:48Speaker 1And I.
00:58:52Speaker 1Went down and.
00:58:53Speaker 1Talked it all over with various different people, all around people, and finally I found out that the right food 10 syllable, the right person was ten farting.
00:59:04Speaker 1So I got talking to Ken Frauding and of course, he was a wonderful, wonderful man.
00:59:09Speaker 1And Ken Farthing listened and help me on this thing.
00:59:12Speaker 1And we told me all about John Charles Thomas being sponsored by Westinghouse in the States and filled me in on a lot of things.
00:59:20Speaker 1And what to do and what not to do and introduce me to.
00:59:26Speaker 1To Ragy introduced me to.
00:59:30Speaker 1Oh, what’s his name?
00:59:31Speaker 1I forget his.
00:59:32Speaker 1Name, who is his sister?
00:59:34Speaker 1To rocky.
00:59:35Speaker 1I’ll think of it in a minute.
00:59:37Speaker 1Nice little fellow.
00:59:42Speaker 1So I made all kinds of presentations and didn’t hear back to them.
00:59:47Speaker 1And I had Jean, who was my secretary down at all.
00:59:52Speaker 1Canada all can’t let me take her too.
00:59:56Speaker 1And she came in to me and she said.
00:59:58Speaker 1This is Mr.
01:00:00Speaker 1So and so I can’t think of his name now.
01:00:03Speaker 1Outside wants to see you.
01:00:05Speaker 1So I said I don’t see anybody, even an insurance salesman.
01:00:09Speaker 1But this guy is the assistant to the President of Westinghouse, and he’s he’s very glad of authority.
01:00:16Speaker 1Please ask him to come in.
01:00:18Speaker 1So he came in.
01:00:21Speaker 1And he said, Mr.
01:00:21Speaker 1Carlin, we’ve decided.
01:00:24Speaker 1To buy.
01:00:25Speaker 1Your presentation.
01:00:29Speaker 1Bonanza and he said, I know, I know from Ken, that things haven’t been good with you since you went into business for yourself.
01:00:42Speaker 1And he would like to help you.
01:00:44Speaker 1And Westinghouse would like to help you with Ken, Soldier Man, no.
01:00:48Speaker 1Or Ken, Ken fighting Ken fighting.
01:00:51Speaker 1And he didn’t mention Ken.
01:00:52Speaker 1He says Ken Sobel says you’re a real good guy and you work your *** off for us and you have nothing else to do.
01:01:00Speaker 1So he said there’s just.
01:01:03Speaker 1One catch.
01:01:06Speaker 1And I want to be very careful how I say this to you.
01:01:11Speaker 1Westinghouse Pittsburgh’s head office doesn’t control Canada.
01:01:17Speaker 1I felt like you say ha.
01:01:19Speaker 1And nor does there ever do.
01:01:21Speaker 1The editing department, which is in Pennsylvania.
01:01:24Speaker 1Control our advertise.
01:01:28Speaker 1Because this suggestion of the darn right course is so close to what we did in New York.
01:01:36Speaker 1I’d like you to go down with Ken Firefly and we’ll pay your expenses and present it to our advertising office.
01:01:44Speaker 1At both in Pittsburgh and at this other place, I forget the town now.
01:01:50Speaker 1In Pennsylvania.
01:01:53Speaker 1So I said delighted.
01:01:56Speaker 1Delighted and most likely to give me some good pointers.
01:02:02Speaker 1And he said if they.
01:02:04Speaker 1They won’t tell you what they think, but they’ll tell us.
01:02:07Speaker 1And if they think?
01:02:09Speaker 1It’s a good idea.
01:02:10Speaker 1Maybe they quit the John Charles Summit.
01:02:12Speaker 1They quit the.
01:02:12Speaker 1John Carson.
01:02:13Speaker 1Maybe they quit it because it was number good from an advertising point.
01:02:16Speaker 1Of view.
01:02:18Speaker 1But if if we get a favorable thing and we’re only doing this because they had experience in radio broadcasting, which we haven’t.
01:02:26Speaker 1They had a similar show and they think it’s a good idea and they liked what they.
01:02:31Speaker 1Were doing before.
01:02:33Speaker 1And it’s a deal.
01:02:34Speaker 1And we’ll have you set up the.
01:02:37Speaker 1This, you know, select the stations from coast to coast.
01:02:43Speaker 1So away we went and on the way back.
01:02:46Speaker 1Ken fryling.
01:02:48Speaker 1Said to me.
01:02:49Speaker 1And these those guys didn’t say anything to you, but they?
01:02:51Speaker 1Said it to me and they like.
01:02:54SpeakerSo you’re in.
01:02:58Speaker 1And he said.
01:03:03Speaker 1Why don’t you?
01:03:06Speaker 1Set up your own advertising age.
01:03:07Speaker 1If you had any gumption, you do that.
01:03:13Speaker 1Jesus Christ, my own advertising engine.
01:03:15Speaker 1I’ve always, you know, been calling on the advertising.
01:03:18Speaker 1And this is who I call on now to sell my products to this is.
01:03:21Speaker 1Who they have sold them.
01:03:24Speaker 1So I said no, but I did get the Westinghouse.
01:03:28Speaker 1I mean, the General Electric deal and that’s where you guys paid a lot of.
01:03:31Speaker 1Attention to me see.
01:03:34Speaker 1Harry Dawson used to be the cab.
01:03:37Speaker 1Was with General Eckie here and they hired me, which was the first deal I got to put on at the C&E.
01:03:44Speaker 1A complete television show and they brought up all the equipment.
01:03:48Speaker 1And tell us any and the whole thing.
01:03:50Speaker 1And we built a great big broadcasting station.
01:03:52Speaker 1We had to chop a hole through the floor and put in our own Transformers down there.
01:03:57Speaker 1And I was hired to do the program.
01:04:03Speaker 1And at a meeting with the President of General Electric and all of their bosses and all the rest of it, they said that they had selected me to do the programming.
01:04:13Speaker 1But it’s just for two weeks.
01:04:15Speaker 1Just doing the scene, but it will take you six weeks to set it up and it will take you three weeks to knock it down, right?
01:04:21Speaker 1But we want this to be big and we’ll put monitors all around our exhibit and anywhere else they want them in the place where we can.
01:04:28Speaker 1String and table to it.
01:04:31Speaker 1I think it was the Brown 300 Ohm said. No cracks of cable. So so finally this, this, this fellow was the chairman of the meeting.
01:04:44Speaker 1The president was sitting here and vice presidents around, but there was another guy, I guess, that he’s advertising manager and Harry Dawson with her.
01:04:50Speaker 1Said Mr.
01:04:53Speaker 1What will you charge?
01:04:54Speaker 1I told him I could get from the Ed Sullivan show toast of the town.
01:04:58Speaker 1I’d get some NBC shows.
01:05:01Speaker 1I’d get them.
01:05:02Speaker 1The skater that.
01:05:03Speaker 1Just won the thing that’s just married and lived down.
01:05:07Speaker 1What’s her name?
01:05:08Speaker 1And she was.
01:05:09Speaker 1A big hit.
01:05:10Speaker 1Then I could get a movie of her and I’d get all of the best things and I’d program this all day long.
01:05:17Speaker 1From when it opened in the morning until when it closed at night.
01:05:21Speaker 1For the full duration of the C&E.
01:05:25Speaker 1So they said how much you charge for this and I say I want $100 a day plus expenses.
01:05:32Speaker 1Jeez, I thought I’d shoot for the moon. You know, I work for the star now. I don’t do anything. So I said $100 a day plus expenses.
01:05:39SpeakerIt’s just.
01:05:44Speaker 1So the president says, well, that’s all right, Mr.
01:05:47Speaker 1Cole this week.
01:05:48Speaker 1Or I’ll give you another proposition or I’ll do it for nothing.
01:05:57Speaker 1And so he stopped for a minute.
01:06:00Speaker 1I said, well, let’s go a little bit further.
01:06:03Speaker 1What’s the nothing doing?
01:06:04Speaker 1Nothing deal.
01:06:05Speaker 1And I said it’s exactly the same.
01:06:08Speaker 1But between the programs.
01:06:10Speaker 1I put up a slide.
01:06:12Speaker 1And said, produced by Spence Caldwell of S.
01:06:15Speaker 2W called the.
01:06:18Speaker 1Commercials come up and the things people have to get used to, they’re used to it looking at Buffalo.
01:06:23Speaker 1And because a lot of people weren’t.
01:06:26Speaker 1Seeing Buffalo because they.
01:06:27Speaker 1Didn’t have high enough antennas or didn’t have sets.
01:06:33Speaker 1They said very clever, very clever.
01:06:38Speaker 1OK, I’ve got to go up to my office and as he got to the door, he says.
01:06:43Speaker 1Oh, by the way, Mr.
01:06:44Speaker 1Cowell, on your way out after you’re through with the boys here, would you drop in?
01:06:49Speaker 1So I said yes, Sir.
01:06:51Speaker 1So we finished with the meeting and I went up to see the General Electric Presidents.
01:06:57Speaker 1And this can’t be published.
