Transcript
00:00:02 Speaker 1
Prohibition that dogged the early days of radio and matter of fact, dogs wait up till the post war era.
00:00:09 Speaker 1
What are your recollections about that?
00:00:11 Speaker 1
Where it came from and when it?
00:00:12 Speaker 2
Came out. That was part of a complicated deal made by Gladstone Murray, then the general manager and chief executive officer of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1937.
00:00:24 Speaker 2
It involved the CBC, then also the regulatory body in Canadian Broadcasting, and the Canadian Daily Newspapers Association and Canadian Press.
00:00:34 Speaker 2
Gladstone Marie on his side agreed.
00:00:39 Speaker 2
That there would be no price mention on broadcasting, that is radio which so we had in those days.
00:00:45 Speaker 2
And the broadcasting stations could get their news only.
00:00:51 Speaker 2
From Canadian Press or from their own local reporters.
00:00:57 Speaker 2
In return for this, he was guaranteed editorial support.
00:01:02 Speaker 2
From the daily newspapers, the support involving the principle of a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
00:01:10 Speaker 2
The principle of the CBC should remain the body that recommended on licenses and the regulatory body.
00:01:17 Speaker 2
And support for a $3 receiver license fee.
00:01:23 Speaker 2
The license fee at that time was 2 1/2 dollars per receiver per year. It had recently been raised from from $2.00.
00:01:31 Speaker 2
So Gladstone Murray induced the CBC’s board to introduce a prohibition on price mention.
00:01:38 Speaker 2
It was felt that this would protect the position of the dailies, especially in relation to local advertising.
00:01:49 Speaker 2
And it was to remain into effect until about 1947 or 48.
00:01:55 Speaker 2
It prohibited the mention of the price of any service Oregon product on the air.
00:02:02 Speaker 2
CBC Publications and certain items put out by the federal government.
00:02:07 Speaker 2
The Canadian Association of Broadcasters made representations to the CBC board over a period of 13 or 14 years.
00:02:14 Speaker 2
Pointing out consistently that the one thing that could not possibly.
00:02:19 Speaker 2
Be misrepresented was the price of a product.
00:02:22 Speaker 2
Ultimately, the CBC Board of Governors and was after Dave Dutton had become the chairman of the Board of Governors and Chief Executive Officer.
00:02:32 Speaker 2
Went along with the suggestion that Price mentioned the permitted on a 6 month trial period.
00:02:38 Speaker 2
And then a very interesting series of events occurred.
00:02:41 Speaker 2
The Canadian Association of Broadcasters and by that time, I was the Chief Executive Officer.
00:02:46 Speaker 2
Of it at that time with the title of general manager later changed to Executive Vice President.
00:02:52 Speaker 2
Held a series of regional meetings across the country, so much importance that we attach to this.
00:02:58 Speaker 2
The broadcasters agreed on a specific code.
00:03:01 Speaker 2
That there would be only so many price mentions in 1/4 hour and a half hour in an hour.
00:03:07 Speaker 2
The price mentions were to be made very, very carefully and discretely.
00:03:11 Speaker 2
At the end of the six month try our experimental period.
00:03:15 Speaker 2
Oddly nothing happened.
00:03:17 Speaker 2
Everybody just forgot about it by this time.
00:03:19 Speaker 2
Price mentioned had been established.
00:03:21 Speaker 2
There had been no public complaints.
00:03:24 Speaker 2
And the next time the regulations were reprinted without saying anything else.
00:03:28 Speaker 2
The prohibition was simply dropped from the printed regulations.
00:03:34 Speaker 1
There was one other relative curiosity in the early days of broadcasting.
00:03:39 Speaker 1
That is the evening hours, there would be no transcribed music.
00:03:43 Speaker 1
It was to be essentially, I suppose, live entertainment.
00:03:45 Speaker 1
Was that the result of pressure from musicians who were afraid they might be done out of?
00:03:50 Speaker 2
Business, On the contrary, the musicians were greatly opposed to it and told several parliamentary committees that, amongst other people.
00:03:59 Speaker 2
The pressure for the prohibition on electrical transcriptions, as they were then called, came from the line companies.
00:04:06 Speaker 2
Canadian National, Canadian Pacific and to a lesser extent, the telephone companies.
00:04:11 Speaker 2
They wanted to ensure that their lines would be rented for network broadcasts containing music.
00:04:18 Speaker 2
That, as a matter of fact, the recording companies themselves said this quite bluntly in two appearances.
00:04:25 Speaker 2
My memory is the 1932 House of Commons committee and broadcasting in the 1934 and 36 committees.
00:04:34 Speaker 2
Berliner, particularly, who was running an outfit called Compo Cmpo in Montreal.
00:04:41 Speaker 2
Protested this regulation, saying that it would destroy the Canadian recording industry and he was right dead.
00:04:47 Speaker 2
And the Canadian recording industry has never completely recovered.
00:04:51 Speaker 2
Representatives of the line companies appeared before those committees to support it.
00:04:56 Speaker 2
The AF of M appeared at least three committees.
00:05:00 Speaker 2
Walter Murdoch was representing them at the time with legal counsel.
00:05:04 Speaker 2
And he protested the regulation.
00:05:07 Speaker 2
The musicians then as now, got extra pay by way of residuals.
00:05:12 Speaker 2
For recording.
00:05:14 Speaker 2
He said then that they were being deprived of income and would tend to drive a great many musicians to the United States for a living, and Murdoch turned out to be right.
00:05:26 Speaker 2
And it was not until the regulation was dropped and the use of recordings was permitted, although oddly, has never really been encouraged in Canada, the.
00:05:36 Speaker 2
The governing bodies in Canada, one after the other, have always had a curious distaste for mechanical reproductions of any kind.
00:05:45 Speaker 2
Feeling for some reason not clear to me that a performance is valid only if it’s done live.
00:05:52 Speaker 2
Without realizing that recording is simply another form of syndication, like Network, which enables the cost to be spread amongst a number of outlets at a given time.
00:06:03 Speaker 2
The prohibition was a bad one.
00:06:06 Speaker 2
And it is well that it was dropped.
00:06:08 Speaker 2
It’s only now that the Canadian music industry is beginning to recover and very slightly.
00:06:14 Speaker 1
What years was the prohibition in effect?
00:06:17 Speaker 2
It began effectively about 1920, although the regulation was not enforced to restrictively between 1920 and 1934.
00:06:28 Speaker 2
When they will see RRBC came into being, which would be 1932.
00:06:34 Speaker 2
They tightened the regulation and began to enforce it very strictly.
00:06:39 Speaker 2
Mechanical reproductions were prohibited in effect between 7:00 PM and 11:00 PM local time.
00:06:46 Speaker 2
Except in certain instances where a few of them could be used in specific instances with prior written permission of the CRBC.
00:06:55 Speaker 2
The CBC, when it took over in 1936, continued the prohibition for a number of years that it wasn’t really until 1958, although the prohibition had been considerably modified in practice.
00:07:09 Speaker 2
That the situation began to change.
00:07:12 Speaker 2
The CBC introduced a new curious regulation.
00:07:16 Speaker 2
Which compelled you to announce?
00:07:18 Speaker 2
That an electrical transcription was an electrical transcription you had to pro Ceed and follow the transcription with an announcement to the effect that, and so on.
00:07:29 Speaker 1
And that would that would be rather annoying to a.
00:07:31 Speaker 2
Listener it was and the listener.
00:07:33 Speaker 2
As long as he got the music, we didn’t.
00:07:36 Speaker 1
I mean, we’re in business.
00:07:38 Speaker 1
They had that rather unfortunate experience with Gordon Keith Keeble, however.
00:07:43 Speaker 2
The great guy kibel.
00:07:45 Speaker 1
But most of the recording, well, when did you get involved with the cab and what is the cab?