01:06:59Speaker 1But he said to me, he said.
01:07:04Speaker 1You know, it’s refreshing to see a guy.
01:07:07Speaker 1I hear that you’re just desperate for business and and money and Harry Dawson.
01:07:13Speaker 1Has told me all about you.
01:07:16Speaker 1To come along when you’re starving for money and say you’ll do it for nothing to build your business, is it?
01:07:22Speaker 1Boy, that’s what I like.
01:07:25Speaker 1So he said, look you.
01:07:28Speaker 1We’ll pay your expenses.
01:07:29Speaker 1Of course.
01:07:31Speaker 1And he said you bring your expense accounts to me and I’ll initially and he said.
01:07:37Speaker 1You know, we’re pretty generous.
01:07:39Speaker 1We’re used to.
01:07:42Speaker 1So I got this plugged all the way along and I got paid too.
01:07:48Speaker 1Because, you know, I put in.
01:07:50Speaker 1I was going to New York and going down to Montreal, the National Film Board and up to auto run, going on, grabbing all these things that I need to help a lot of material because we.
01:07:58Speaker 1We didn’t want to probably run the same shows right there, right, mixed it all up.
01:08:02Speaker 1And when I did run this thing like the toast of town and I got this from CBS, I wanted.
01:08:08Speaker 114 episodes.
01:08:11Speaker 1And they gave them to me.
01:08:13Speaker 2That’s amazing.
01:08:14Speaker 2Gave them to me.
01:08:15Speaker 2Amazing, isn’t it?
01:08:17Speaker 1And then.
01:08:20Speaker 1Almost everybody did it, and of course I have to work with Harry with Mclarens, but.
01:08:28Speaker 1Hugh Porter was there, you know, and we got along great and he did a lot of things to help me.
01:08:32Speaker 1We put on.
01:08:32Speaker 1Like and the Westinghouse guys were coming around looking all the time and they sent electric.
01:08:38Speaker 1That was advertising business.
01:08:42Speaker 1I didn’t know that.
01:08:43Speaker 1See that guy?
01:08:44Speaker 1He’s the salesman too with.
01:08:46Speaker 1This this fellows was GSW and this one is with mcclarity he’s and this is with the.
01:08:53Speaker 1Moffatts and all of the people around looking at this great thing and seeing what was going on.
01:08:55Speaker 3All right.
01:09:00Speaker 1So anyway.
01:09:03Speaker 1After that, after that was over, I had a little.
01:09:06Speaker 1Bit of.
01:09:07Speaker 1You know the trade papers.
01:09:08Speaker 1With all kinds of stories.
01:09:10Speaker 1And so I.
01:09:10Speaker 1Got a lot of publicity out of the thing.
01:09:12Speaker 1And then.
01:09:14Speaker 1On this Westinghouse thing.
01:09:16Speaker 1Coming back from on the on the train with them.
01:09:21Speaker 1Ken friending you, why don’t you get your own advertising needs?
01:09:25Speaker 1He says.
01:09:25Speaker 1I’ll tell you something.
01:09:26Speaker 1Our agency is Russell T Kelly.
01:09:29Speaker 1And we told them we wanted to go on the radio.
01:09:32Speaker 1And they came back and advised us not to.
01:09:36Speaker 1To expand our advertising in the newspapers and magazines, and especially in the trade papers.
01:09:45Speaker 1And he said, we just think in Westinghouse.
01:09:48Speaker 1That’s the lousiest recommendation in the world.
01:09:51Speaker 1And we don’t think it would be a good idea if we buy a program from you as a programmer.
01:09:57Speaker 1And as the creator of this program.
01:10:01Speaker 1And have them handle it.
01:10:03Speaker 1Because they’ve already advised against ready and they might do everything apart and make it lousy because they want their print, right?
01:10:10Speaker 1Right.
01:10:10Speaker 1So go and get yourself an advertising.
01:10:13Speaker 1And we’ll start tomorrow with Ken Sobel.
01:10:16Speaker 1So I went and saw Ken and I said Ken and I sold the thing.
01:10:19Speaker 1It’s gonna run a new station.
01:10:21Speaker 1And Ken here suggests I should have my own advertising agency, and I’d like.
01:10:25Speaker 1To would would you?
01:10:26Speaker 2Vote for me.
01:10:27Speaker 1You said Jesus, I said, be delighted.
01:10:29Speaker 1So I ran up to Toronto and I running.
01:10:32Speaker 1To see Harry Cedric.
01:10:33Speaker 1Harry, would you support me on this thing?
01:10:36Speaker 1And yes, he said.
01:10:39Speaker 1Although apparently you’re going to put this Westinghouse.
01:10:42Speaker 1Show on the CBC and what the hell of a place that is in Christ.
01:10:46Speaker 1You bring it over here and and the you get twice the.
01:10:50Speaker 1So he says no.
01:10:51Speaker 1I’ll support you.
01:10:52Speaker 1Joe did.
01:10:53Speaker 1And Joe was his lawyer for the CAD at the time.
01:10:57Speaker 1And Jim Allard came down to see me and many of the other guys who were in it and I phoned a lot of the people.
01:11:02Speaker 1Were directors of.
01:11:03Speaker 1The CAVU Christ.
01:11:05Speaker 1I had a *** **** advertising.
01:11:07Speaker 1Agency in three weeks.
01:11:10Speaker 1At the.
01:11:11Speaker 1Prove that I had more than one account.
01:11:13Speaker 1Yeah, so I put down the Cancer Society, which I was right.
01:11:19Speaker 1And what else?
01:11:20Speaker 1Something else that they put down in the list in these cases, laugh like hell and then and put it through.
01:11:26Speaker 1I’d given the thing I was.
01:11:31Speaker 1As as somebody said to me and at that time they said anybody that could sell Westinghouse on going on radio.
01:11:43Speaker 1When everybody’s taking a cat a crack at them at one time or another and never have been successful, and you’re the only guy that’s been.
01:11:49Speaker 1Able to sell Westinghouse, Canada.
01:11:53Speaker 1And spending any money. Oh, they ran the odd spot campaign at Christmas. Yeah, so Christmas tree lights or things like that. But this went on 38 stations, coast to coast.
01:12:03Speaker 1Produced in the private station at CFL London, the only show that’s ever been produced in a private station fed to the full CBC.
01:12:12Speaker 1Network live.
01:12:16Speaker 2Really. That surprises me though.
01:12:20Speaker 1The only time A at that time there might be others.
01:12:25Speaker 1No at that time, this was the first program that we created in a private station, and Walter Blackburn wanted it so bad he could taste it.
01:12:34Speaker 1He almost gave me the recordings for nothing.
01:12:37Speaker 1They used their studios because Don lived there.
01:12:40Speaker 1Yes, and I made Lilian, the assistant producers, so I didn’t have to go down every week.
01:12:45Speaker 1His wife.
01:12:48Speaker 1You know, is a men.
01:12:51Speaker 1Said have Prime Minister means daughter Max Me and her brother, which is a very rich man.
01:12:53Speaker 3Yes, yes.
01:12:57Speaker 1Now in Wellington.
01:13:02Speaker 1Then I got into trouble on that thing because Don asked.
01:13:05Speaker 1Me if I would.
01:13:07Speaker 1He says you recorded 15 times while we were rehearsing on the thing.
01:13:11Speaker 1Why don’t you take the best tape?
01:13:13Speaker 1And play it to the network, you’ll never know the difference, and then we will all be able to go to church because all these kids are in the chorus, church choruses and.
01:13:21Speaker 1If they come.
01:13:22Speaker 1On from 6:00 to 6:30, they can’t.
01:13:26Speaker 1You know, make the church with and and they can’t eat before.
01:13:30Speaker 1So it’s rather just giving up the church and it makes them better singers within the church.
01:13:35Speaker 1So I said, OK, I don’t give.
01:13:37Speaker 1A damn play a tape.
01:13:39Speaker 1And good quality.
01:13:40Speaker 1You have good, wonderful weekend good, however.
01:13:43Speaker 1Five years later, the government to master the Union.
01:13:46Speaker 1Said you.
01:13:48Speaker 1You’re just paying sales tax, Mr.
01:13:50Speaker 1Cowell on the recording.
01:13:53Speaker 1The bill that you get from CFPL you’re paying.
01:13:57Speaker 1Sales tax on it, but it’s supposed to include all of the talent.
01:14:03Speaker 1I said if I had to, I’d move the origination over to Buffalo and bring it in on the network like the government does.
01:14:10Speaker 1It doesn’t pay you.
01:14:13Speaker 1Sales tax and based on that I should know because I worked there and brought in thousands of programs like.
01:14:19Speaker 1So all I got to do is move across the border and bring it in there.
01:14:22Speaker 1So are you so against Canadian talent?
01:14:24Speaker 1Would you like it to come out in the paper that I had?
01:14:26Speaker 1To cancel the.
01:14:26Speaker 1Show because you people wanted to charge me sales tax and you don’t charge CBS, NBC or.
01:14:31Speaker 1Mutual or any other other people.
01:14:33Speaker 1Christ, you must.
01:14:34Speaker 1Be out there and that.