00:07:53 Speaker 2
My connection with the cab started in 1945.
00:07:58 Speaker 2
The quickest way to describe the Canadian Association of Broadcasters is as a management union.
00:08:05 Speaker 2
Its members are the privately owned radio and television broadcasting stations across Canada, represented of course, by individuals.
00:08:13 Speaker 2
And its purpose, broadly, is to assess these people in the more efficient operation of their stations.
00:08:19 Speaker 2
And to advise on and protect their collective interests.
00:08:23 Speaker 2
That I had come to water originally as an employee of the Taylor Pearson Carson Group, now all Canada.
00:08:30 Speaker 1
Was that the first advertising agency broadcast advertising ever?
00:08:35 Speaker 2
No, they’ve never been in the agency business.
00:08:38 Speaker 2
TP and C were and are to some extent a unique group.
00:08:43 Speaker 2
When they first got into broadcasting business and for years afterwards, they only owned one broadcasting station which was CJOC in Lethbridge.
00:08:51 Speaker 2
The other stations they operated, the ownership remained with the original licensee.
00:08:58 Speaker 2
They were professional managers, managers, really.
00:09:03 Speaker 2
They opened the first Rep house, a representative house, as it’s now known, originally called United Broadcast Sales run by Percy Gainer, who had been sent down from.
00:09:13 Speaker 2
CJC and Edmonton to Toronto for that purpose.
00:09:17 Speaker 2
It later became all Canada radio and television facilities and the Rep House is still known as that.
00:09:23 Speaker 2
It’s now a subsidiary of Selkirk Selkirk, Broadcast Holdings, or Selkirk Holdings Limited, which now also owns some of the stations that TPC used to manage.
00:09:36 Speaker 2
I came down here originally in 1945.
00:09:40 Speaker 2
To open an Ottawa office or tailor person, Carson.
00:09:44 Speaker 2
I had convinced Harold Carson, the President of the group, that a licensed industry should have representatives in Ottawa where the licenses came from.
00:09:56 Speaker 2
We had also opened a thing called the Radio Bureau, which is a very interesting history in itself.
00:10:01 Speaker 2
In fact, that was the excuse for the Ottawa.
00:10:04 Speaker 2
The industry wanted to absorb the Radio Bureau in 1946.
00:10:09 Speaker 2
And Carson, being the kind of gentleman he was, was perfectly willing to see them do thus.
00:10:15 Speaker 2
And still pay his share of the cost.
00:10:18 Speaker 2
When they were.
00:10:19 Speaker 2
Absorbed, I went along after discussions with Harold Carson with the package.
00:10:24 Speaker 2
And at the same time became public relations director for the CAB, which then was headquartered in Toronto.
00:10:30 Speaker 2
But I still operated from the Ottawa office.
00:10:34 Speaker 2
Then, in 1948, they invited me to become their chief executive officer with the with the title of general manager.
00:10:45 Speaker 2
And then in about 1953, the title was changed to Executive Vice President.
00:10:50 Speaker 1
What was your background in broadcasting itself?
00:10:53 Speaker 2
I started in 1934, July 11934 at CJC in Edmonton and I started incredibly as the switchboard operator answering telephones.
00:11:05 Speaker 1
That’s that’s a new way to get into broadcast is what I.
00:11:08 Speaker 2
Haven’t heard before?
00:11:08 Speaker 2
Well, as matter of fact, it was.
00:11:10 Speaker 2
The first decent job I’d ever had in my life that I entered the labor market at the start of the depression, which was remarkably bad judgment.
00:11:19 Speaker 2
And the first decent job I ever had was with the old Edmonton Journal.
00:11:25 Speaker 2
At that time, they owned and operated CGCA from a corner of the top or 6th floor of the building, and nobody really paid that much attention to it.
00:11:34 Speaker 2
Taylor Pearson in Edmonton had got into the business in 1933 with a little station called CFTP.
00:11:41 Speaker 2
In the same year, they had entered into an operating deal with the Calgary Herald to operate CFAC in Calgary.