01:14:35Speaker 1I ended up being an advisor to the government on the importation of.
01:14:39Speaker 1Films tape paying my expenses to go.
01:14:42Speaker 1Up there and they billed me for $27,000 and Phil Mills.
01:14:46Speaker 1So I got to know up there.
01:14:47Speaker 1And love and.
01:14:48Speaker 1It’s really good.
01:14:49Speaker 1He just had it wiped out.
01:14:51Speaker 1Jesus, I scared because the radio program had gone off now for a year.
01:14:56Speaker 1By the time they came to me and we were into the.
01:15:01Speaker 1Right, right. So when?
01:15:04Speaker 1When and I Bush put this in because the CI got very close to CBS and I thought like the Dickens to get CBS and CBC to get together on television and they couldn’t get together.
01:15:19Speaker 1And I don’t want to pat myself in the back, but I had a great deal to do with bringing the CBC.
01:15:25Speaker 1And the CBS together so we could bring in.
01:15:29Speaker 1Studio 1.
01:15:31Speaker 1On Monday night.
01:15:34Speaker 1It was the biggest big dramatic show in life.
01:15:38Speaker 1And a Worthington miner as producer and Fletcher Markel and a lot of it.
01:15:42Speaker 1So when we couldn’t get the CBC and CBS together fast enough in the meantime, television was starting.
01:15:52Speaker 1So I talked Westinghouse and to take the big review.
01:15:55Speaker 1Which was an hour long musical dance show this, and so Westinghouse took that for about 20 weeks till they could get the studio one in.
01:16:06Speaker 1So we brought Studio one in for justice a couple of weeks with Betty Furness doing the commercials.
01:16:13Speaker 1I got a phone call one day and said, Christ, what are you doing to us, Spence?
01:16:18Speaker 1Betty Furness is advertising the frost where he refrigerator. We’re not even into production on the frost free refrigerator. We’re six months away from production. We’ve got 37,000 other refrigerators in stock.
01:16:31Speaker 1Now Christ, get those.
01:16:33Speaker 1*** **** American commercials.
01:16:35Speaker 1We love this show.
01:16:36Speaker 1And love everything so.
01:16:37Speaker 1I put on auditions.
01:16:39Speaker 1And hired Lady Dennis and Joel Aldridge and we produce.
01:16:45Speaker 1So I got a writing fee.
01:16:46Speaker 1I got a production fee, I got a.
01:16:52Speaker 1Every kind of fee you could think of anything. And then I get 15% on 37 stations in Canada.
01:17:00Speaker 1It sure was a long way from being broke in business.
01:17:05Speaker 1Yeah, so now if you have a big.
01:17:07Speaker 1Name like Westinghouse.
01:17:09Speaker 1Then everybody else started counting.
01:17:12Speaker 1The BBC came and brought their programs.
01:17:14Speaker 1They had their own offices across town, they said.
01:17:16Speaker 1We’re not selling damn thing.
01:17:17Speaker 1Apparently you were a real cracker.
01:17:18Speaker 1Saying, can you do anything with the BBC program?
01:17:20Speaker 1And I sure can.
01:17:22Speaker 1So I got the BBC then.
01:17:26Speaker 1Both film and radio.
01:17:28Speaker 1And then.
01:17:30Speaker 1I went down to and this is an interesting story.
01:17:34Speaker 1The funny things that happened in life.
01:17:36Speaker 1I have been trying to get CBS film Department to give me the distribution in Canada and I couldn’t get the first base with him and the manager of the then is now.
01:17:47Speaker 1President of Encyclopedia Britannica.
01:17:51Speaker 1And he just couldn’t see it.
01:17:53Speaker 1And so.
01:17:54Speaker 1I went to the NAB convention in Los Angeles.
01:18:00Speaker 1And I went in to see.
01:18:05Speaker 1Sai Langley of Langworth Library, which I was.
01:18:08Speaker 1Handling inside was half cut and he had two dolls with him.
01:18:15Speaker 1It turned out to be radio station managers that had his library.
01:18:20Speaker 1And they were.
01:18:21Speaker 1They had been drinking.
01:18:21Speaker 1He closed the door.
01:18:24Speaker 1And you know, and in his display and demonstration room, he closed the door while he was.
01:18:29Speaker 1So when I came knocked on the door and came in, he said, Ohh, just the guy I’m looking for, we need a fourth.
01:18:35Speaker 1And I wasn’t drinking it all in, so I was the bartender.
01:18:40Speaker 1So we get out of the room and start down in.
01:18:42Speaker 1The elevator.
01:18:43Speaker 1And there’s a guy standing in the corner of the elevator.
01:18:47Speaker 1How is it tight?
01:18:50Speaker 1And so.
01:18:53Speaker 1He said hello there.
01:18:54Speaker 1Are you broadcasters?
01:18:55Speaker 1And I said, oh there you broadcaster and they going like that, he said where you going?
01:19:01Speaker 1So we’re going to dinner.
01:19:02Speaker 1Come on join us said sigh.
01:19:05Speaker 1No, you come with me.
01:19:07Speaker 1And so I said that with you, I was first.
01:19:09Speaker 1You come with.
01:19:10Speaker 1Me and in the meantime, I’m backing up in the elevator and this fella still had they give you an envelope, you know, with all your passes in the program and everything else.
01:19:21Speaker 1And Jesus on here it says.
01:19:29Speaker 1Van valkenburg.
01:19:33Speaker 1CBS He was the president of CBS.
01:19:38Speaker 1So I said, oh boy God, he’s on the program.
01:19:44Speaker 1I think he’s tomorrow.
01:19:45Speaker 1He’s corn.
01:19:47Speaker 1So I said we better look.
01:19:48Speaker 1After this guy and don’t let him go.
01:19:50Speaker 1To the so we get the.
01:19:52Speaker 1Elevator goes down to the ground floor.
01:19:54Speaker 1And the doors swing open.
01:19:56Speaker 1And who’s standing there, but Bill Jones?
01:19:59Speaker 1Who was in charge of?
01:20:00Speaker 1CBS Film and things like that and the vice president.
01:20:04Speaker 1So I said, how old I met them and I said, oh, well, he ain’t paying attention to me.
01:20:08Speaker 1And so I said the woman, even Frank.
01:20:11Speaker 1Where the Jesus Christ?
01:20:12SpeakerIf you think we’ve been looking all.
01:20:15Speaker 1Over this countryside for.
01:20:16Speaker 1You we’ve been up in Beverly Hills.
01:20:18Speaker 1And all the rest, he says, you were agonized.
01:20:20Speaker 1A big dinner party down the strip and we got this table all set up and.
01:20:24Speaker 1I got to kind of.
01:20:25Speaker 1Come on, hurry up and get there.
01:20:27Speaker 1You’re late.
01:20:28Speaker 1We’ve got all the important people in the Hollywood.
01:20:32Speaker 1Yeah, **** ***.
01:20:35Speaker 1I got some free.
01:20:37Speaker 1Come on, guys.
01:20:38Speaker 1Pile in the car.
01:20:40Speaker 1So these two bags, one was from Cicero, you know.
01:20:46Speaker 1And she looked like a meat acting makeup.
01:20:49Speaker 1Ohh God, you couldn’t see her face with makeup.
01:20:51Speaker 1And I’m sure she was sixty.
01:20:53Speaker 1She was a day.
01:20:54Speaker 1So we piled in the car.
01:20:57Speaker 1And we go to this thing on the strip, and it’s a great thing.
01:21:01Speaker 1There’s a great big table there and they put a few more table tables in.
01:21:06Speaker 1And I.
01:21:08Speaker 1Someone says you sit there as me, so I sit down there.
01:21:13Speaker 1And there’s a lady beside me, terrific lady.
01:21:16Speaker 1Good looking.
01:21:17Speaker 1Well, dress.
01:21:19Speaker 1Southern accent.
01:21:22Speaker 1She said way often and I said Canada, Canada.
01:21:27Speaker 1Gee, what are you doing right now?
01:21:30Speaker 1Well, if you want to tell it, want me to tell you the truth.
01:21:32Speaker 1I have been trying for about a year to get the CBS distribution in Canada because I am the best salesman on film in Canada and I know more about Canada than all the people in CBS put together, and I want the distribution in camp.
01:21:47Speaker 1And I’ve been talking to your manager, and I’ve been talking to everybody and they won’t pay.
01:21:51Speaker 1Any attention to them?
01:21:53Speaker 1She says we’ll fix that.
01:21:57Speaker 1What’s your thought?
01:21:59Speaker 1She was talent.
01:22:01Speaker 1See, I didn’t know it was the boss’s wife. Nobody introduced me to just.
01:22:06Speaker 1Say you said so I said look at this.
01:22:08Speaker 1She had a I was looking for a name tag and she didn’t have.
01:22:11Speaker 1Any name them, she says. I’m I’m Mrs. milestones. And I said, oh, I think Mel’s wonderful.
01:22:18Speaker 1He’s the only guy that’s been nice to me in CBS, and he had been, but he says I have to go and see the department.
01:22:23Speaker 1They’ve got some kind of a plan.
01:22:27Speaker 1Merls up dancing around.
01:22:34Speaker 1So I said, would you like to dance?
01:22:36Speaker 1She’s fine.
01:22:37Speaker 1So we get up and we’re dancing around.
01:22:40Speaker 1And it’s really going by the table, she says.
01:22:43Speaker 1I see you don’t drink.
01:22:45Speaker 1She says the men that I know that don’t drink or always.
01:22:50Speaker 1Are you and I said, yeah, I’m just dying.
01:22:54Speaker 1And she said, well, like, just put our dinner on the table and I like my food hot.
01:22:57Speaker 1Let’s sit down and and you know, I thought I was.
01:23:00Speaker 1A pretty good dancer.
01:23:02Speaker 1But anyway, we were both hungry, so we sat down and we were eating away.
01:23:07Speaker 1And she said, and girl stopped his dancing.
01:23:10Speaker 1He said Merl.
01:23:11Speaker 2Come over here.
01:23:14Speaker 1This is Spence Carlo.
01:23:16Speaker 1You know, he says.
01:23:17Speaker 1Yeah, I know Spencer.
01:23:18Speaker 1He says Spence has been trying for a year to get the distribution of CVS in Canada.
01:23:24Speaker 1You got a lovely bunch of lovely shows.
01:23:26Speaker 1He can sell them and you can’t and you’ve done nothing about it.
01:23:30Speaker 1Why don’t you talk to this man?
01:23:33Speaker 1And he said.
01:23:35Speaker 110:00 o’clock tomorrow morning in the CBS suite.
01:23:39Speaker 1Aye, Sir.
01:23:40Speaker 1It’s 10:00.
01:23:40Speaker 1O’clock in the morning.
01:23:41Speaker 1I go up there.
01:23:43Speaker 1And he says, tell me the whole story aspects about you and what you’re doing and all that I did.
01:23:47SpeakerRight.
01:23:49Speaker 1He didn’t have the manager in there.
01:23:51Speaker 1He let me have them all by myself and I told him the whole.
01:23:55Speaker 1Thing I said.
01:23:56Speaker 1I can sell those programs to you.
01:23:59Speaker 1CBC Coast to coast manufacturers.
01:24:03Speaker 1I know everybody.
01:24:04Speaker 2Out there.
01:24:05Speaker 1And furthermore, they like to have a Canadian.
01:24:10Speaker 1A company selling them rather than a guy flipping.
01:24:12Speaker 1Up from New York, everyone.
01:24:14Speaker 1You either got to have me.
01:24:16Speaker 1Set the thing up and then take over the management sometime in the future.
01:24:20Speaker 1This is how all the big company.
01:24:23Speaker 1Dunlop Tire AC spark plug.
01:24:25Speaker 1I told him the Taylor Pearson Carson story.
01:24:27Speaker 1Kaiser Holes on the higher can the Canadian builds up the business and let him have it for his life.
01:24:33Speaker 1He retires.
01:24:34Speaker 1And then they don’t upon.
01:24:35Speaker 1Somebody else, they take it.
01:24:36Speaker 1Over themselves, and this is what you can.
01:24:38Speaker 1Do but while.
01:24:39Speaker 1I’m alive and in business.
01:24:41Speaker 1You got to leave it with me.
01:24:43Speaker 1That I can really do this, so he said.
01:24:45Speaker 1I’m going to get so and so up here.
01:24:47Speaker 1Bill Edwards, Bill, Edw.
01:24:51Speaker 1So Bill Edwards.
01:24:53Speaker 1Came up.
01:24:54Speaker 1Nice fella, but he just didn’t see.
01:24:56Speaker 1I die with me.
01:24:57Speaker 1He came up and see me, you know?
01:24:59Speaker 1He said bill.
01:25:01Speaker 1I’ve had a long talk with Spence.
01:25:05Speaker 1He didn’t go over your head.
01:25:07Speaker 1He said he was telling who he was to my wife and my wife said I must talk to him.
01:25:13Speaker 1So I, you know, I talked to him, but Spence didn’t come to me, and I don’t want you to think that he’s gone over here with this very sweet.
01:25:23Speaker 1And he said he wants desperately to get the distribution he’s got BBC now and he’s got some other things and Guild films, you know.
01:25:34Speaker 1And Liberace?
01:25:36Speaker 1And that and he said he can do a job for us.
01:25:38Speaker 1And he says, I know we hate to put our product in with those lousy things that Bill was putting out.
01:25:42Speaker 1And we’re still BBC shows, but at least this guy’s got all the connections and I think that you should get very serious consideration.
01:25:52Speaker 1To a point.
01:25:56Speaker 1And he says I don’t have have to have serious consideration to it.
01:26:01Speaker 1I think he’s right.
01:26:04Speaker 1I’m delighted to hear you say that, and we’ll.
01:26:06Speaker 1Make a deal right away.
01:26:09Speaker 1What do you want?
01:26:09Speaker 1Spent three years would that.
01:26:10Speaker 1Be enough to start.
01:26:12Speaker 1I said yeah, but there’s a lot of other things in there that I want.
01:26:15Speaker 1I want to build it under my name and I want to build the advertisers under my name, and I want to collect the money and pay you.
01:26:25Speaker 2Is it oh.
01:26:27Speaker 1All of our producers and split shows.
01:26:29Speaker 1And all the thing.
01:26:30Speaker 1So I said that’s the way to do it.
01:26:32Speaker 1You’ll get far better.
01:26:35Speaker 1If you let me do it because I’m a Canadian first generation Canadian, know everybody in the CDC and the agencies and they want to.
01:26:41Speaker 1Deal with SW.
01:26:43Speaker 1Called well limited and not with CBS and New York.
01:26:47Speaker 1So I got the CBS deal.
01:26:52Speaker 4Beautiful. Beautiful.
01:26:52Speaker 1And when?
01:26:57Speaker 1I got the license for CCTV.
01:27:00Speaker 1Government maybe divest myself of all my businesses. So I went around and sold them to the employees I sold, called the AD equipment to Bruce Edmonson and that his staff for $87,000. And three months later, they sold it to the Continental Electric Chicago for 2 1/2.
01:27:16Speaker 1That’s what you get for selling things to Canadians, which the government.
01:27:21Speaker 1Doctor Stewart asked me to do I sold the CBS business Caldwell film sales.
01:27:29Speaker 1TO10P.
01:27:31Speaker 1And as I was going to let him.
01:27:33Speaker 1Collect a number of bills that were outstanding in that I asked him $90,000.
01:27:42Speaker 1And he almost died. And he says, I’ve never seen $90,000 or $9000.
01:27:48Speaker 1I said, well, I’ll make arrangements with the bank to loan it to you.
01:27:52Speaker 1Now take you to New York and get CBS to approve it.
01:27:56Speaker 1And I’ll ask them to give you extended terms.
01:27:59Speaker 1I’ve got three months terms, so I went, took him down to CBS and asked him to get to that.
01:28:06Speaker 1Him set up in business because he was doing the selling.
01:28:09Speaker 1He was going to call it page one.
01:28:12Speaker 1And so they went along with it.
01:28:16Speaker 1And I said, I want you to give them for the first year.
01:28:22Speaker 1Six months terms.
01:28:24Speaker 1If he can bill it.
01:28:26Speaker 1It’s supposed to be paid.
01:28:33Speaker 1And I said, I want you to give them for the first year.
01:28:38Speaker 1Six months term.
01:28:40Speaker 1If he can feel it.
01:28:42Speaker 1It’s supposed to be paid in 30 days, but the agencies and the CBC pay you in 60 or 90 days.
01:28:48Speaker 1And sometimes I was paying you in 90 days before I got paid.
01:28:53Speaker 1Ken can’t take that.
01:28:55Speaker 1So you’ve got to give him a.
01:28:56Speaker 1Little expensive fiscal year to give.
01:28:57Speaker 2Him the status which it should.
01:29:02Speaker 1But Merrill Jones told me afterwards, he said I’m doing this for you, Spence, because you’re going into the network up there and you’re going to be a help to us.
01:29:14Speaker 1And I could see the predicament.
01:29:15Speaker 1Hearing or forced to sell.
01:29:16Speaker 1That would be nice if you could have kept it on the side.
01:29:18Speaker 1But I’d go along with them if you bought a CBS show and didn’t make him.
01:29:23Speaker 1Your people didn’t make a big enough picture.
01:29:25Speaker 1The CBC, how we met the accusing you of.
01:29:28Speaker 1Of inside dealing.
01:29:32Speaker 1And so it would.
01:29:33Speaker 1And and this is what Doctor Stewart said in.
01:29:35Speaker 1And he says the same with your lab.
01:29:37Speaker 1You process all the CDC news.
01:29:40Speaker 1Wouldn’t it be a simple thing for you?
01:29:41Speaker 1To phone the.
01:29:42Speaker 1Guy that you hired and say, what are the CBC guy on the 6:00 o’clock news tonight?
01:29:46Speaker 1And then you make sure you cover it.
01:29:49Speaker 1The new story. So.
01:29:50Speaker 1Says you can’t have the lab something you can’t have your something.