00:11:50 Speaker 2
In conjunction with Harold Carson.
00:11:53 Speaker 2
Who owned and operated Cgoc in Lethbridge?
00:11:58 Speaker 2
I should explain that they were primarily in the automotive.
00:12:03 Speaker 2
Parts business.
00:12:04 Speaker 2
Harold Carson operated in Lethbridge Taylor and Pearson Limited operated in Edmonton.
00:12:10 Speaker 2
They got together in Calgary to operate Taylor, Pearson and Carson as automotive parts distributors.
00:12:17 Speaker 2
It was then they discovered that Harold owned Cgoc in Lethbridge and thought it was a good idea.
00:12:24 Speaker 2
They tried to get a station in Calgary and failed, so they made their operating deal with the Calgary Herald.
00:12:30 Speaker 2
They then thought it would be a good idea to an operating deal with the Edmonton Journal and made their deal.
00:12:37 Speaker 2
The licensing authority told them they couldn’t have two stations in Edmonton.
00:12:41 Speaker 2
So they sold CFTP to the manager of CGCA de Grace, who is still the sole owner.
00:12:49 Speaker 2
Of the station, now called CFRN, and CFRN TV.
00:12:53 Speaker 2
The fact that a shuffle was taking place alerted several of us to the fact that broadcasting existed.
00:13:00 Speaker 2
I made-up my mind that broadcasting would probably replace newspapers and become effective in the news business, so I wanted to get into broadcasting.
00:13:09 Speaker 2
I went around to see Hugh Pearson at Taylor Pearson and told him I would like to get into the broadcasting business.
00:13:16 Speaker 2
He said we have no openings at the moment.
00:13:20 Speaker 2
So I said, look, would you call me if anything comes up?
00:13:23 Speaker 2
He promised me to do that.
00:13:24 Speaker 2
He would do that and about six months later, he calls saying where the dubious lay that they had an opening for a.
00:13:31 Speaker 2
Switchboard operator.
00:13:33 Speaker 2
And I said, Mr.
00:13:34 Speaker 2
Pearson, you’ve got yourself a boy.
00:13:37 Speaker 2
And he said, well, you haven’t even asked how much it pays.
00:13:39 Speaker 2
And I said, I don’t care.
00:13:40 Speaker 2
And as a matter of fact, I took a reduction and a substantial reduction in income to take the job.
00:13:46 Speaker 2
But within six months I was writing continuity.
00:13:51 Speaker 2
And doing some operating and then I went on to their announcing staff, although still writing continuity.
00:13:58 Speaker 2
Later, at CGCA, I became continued the editor.
00:14:03 Speaker 2
I then persuaded the proprietors they should open a news department.
00:14:07 Speaker 2
And became Muse and continuity editor, and later I became promotion director, although still retaining responsibility for the news and Continuity department.
00:14:19 Speaker 2
It was while I was acting in that triple capacity that I sold Harold Kirsten.
00:14:23 Speaker 2
The idea of the Radio Bureau at an Ottawa office.
00:14:27 Speaker 1
What was the Radio Bureau as service to radio stations of news?
00:14:31 Speaker 2
No, except in a limited sense.
00:14:35 Speaker 2
Oddly, I was to discover later that the concept had occurred to other people as well.
00:14:40 Speaker 2
My thought was that the TPC stations in Western Canada by that time we were operating each stations.
00:14:47 Speaker 2
Should open an office in Ottawa and record members of the House of Commons, thus permitting them to speak directly to their constituents.
00:14:56 Speaker 2
The participating stations would pay for the cost of the Ottawa Office and provide time free of charge to the MP’s who would come in on a regular basis.
00:15:08 Speaker 2
And make their recordings.
00:15:09 Speaker 2
It occurred to me that this was a useful public service concept.
00:15:14 Speaker 2
And simultaneously would enable us to be in constant contact in a favorable atmosphere with the MPs.
00:15:21 Speaker 2
Carson was considering the idea when he came to an annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters in Quebec City.