01:29:53Speaker 1So I sell the lab and I sold the equipment and I sold the film.
01:29:56Speaker 1And it’s even had to sell a brand and radio station, which I didn’t want because I wanted to have it.
01:30:01Speaker 1Now that I could play with it.
01:30:03Speaker 1But anyway, Ken page.
01:30:06Speaker 1Who cried blue murder and he’s a good friend of mine and he’ll agree with what I have to.
01:30:11Speaker 1Say cried like mad at this $90,000.
01:30:16Speaker 1And he phoned me up in 6.
01:30:19Speaker 1This is Spence.
01:30:20Speaker 1I just gotta tell you this.
01:30:24Speaker 1Do you know how much money I’ve got in the bank?
01:30:28Speaker 1And I said no, I haven’t.
01:30:31Speaker 3I said if you’ve got a lot of.
01:30:32Speaker 1Money. Why don’t you?
01:30:33Speaker 1Pay me.
01:30:35Speaker 1And you know, I sold it to him with so much down and whenever I could catch him, he said, I’m going to.
01:30:43Speaker 1A half $1,000,000.
01:30:46Speaker 2In six months.
01:30:47Speaker 1In six months.
01:30:50Speaker 1That’s in the bank.
01:30:51Speaker 1It’s not mine, but you’ve got that six months thing and everybody’s been paying me and they know I’ve started up business.
01:30:57Speaker 1They’re paying me fast, they, coalfield Brown and these other people, they’re sending me checks right away.
01:31:02Speaker 1I’ve been up to see the CBC and they’re whacking the money into me and I haven’t been paying CBS because I don’t have to pay them for six months and this money.
01:31:11Speaker 1Even the bank manager thinks that I’ve got the real Rd.
01:31:17Speaker 1And I said, Ken, send some money to CBS in advance.
01:31:22Speaker 1You don’t want all that money in the current account?
01:31:25Speaker 1Save them.
01:31:26Speaker 1Now love you for paying in advance of.
01:31:28Speaker 1The six one.
01:31:30Speaker 1Don’t wait till the last minute, OK?
01:31:32Speaker 1And he said, oh, jeez, I guess you’re right.
01:31:35Speaker 1I said send it down to.
01:31:36Speaker 1Them and they’ll love.
01:31:37Speaker 1You for it?
01:31:39Speaker 1Well, of course.
01:31:40Speaker 1They only let Ken have it.
01:31:43Speaker 1For two years, I think it was the deal and then they said can we want to open up in Canada and we’ll make you President of CBS Films Canada.
01:31:56Speaker 1And you’ll get more and we’ll give you a very good deal and all the rest so.
01:32:02Speaker 1Ken came to see me and I said it’s inevitable, Ken.
01:32:06Speaker 1I kind of suspected that you wouldn’t be there.
01:32:08Speaker 1They they made this deal, they’d like to have opened up men, but they didn’t want to hurt me.
01:32:14Speaker 1Because I was going to CBS and could be a you.
01:32:16Speaker 1Know a big customer, right?
01:32:17Speaker 1And CBS.
01:32:18Speaker 1Sure. So I said.
01:32:20Speaker 1Go along with it.
01:32:22Speaker 1So then they made him.
01:32:24Speaker 1And then they.
01:32:26Speaker 1They sent somebody else to Canada or hired as a system.
01:32:30Speaker 1I think it was, and sent it to England.
01:32:33Speaker 1No to Zurich, Switzerland, as head of CBS in Europe.
01:32:37Speaker 2Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes.
01:32:38Speaker 1And then CBS, because of the pressure of the FCC, went out of.
01:32:46Speaker 1Of shows because they were raising hell with this and the networks being in production and not buying from the individual producers.
01:32:53Speaker 1So CBS stopped.
01:32:55Speaker 1Having their own production shows.
01:33:00Speaker 1Ken wasn’t getting enough product.
01:33:05Speaker 1Get his, earn his salary and get his Commission.
01:33:09Speaker 1So that’s why he left and went with screen gems because they had Saddam in.
01:33:12Speaker 1The old movies.
01:33:14Speaker 1And he’s now.
01:33:15Speaker 1And he was in charge.
01:33:16Speaker 1They moved him to England and made in charge of.
01:33:19Speaker 1With screen jams in charge of Europe for them, and now he’s vice president and screen Gems in Hollywood.
01:33:28Speaker 2There’s a.
01:33:31Speaker 2Spence, I think this is a fitting place to sort of put a punctuation mark in.
01:33:48Speaker 2You’ve been telling.
01:33:49Speaker 1It’s gone.
01:33:51Speaker 2Yes, you’ve been telling me a lot of fascinating stories.
01:33:54Speaker 2And believe me, they are fascinating and.
01:33:59Speaker 2It is a total of story the like of which I don’t think anyone at Canadian Broadcasting can match.
01:34:05Speaker 2In fact, I know they can’t.
01:34:08Speaker 2And there are a lot more stories, but I.
01:34:10Speaker 2Think they’re better?
01:34:12Speaker 2Saved for another day is the whole story of.
01:34:15Speaker 2Of the transition from the period you’ve just been talking about.
01:34:19Speaker 2Through your application for a second.
01:34:25Speaker 2Television station in Toronto.
01:34:28Speaker 2And the parlay from that to the CTV network.
01:34:34Speaker 2And your present life as a gentleman farmer.
01:34:38Speaker 2That’s another episode.
01:34:39Speaker 2I think there are at least three considerable volumes in that I think we better leave them the second, you know, spend.
01:34:48Speaker 2Thank you so much.
01:34:49Speaker 2Hey, I’ve enjoyed you as I always have for many years and you’ve made a significant contribution to.
01:34:56Speaker 2This total story.
01:34:57Speaker 1Well, I think ****, the.
01:35:01Speaker 1You asked me to tell the story of Spence Caldwell so we could get that thing I think.
01:35:08Speaker 1Next time we meet.
01:35:10Speaker 1And I’ll have my notes all prepared.
01:35:14Speaker 1I just got nine years to fill in on the thing and then we can go through that book and pick out of it all of the high.
01:35:23Speaker 1Of men like Harold Carson and Jim Taylor and Hugh Pearson and Clifford Sifton, John Sifton in the South and away back, long before the sellers in charge of Southerns.
01:35:37Speaker 1Now was there, you know, and all of the.
01:35:43Speaker 1Johnny Baldwins and the purse gainers and the the Calgary Office of of.
01:35:49Speaker 1Of all Canada and the Toronto office and Bert Hall and the Fed cannons and all these other people that helped build up the All Canada.
01:36:00Speaker 1And the stations and I because.
01:36:06Speaker 1I saw more of all of the.
01:36:10Speaker 1Taylor Pierce and Carson stations.
01:36:12Speaker 1When I was with Marconi and maybe anybody else.
01:36:16Speaker 1In the hole.
01:36:18Speaker 1Yes, all candidates and carsons.
01:36:21Speaker 1Yeah, because I was travelling every two weeks around them and I was calling in that I’d take off, I’d call in the people in Yorkton and then I’d go to Saskatoon and calling the Murphy’s and then I’d go up to Prince Albert and off to Edmonton.
01:36:23Speaker 2Yeah, I can hear that.
01:36:34Speaker 1And, you know, I helped.
01:36:39Speaker 1What was a fellow’s name that got the station up in Grand Prairie?
01:36:44Speaker 1Sasser, Barry and I helped him get that and supply them with the equipment went up there for opening night with Jim Taylor and I loaded the car up with liquor and Jim Taylor loaded up a car with liquor and.
01:36:45Speaker 2Cecil Berry, yes.
01:36:56Speaker 1That’s all very loaded up the.
01:36:57Speaker 1Car, like all the time we got up to Grand Prairie, were in pretty good shape and Jim Taylor was supposed to make a speech.
01:37:04Speaker 1And we go to the church.
01:37:07Speaker 1There’s a total two cars of us.
01:37:10Speaker 1Red McMahon and everybody else from there, and two cars of us.
01:37:13Speaker 1And we went up to Grand Prairie for the opening thing.
01:37:17Speaker 1And the manager’s station was very religious, had filled our seats with people from the church.
01:37:23Speaker 1And we went back and to a Chinese restaurant, they eat.
01:37:28Speaker 1And listen to the opening of the station on the radio.
01:37:33Speaker 1So we’ll talk all about the Taylor person, Carson and the whole Canada people, the.
01:37:36Speaker 1Next time.
01:37:37Speaker 2Flags pass.
01:37:39Speaker 3This interview was recorded in 1978 by **** Meister.
01:37:57Speaker 2Than technical changes, it continues to get technically better.
01:38:02Speaker 4But in the content in the content of programming in the future.
01:38:07Speaker 4I I can’t see anything startlingly different than what we are doing today.
01:38:14Speaker 4I am.
01:38:15Speaker 4I am somewhat concerned with the proliferation of signals and the importation of signals from the states where the Canadian government is allowing cable companies to import automated programming from the states in which there is really no substance at all.
01:38:35Speaker 4And this material is being brought in and.
01:38:40Speaker 4Is set up as competition to.
01:38:43Speaker 4Stations in in Canada who have to live by the Canadian Content Regulation.
01:38:46Speaker 4However, I think with probably a few isolated exceptions.
01:38:54Speaker 4The Canadian stations are holding their own pretty well against the importation of recorded sound.
01:38:59Speaker 4Yes, so far, because people are looking for some some local information.
01:39:00Speaker 2I’m ready.
01:39:04Speaker 4But I was startled the other day and in.
01:39:09Speaker 4Rockville, Ontario.
01:39:11Speaker 4Where there are, I think, on cable, there were there were three or four Canadian stations and as many American stations and the proposition was to greatly increase the number of TV stations available and the.
01:39:25Speaker 4I would say they were going to offer about from memory something like 16 important signals that as they be imported into Brockville from, say, Ottawa and surrounding area and from the States and the only station that would not be put on the cable would be was the one Brockville station.
01:39:43Speaker 4Which happens to be an AM station.
01:39:45Speaker 4I think.
01:39:45Speaker 4I think that’s that’s wrong.
01:39:47Speaker 4Yes, very much wrong, especially to ignore the to ignore putting it on the cable.
01:39:53Speaker 4And and put give everybody else the the break of being on cable, as it were, which you know so well that the technical advance.
01:40:06Speaker 2And the machinery of broadcasting.
01:40:10Speaker 2Always outpaces regulatory functions.
01:40:15Speaker 2The regulators can at best hold on.
01:40:18Speaker 2They can’t stop the development of a thing like cable, for example.
01:40:23Speaker 2All they can do is try to shape a little.
01:40:25Speaker 2Once it’s on the doorstep.
01:40:27Speaker 2So I.
01:40:31Speaker 2That situation of multi services.
01:40:35Speaker 2Will sort itself out.
01:40:37Speaker 2It has to and it will, and it can’t be regulated out.
01:40:42Speaker 4We were looking back on this now some some years ago, I was discussing this problem with the one member of the BBG.
01:40:51Speaker 4Or critc.
01:40:52Speaker 4I think he was on both.
01:40:53Speaker 4He’s off the board now.
01:40:54Speaker 4He’s very nice, man.
01:40:56Speaker 4And he said, you know, we’ve got this problem.
01:40:57Speaker 4People want more services.
01:40:59Speaker 4What should we do?
01:40:59Speaker 4And I said, well, the way I see the thing and I put it on paper for him.
01:41:03Speaker 4And if you would take, say, look at Saskatchewan, if we’d had three networks across this country.
01:41:09Speaker 4We would not have the cable we have today in most parts of Canada if they are licensed the the the licensees provincially instead of URBANELY.
01:41:14Speaker 2My name is Aaron.
01:41:19Speaker 4If you’ll take, for example, Saskatchewan, if they gave CBC.
01:41:24Speaker 4Sticks, that is, repeaters throughout all of Saskatchewan, with studios in Regina, possibly a smaller studio in Saskatoon, and allowed them just simultaneous transmission and saturation of Saskatchewan using as many transmitters as are required.
01:41:38Speaker 4Then let us say they’d say to CKCK TV and Regiana, won’t you?
01:41:43Speaker 4But transmitters everywhere, and you’ll be the CTV affiliate.
01:41:47Speaker 4And so they built, they build their studios, of course, and have their news departments and production centers center there in Regina.
01:41:53Speaker 4Then in Saskatoon, the CF QC station up there they say, well you are, let’s say global and you have repeaters everywhere.
01:42:00Speaker 4They could have used the same buildings in all instances.
01:42:03Speaker 4They could have put.
01:42:04Speaker 4I know where you can put.
01:42:05Speaker 4I guess they could put 3 signals on one tower or possibly 4 if you included French through some combined.
01:42:12Speaker 4Arrangement with the CBC and the private stations, and they could they could saturate the province with three signals and they would carry, I would guess, about 80 to 85% of the programs that are available in the States one way or or another on those states.
01:42:27Speaker 4Who the hell would want cable if all those programs were available in that way, there wouldn’t be any great incentive to.
01:42:33Speaker 4To put bring cable in and add it and I think.
01:42:35Speaker 2Except that can’t turn back the hand, and so we’ve got it.
01:42:37Speaker 4Oh no, we can’t do it now.
01:42:40Speaker 4I think the the biggest thing now is simultaneous release, I noticed.
01:42:43Speaker 4That if the big spectacular gets on in the states, there’s a station in Toronto was carrying it at the same time.
01:42:50Speaker 4I think this is helpful to our cause here, but radio wise it’s as you know it’s become more specialized.
01:42:56Speaker 4I do think this and.
01:43:00Speaker 4The the recorded music that is being made today is music that does well at the box office, as it were, in record stores, and it’s usually the rock’n’roll kind of thing. Or you might say, hit parade material. Popular music of the.
01:43:16Speaker 4And there’s there’s not very little, if any, recording done in the Nice music field of the Mantovani kind of thing or the old Percy face stuff, this beautiful music that FM station requires.
01:43:28Speaker 4The FM station requires not being recorded and this this is the big void.
01:43:34Speaker 4American broadcasters right now are going crazy trying to get this.
01:43:37Speaker 4Kind of thing, to the extent that they are.
01:43:41Speaker 4They are getting together groups of them and hiring, for example.
01:43:45Speaker 4Ah, Frank Chacksfield to turn out six selections a month.
01:43:49Speaker 4They’ll take some members off the hit parade and get Frank to have them arranged in a nice fashion.
01:43:54Speaker 4And he does this 6 * a month, sends them to the promoter here in the states, and he in turn sells these tracks to radio stations and production services that require this kind of music.
01:44:06Speaker 4This is really like going back to the days of world the source and language, where there was music made just for radio, and I predict that as a matter of necessity there we will see.
01:44:09Speaker 2Yes, yes, correct.
01:44:16Speaker 4The some sort of service like this return a service of music for for radio so that with the number of different radio stations we’ve got around here, they’ll have something different to offer rather than everybody dipping into the same barrel.
01:44:30Speaker 2Well, I mean rather than.
01:44:37Speaker 2Good nature.
01:44:39Speaker 2We’re going to go on talking like this for as long as we’re in the business, that’s for sure.
01:44:44Speaker 2And I do want to thank you and thank standard for the lawn of you and your memories tonight, if you like.
01:44:52Speaker 2It’s been it’s been good fun.
01:44:54Speaker 4Well, I thought it fun too.
01:44:55Speaker 4****, there’s so many I in my conversation here.
01:44:58Speaker 4I’ve I’ve talked very quickly.
01:45:01Speaker 4I skimmed over a lot of things.
01:45:02Speaker 4There are a lot of people have made great contributions to this business and should be remembered.
01:45:07Speaker 4Some great stories to tell and we really just really as you know, skimmed the surface here.
01:45:12Speaker 4But it’s been a lot of fun, a great business.
01:45:14Speaker 4I think we’ve lived through the best part of it.
01:45:16Speaker 4It’s not it.
01:45:18Speaker 4We lived through the developing period.
01:45:20Speaker 4And there was always something to do.
01:45:21Speaker 2Well, I yeah, I I agree with you.
01:45:27Speaker 2And yet there are the people who are on radio today who think that radio today is the greatest, and they should think that.
01:45:34Speaker 2And that’s alright.
01:45:35Speaker 2That’s true.
01:45:36Speaker 2OK.
01:45:39Speaker 3This interview was recorded in 1978 by **** Meisner.
01:45:50Speaker 3The Selkirk collection.
01:45:55Speaker 3Of The Pioneers of Selkirk communications.
01:46:00Speaker 3The following interview with Lyman Potts was recorded in February 1978 by **** Meisner.
01:46:09Speaker 2This will be February the 13th, 13th.
01:46:14Speaker 2I’m sitting here about to chat with lamb and pop lineman.
01:46:18Speaker 2You have a a long and very impressive title, so I’m going to let you tell.
01:46:23Speaker 4What our what?
01:46:23Speaker 4The title is rather than following up myself, I have a very fancy title called President of Standard Broadcast Productions Limited.
01:46:29Speaker 4This is a subsidiary, if I could say it of Standard Broadcasting Corporation Limited and standard broadcast productions.
01:46:38Speaker 4Limited is sort of an umbrella company for a number of services that are.
01:46:43Speaker 4Offered the broadcasting industry, one is a new service which I started called standard Broadcast News and I may as well put in the record here that this did revolutionize the dissemination of news and.
01:46:55Speaker 4Canada, we figured out a way of getting it from here to there very quickly, and we forced our competitors to do likewise.
01:47:03Speaker 2OK, that’s enough of a plug for stand up.
01:47:05Speaker 4Yes, OK.
01:47:06Speaker 4And we also managed the Canadian Talent Library.
01:47:10Speaker 2And they have it at beginning.
01:47:10Speaker 4Tell me something about the beginnings of alignment. Pops. Lyman Potts was born November the 11th, 1916 in Regina, SK.
01:47:18Speaker 4His father was a Barber, his mother and father were pioneers.
01:47:22Speaker 4His father was a very prominent sportsman and Regina.