00:15:28 Speaker 2
And found that Ken Sobel, by then the proprietor of C Hmel and Hamilton, was actually doing this for CHTML only.
00:15:38 Speaker 2
This made-up his mind thoroughly.
00:15:40 Speaker 2
So I got shot down to Ottawa.
00:15:43 Speaker 2
To open what we call the Radio Bureau primarily for this purpose, although we also provided a 5 minute newscast to participating stations dealing with Ottawa news.
00:15:55 Speaker 2
We obtained for that purpose free of charge the line connections.
00:15:58 Speaker 2
What was then British United Press, now UPI and I wrote that six days a week, in addition to running the radio Bureau.
00:16:06 Speaker 2
The idea became well known in the industry, decided it wanted to take it over.
00:16:12 Speaker 2
So it became a subsidiary or a programmed division of the CAB, which, by the way, it still is.
00:16:16 Speaker 2
It’s still in existence at this moment.
00:16:19 Speaker 2
It’s probably the most successful.
00:16:22 Speaker 2
Public service concept that’s ever been devised in North America.
00:16:27 Speaker 1
The news was not a large part of the early radio news or radio operations.
00:16:33 Speaker 1
Was that a simple, simple oversight?
00:16:35 Speaker 1
Or was it a matter of Canadian Press was presenting?
00:16:39 Speaker 2
It was a combination of both.
00:16:42 Speaker 2
The daily newspapers individually and collectively did not want the broadcasting stations to get into news.
00:16:48 Speaker 2
And they through every conceivable obstacle in their path.
00:16:52 Speaker 2
At one time there was an agreement amongst the newspapers not to provide news to broadcasting stations.
00:16:58 Speaker 2
Many of the broadcasting stations circumvented this by the simple process of scalping.
00:17:03 Speaker 2
And the state of the copyright law is so obscure, there was very little that the newspapers could do about it.
00:17:10 Speaker 2
Very few of the stations in that day had local reporters one or two.
00:17:16 Speaker 2
But when broadcasting first started in Canada.
00:17:21 Speaker 2
The the concept of it was primarily that of entertainment rather than information, which came later.
00:17:29 Speaker 2
I think there are basically two reasons for this.
00:17:32 Speaker 2
Every new art form or scientific form for matter of that must start from what is.
00:17:39 Speaker 2
And most of the people who got into broadcasting visualized that new art as an extension of the theatre.
00:17:47 Speaker 2
That’s why broadcasting was originally rigidly structured in hourly.
00:17:53 Speaker 2
Formats and of course the half hour and quarter hour.
00:17:57 Speaker 2
As contradistinction, today’s so-called rolling format, and of course the people we could draw on in the main to run broadcasting were people with theatrical experience of one kind or another.
00:18:08 Speaker 2
But the impact of broadcasting on the listener was entertainment.
00:18:14 Speaker 2
All of a sudden, the people in the in Western Canada and the Atlantic area.
00:18:20 Speaker 2
Had available the finest talent of the entire world.
00:18:25 Speaker 2
In the entertainment sense, these people have been virtually isolated.
00:18:29 Speaker 2
They made their own entertainment at home or at the Legion Hall or the Community hall.
00:18:34 Speaker 2
They listened to amateurs.
00:18:35 Speaker 2
They had sing songs, that kind of thing.
00:18:38 Speaker 2
The movies were beginning to have an impact in that fed.
00:18:42 Speaker 2
I think the desire for entertainment.
00:18:45 Speaker 2
You had the visiting evangelists and should taqwa this kind of thing and it was really entertainment in those days?
00:18:52 Speaker 2
Yet I don’t want to hurt the feelings of the evangelists, but they were really considered entertainment more than a great religious message.
00:18:59 Speaker 2
Then, when people found that by way of recordings or line broadcasts, they could hear the finest entertainment from New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and indeed all over the world they went for.
00:19:10 Speaker 2
That very eagerly.