01:47:26Speaker 4And he named his first son, Lyman, after Lyman Abbott, who was one of his best friends who was killed in the First World War.
01:47:33Speaker 4And you may recall the Abbott Memorial Trophy, which was the trophy for Western Canada, and I guess I was the first contributor to that trophy.
01:47:41Speaker 4I didn’t know that, but the and so be it.
01:47:43Speaker 4My second brother, my brother next to me is ****.
01:47:46Speaker 4He’s named after Dickinson.
01:47:47Speaker 4German and my dad brought **** Irvin to Regina to play hockey, and that was my dad’s great claim to fame, so we were very close friends of the irvins and of course I know young **** very well. His mother very well too, but that’s a lot of trivia.
01:48:02Speaker 2You started in in broadcasting before joining the.
01:48:06Speaker 2What is now the Selkirk organization.
01:48:08Speaker 2I think you told me about 19.
01:48:09Speaker 23233.
01:48:10Speaker 4Thereabouts. Somehow I when I was six years old, I lived about 1-2 and 1/2 blocks away from the leader post building and I saw a record on the leader post building at 2 Towers and I was told that this was going to be a radio station and eventually we bought a crystal set that someone made.
01:48:30Speaker 4And by putting on the earphones, we could hear what was being said from those towers. This was 1920.
01:48:36Speaker 4Too, and the man who built the whole thing, he didn’t actually put up the towers.
01:48:40Speaker 4But, I mean, he ran the whole place and built the equipment was Burt Hooper.
01:48:43Speaker 2Oh yeah.
01:48:43Speaker 4He was chief engineer, announcer, operator, a music supervisor, program director, you name it, he did everything and the station went on and off the air, depending upon whether.
01:48:56Speaker 4The bird had had anything to eat or not.
01:48:57Speaker 4They had to run out and get some lunch or get the next program ready.
01:49:00Speaker 4But the IT was a rather a fluid sort of thing, sort of off again on again kind of.
01:49:06Speaker 4Thing about 1928, I think it was Williams Department store, which is now Simpsons in Regina and Regina decided it’d be a good thing if Regina had continuous radio service, so they got their brilliant idea of starting up a radio station.
01:49:20Speaker 4And as you will appreciate, there were thousands of frequencies available out there at the time, but for some reason or other they chose the same.
01:49:26Speaker 4Frequency of CKCK which was I think if I’m not mistaken it was 960 or 920 somewhere around in that.
01:49:35Speaker 4Area and.
01:49:38Speaker 4So they at this time the government had a regulation that you couldn’t locate a transmitter in the city CKCK’s transmitter was in the city.
01:49:46Speaker 4CHWC therefore had to go 15 miles east to reach on at a pilot Butte.
01:49:51Speaker 4They put up two tall telephone poles and ran a horizontal wire in between, and they had aligned to.
01:49:54Speaker 2Yeah, yeah.
01:49:57Speaker 4Studios in the Kitchener Hotel in Regina, which at one time I was told was owned by Williams Department store and the studios were located in the off the back lane in what they call sample rooms that were used by travelers for showing their samples and the like.
01:50:09Speaker 2Yes, the edge symbols.
01:50:11Speaker 4So it went something like this.
01:50:13Speaker 4For the record, nobody got up very early in those days, as you will appreciate.
01:50:17Speaker 4But CHWC came on at 8:00, o’clock in the morning and ran until nine.
01:50:23Speaker 4Then at 9:00 o’clock, the announcers would would would sign off, saying CHWC is leaving the air.
01:50:28Speaker 4We’ll be back in one hour, meanwhile, stand by for CKCK.
01:50:31Speaker 4He would then click his microphone off turn a magnetophon which rang a bell over at CKK Studios in the leader post building and they would then throw their transmitter on in town.
01:50:40Speaker 4Meanwhile, everybody in the city had to run fast for their radios and turn the volume down because they were now 15 miles closer to a transmitter and.
01:50:50Speaker 2When? Roughly.
01:50:52Speaker 2CKCK. Go on.
01:50:54Speaker 4There. Well, they went well, then they they went on the year in 22 and CWC, I believe in 20.
01:50:58Speaker 47 and 20, yeah.
01:50:58Speaker 2When I ask you is that when I was in my early teens, I used to go out and spend school holidays and summer.
01:51:09Speaker 2On the farm of an uncle and aunt at Strasbourg.
01:51:13Speaker 2Which is about an hour out of Regina, and CKCK was of course, our local station.
01:51:18Speaker 4Oh yeah, yeah.
01:51:19Speaker 2And it was a big event and you said nobody got up early.
01:51:21Speaker 2We got up early and we like the radio stations, didn’t get up early though.
01:51:24Speaker 4That was The funny thing. CHWC didn’t really go on till. Well, I think at once one stage of game, they started coming on maybe at 7:30 or something like that.
01:51:33Speaker 4You know when Kemp got there in his pajamas and dressing gown to put the station on the air.
01:51:37Speaker 4You know Jack Jack Kemp I bought.
01:51:38Speaker 2That was wack camp.
01:51:40Speaker 4Come to.
01:51:40Speaker 4I’ll come back to him.
01:51:41Speaker 4But they they worked.
01:51:42Speaker 4Something like this.
01:51:43Speaker 4If I can go.
01:51:44Speaker 4Like almost.
01:51:44Speaker 4After CWC till 9:00, o’clock CKCK 9 to 10, C 10:50, CK 11 to 12, CWC 12 to one, CK CK1 till 3:30.
01:51:55Speaker 4And on.
01:51:57Speaker 4Then CWC would come back at 3:30 till 5:30 except on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. They stayed on all the way through.
01:52:05Speaker 4But on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, if you can figure that one out, that’s the case. Yeah. CKCK came on at 5:30 again, and they CKCK stay down till 10:45. And CWC would stay on longer.
01:52:09Speaker 2Leave here.
01:52:17Speaker 4They were a little more dashing then they’d break it up on Sundays.
01:52:21Speaker 4I think CHWC would start CKCK would come on for a while and then I have to work on that one a little bit, but they split, they split the the day but it could be that CKCK started then WC came on later in the afternoon and then CKCK came back on at 9:00 o’clock at night I.
01:52:39Speaker 4Know they did that.
01:52:41Speaker 4It was kind of a funny setup, but jump ahead just a little bit.
01:52:45Speaker 2Alignment to a point in time when the station was.
01:52:50Speaker 2Shall we say a little more sophisticated?
01:52:53Speaker 2And it seems to me that at the time that that you were there, Andy McDermott of Toronto was probably also on staff.
01:53:03Speaker 2When did Harold Crittenden come?
01:53:04Speaker 4Into the picture.
01:53:05Speaker 4Well, Harold Critten, actually, it started.
01:53:07Speaker 4I was managing the Regina Boys Fair and Regina, our advertising manager and how was advertising manager the Voice Fair and Moose Jaw.
01:53:13Speaker 4We’re both out in search of publicity.
01:53:15Speaker 4This is both lettuce, both LED both of us to radio stations.
01:53:18Speaker 4Because we we wanted some free time and so the radio stations said to us, look, you find the talent, put them on, we’ll give you 1/4 hour. You announce the program and things like this and we’ll give you the time.
01:53:28Speaker 4Yeah. So that’s what really got me on the air in radio and did the same thing for Crittenden. In Moosejaw hell started at what was ten. AB became CHAB Moosejaw and.
01:53:38Speaker 4He then moved into.
01:53:40Speaker 4EJRM, as it was called in when the studios were moved from Moosejaw to Regina and he worked under Fred Scanlon as a salesman at CJR M.
01:53:50Speaker 2That’s when Richardson, all the state.
01:53:52Speaker 4Yeah, that’s right. Then he moved over to CKCK. My guess is I was at CKCK. Then he moved over about 1930.
01:54:01Speaker 4So maybe.
01:54:04Speaker 4Eight, I would say 38 twos become a salesman at CK.
01:54:08Speaker 4Atk and then you know, as people moved out of CKCK, **** moved up the ladder and became manager, and he held on to that a good long while.
01:54:15Speaker 2He’s still holding. Yeah. Now, in spite of the fact that crit is, I hope enjoying semi retirement in this 1978.
01:54:24Speaker 4He could hardly be accused of having been a job jumper.
01:54:27Speaker 4No, no, he was.
01:54:28Speaker 4He stuck.
01:54:28Speaker 4He was, he was.
01:54:30Speaker 4He became Mr.
01:54:31Speaker 4He was very much a big man in.
01:54:33Speaker 2Regina, who were some of the the names of people who achieved a degree of prominence in the industry who came out.
01:54:40Speaker 2Of that era.
01:54:40Speaker 4Well, if we can go back just a bit ahead of that, they were at CKCK horse Stovin was manager.
01:54:46Speaker 4He came from Unity, Saskatchewan.
01:54:48Speaker 4He had his own.
01:54:49Speaker 4He was a druggist.
01:54:50Speaker 4He had his own radio station in the backroom of the drugstore.
01:54:53Speaker 4And at one stage of the game, the Leader post brought him in to manage CKCK and working there at the same time was a man named Vic Nielsen, who later ended up as manager of CFCF Montreal.
01:55:04Speaker 2Yes, of course.
01:55:05Speaker 4Herod will recall, and they’re very good announcer.
01:55:07Speaker 4They’re named Brian Elliott as well.
01:55:10Speaker 4And these are these people I remember fondly when I was.
01:55:14Speaker 4A kid and Regina.
01:55:16Speaker 4And that was CKK over at CCWC.
01:55:19Speaker 4There was Jack Kemp, Bill Spears and art Belfer.
01:55:22Speaker 4They were the Balfour was sales manager.
01:55:24Speaker 4But you couldn’t keep him off the air, right?
01:55:26Speaker 4He loved to get on the air and camping.
01:55:28Speaker 4Spears were the two announcers.
01:55:30Speaker 4I don’t think anyone was bought.
01:55:32Speaker 4They answered to Tommy Caldwell, who was the controller of Williams Department store.
01:55:37Speaker 4He was put in during the bankruptcy of Williams, was virtually bankrupt.
01:55:41Speaker 4I I don’t know what you would actually call it, but the the creditors took over the store anyway and Tommy Caldwell was the controller.
01:55:47Speaker 4But Williams owned, as I say, CHWC.
01:55:49Speaker 2I think it was Bill Spears who told me when I was.
01:55:51Speaker 2Chatting with him a few weeks ago.
01:55:54Speaker 2That he and camp to the average listener sounded so much alike.
01:55:59Speaker 2That anytime that.
01:56:02Speaker 2That Spears would blow a commercial or whatever.
01:56:07Speaker 2It immediately come on and say, and this is Jack Kemp speaking.
01:56:11Speaker 4Well, I tell you, I can tell them apart because I was a great admirer of camp and I think of him very fondly, actually, KCK.
01:56:18Speaker 4There was also a chap named Wolf Collier who went on to hold several positions.
01:56:23Speaker 4Within the industry, we’ll start it as an operator and then at one stage of the game became manager of the station in North Battleford and went forward from there.
01:56:32Speaker 4But Horace Stoven contributed a great deal to the industry. The Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission came into being, as you know, in 1932, and Horace was hired as the program director for the West, and Bushnell was the program director for the East.
01:56:47Speaker 4And I think Arthur DuPont was the program director for Quebec, and he also was in charge of the Michigan Radio.
01:56:53Speaker 4Network or exchange programs with this.
01:56:55Speaker 4States and Horace programmed the West and he went around and he developed programs and I think his contribution, somebody should write a book about Horace Dolan.
01:57:04Speaker 4Anyway, he worked out of an office in the Hotel, Saskatchewan and Regina.
01:57:10Speaker 4He subsequently moved to Winnipeg and then later on moved to Toronto.
01:57:16Speaker 4Became station relations manager in Toronto for for the CBC and then went into the station Rep business himself.
01:57:23Speaker 4Hmm, yes.
01:57:23Speaker 4And just why?
01:57:24Speaker 4Just one thing.
01:57:25Speaker 4I’d like to put in the record.
01:57:26Speaker 4Horace had a.
01:57:27Speaker 4Sign off they they had a man on a 10:30 called the News Butcher. His name was G Johnson.
01:57:32Speaker 4He was a little wizened up reporter who worked for the newspaper who took what they call the blacks from The Newsroom.
01:57:37Speaker 4Yes, and would put a newscast on on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays at about 10:30, and the announcer would come on and say, ladies and gentlemen.
01:57:48Speaker 4The news butcher he come on and say good evening and he’d end off with some story about Dory.
01:57:53Speaker 4You know, Dorothy Dix says he always had a little thing at the end of his newscast that kept you listening.
01:58:00Speaker 4When he finished, they went into some very pretty music and they would fade it down and then horse stolen or Vic Nielsen or Brian Edit would read this and they’d say ships that pass in the night.
01:58:10Speaker 4And speak each other in passing only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness.
01:58:15Speaker 4So on the ocean of light we pass and speak one another.
01:58:19Speaker 4Only a look, and the voice and the darkness again.
01:58:23Speaker 4And as I.
01:58:24Speaker 4And this, ladies and gentlemen, concludes our day, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
01:58:27Speaker 4This is Horace Donovan speaking on behalf of the staff and management of CKCK bidding you a very pleasant good night.
01:58:33Speaker 4But that was read every night just we had sign off time and it was, you know, a nice touch in a way that’s a little reminiscent of Earl Kelly, who used to come out of Vancouver famous.
01:58:41Speaker 4Mr. good.
01:58:43Speaker 4Good evening.
01:58:44Speaker 2And his good night and a special good night to.
01:58:47Speaker 4All the ships at.
01:58:49Speaker 4Yeah, which is on duty.
01:58:49Speaker 2There’s different different.
01:58:51Speaker 4Or he was.
01:58:52Speaker 4He was a showman.
01:58:53Speaker 4Another man that CKCK.
01:58:55Speaker 4I should tell you about his name was Bill Schultz.
01:58:57Speaker 4He if he were alive today, this man could get him elected, get himself elected premier of the province.
01:59:02Speaker 4He was the best known man in Saskatchewan and he didn’t know how popular he really was.
01:59:06Speaker 4But he was on the air for the army.
01:59:08Speaker 4Navy Department stores and he was on every morning on CKCK 9:00 to 9:30 with a thing called Pleasant.
01:59:13Speaker 4Memories and on Sundays from 12:00 o’clock through to three o’clock 3 hours and he would come in and bring all his records in and his script and a scar sticking out of the corner of his mouth.
01:59:24Speaker 4And he originally started on the Moose Jaw Station, then moved to Regina, but he would play Jessie Crawfords at Peace with the world and Irving Berlin to, and he’d faded down and he’d say.
01:59:34Speaker 4My creed, I expect to pass through this world, but once any good, therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it.
01:59:44Speaker 4Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
01:59:49Speaker 4And that was that was actually his sign off every every to every program was nice.
01:59:53Speaker 4Nice touch.
01:59:54Speaker 4Those things have disappeared.
01:59:55Speaker 2Yes, it is too bad because it it’s it reminds me of.
02:00:01Speaker 2Paul Carson, the West to dreamland.
02:00:02Speaker 2Oh, yes.
02:00:04Speaker 2States with his family.
02:00:06Speaker 2That’s a lovely show.
02:00:08Speaker 2And they’re being an answer, reading a Don Blanding poem.
02:00:11Speaker 2Like his Cranston favorite boy.
02:00:12Speaker 2As I sometime may, yeah.
02:00:16Speaker 2And that was good radio.
02:00:17Speaker 4Oh, it was great.
02:00:18Speaker 4Radio Paul Carson played the organ on our one man’s family.
02:00:21Speaker 4You’ll recall, yes, the theme of the original theme before the S gap BMI fight was the destiny waltz, if I remember.
02:00:27Speaker 4Yes, da da da da da da da da da da, da, da here it was the one thing that should win to the record is that CKCK.
02:00:36Speaker 4Was thought to be the first station to broadcast a hockey.
02:00:40Speaker 4And every time somebody said Foster, who would broadcast the first game, we would dig up this clipping that said, a fellow named DL Pete Parker broadcast the first game in mid March of 1923. And Regina.
02:00:52Speaker 4And we even have here the lineup of the teams that played, and I knew of these people when I was a little kid were members of that team.
02:00:59Speaker 4Nick Urban was in the Regina caps at the time and rabbit make they people like that, but that was the game.
02:01:06Speaker 4That’s **** Irving senior.
02:01:07Speaker 4That’s right.
02:01:08Speaker 4Yeah, very much and.
02:01:12Speaker 4And Mr. Parker here this was May 1970, I got this clipping. He lived in Kelowna in retirement, but there was an item in the paper the other day that somebody at CFC, A the Toronto Star station here was, which was located at Saint Clair and Young and is no longer in existence, but someone there did.
02:01:30Speaker 4The hockey broadcast, about a week before that, and they claim that they were the first, but I’ll say this, I think that CKCK was the first radio station in the British Empire to broadcast a church service by remote control, and that was from the Carmichael United Church.
02:01:43Speaker 4And John, these are the stories that I was told.
02:01:45Speaker 2Well, then you moved.
02:01:47Speaker 2How many?
02:01:47Speaker 4We got well, you know, we should get this.
02:01:49Speaker 4I’m sorry.
02:01:49Speaker 2I’m not trying to rush you.
02:01:50Speaker 4No, I know.
02:01:51Speaker 4And there’s so much to tell.
02:01:53Speaker 4I think we might skip ahead too fast.
02:01:55Speaker 4Either you’re talking about me or the radio station.
02:01:57Speaker 4Should we do?
02:01:57Speaker 4Let’s do what?
02:01:58Speaker 4The radio station first.
02:02:01Speaker 4C case.
02:02:02Speaker 4I worked three years for nothing at CWC.
02:02:08Speaker 4I do anything anybody would let me do, and I did some some announcing on CKCK like voice Fair Work and things like that.
02:02:15Speaker 4One year as advertising manager, the boys fair, I did a I took a portable blunt mic all through the wall.