00:19:11 Speaker 2
And very hungrily in broadcasting tatter to concentrate on that.
00:19:16 Speaker 2
The news concept came a little later and it started.
00:19:21 Speaker 2
From the angle of what today we would call a spectacular.
00:19:24 Speaker 2
One of the first real spectacular broadcasts was conducted by Vic George, who was then the manager of CFCF in Montreal when the R-100 derived in Canada of the dirigible.
00:19:38 Speaker 2
From Britain.
00:19:39 Speaker 2
And he set up the series of commentators all the way from the Atlantic Coast, right into Montreal.
00:19:46 Speaker 2
He handled the Montreal commentary person.
00:19:49 Speaker 2
Now this kind of development is spectacular, was what first shifted the attention of both broadcasters and listeners into the possibility of of news broadcasts on a regular and continuing basis.
00:20:02 Speaker 2
Then, of course, the oak brick of the war completed the process.
00:20:06 Speaker 1
And prior to that, you finally had the royal visit.
00:20:08 Speaker 1
1939.
00:20:09 Speaker 2
Yes, which also tended to shelve broadcasting more into the direction of news, particularly at that time.
00:20:16 Speaker 2
The spectacular kind of news broadcast.
00:20:20 Speaker 1
And you say the war and the CBC’s obviously viewing it in particular, that made the voices and the sounds part of the part of the living room.
00:20:28 Speaker 2
Yes, exactly, exactly.
00:20:30 Speaker 2
Although several private stations had people overseas during the war, including one woman.
00:20:36 Speaker 2
Who did a spectacular job for the Thompson stations?
00:20:40 Speaker 2
I must look up her name for you and get that to you, Margaret.
00:20:44 Speaker 1
Up in her head and screw.
00:20:45 Speaker 1
I hadn’t been worried that we had a woman.
00:20:47 Speaker 2
Correspondent at home?
00:20:48 Speaker 2
Yes, straight.
00:20:48 Speaker 2
She worked for the Thompson Papers during World War Two.
00:20:51 Speaker 2
Who did an excellent job.
00:20:55 Speaker 1
With the equipment you had when you went in to switchboard operator, announcer, continuity rate or what have you was must have been relatively primitive, even even considering you were 14 years into the.
00:21:06 Speaker 2
Business of, by today’s standards, incredibly primitive.
00:21:10 Speaker 2
Oh, anything that works.
00:21:13 Speaker 2
In the field of electromagnetics is obsolete.
00:21:17 Speaker 2
Our equipment then would appall people who have got to the business since the end of World War Two.
00:21:22 Speaker 2
It was clumsy and big and inefficient, broke down very frequently, but it was considered miraculous at the time, and it did its job for the larger part of the period.
00:21:34 Speaker 1
Of course you were live most of the time on air.
00:21:37 Speaker 1
You we didn’t have the again transcriptions and or tape recording facilities.
00:21:43 Speaker 2
There was far more live broadcasting in those days than we’ve ever seen since.
00:21:46 Speaker 2
As a matter of fact, the distaste for recordings.
00:21:50 Speaker 2
Oddly, was shared by some broadcasters.
00:21:54 Speaker 2
They didn’t like them, particularly.
00:21:55 Speaker 2
Every station had a spectacular amount.
00:21:58 Speaker 2
Brighter day standards of life origination.
00:22:02 Speaker 2
Partly a matter of pride, partly that the recording equipment and the recordings themselves in that they were not all that good by today’s standards, the quality was.
00:22:11 Speaker 2
Incredibly bad.
00:22:14 Speaker 2
Nor was there a great supply available.
00:22:17 Speaker 2
And the recording companies were not particularly fussy at one time about having their material used.
00:22:24 Speaker 2
On air, they had the feeling it might reduce the sales of the recordings.
00:22:28 Speaker 2
Great and sad mistake.
00:22:29 Speaker 2
As it turned out, although one or two of the more progressive companies encouraged that most of them tended to try and discourage it.
00:22:38 Speaker 2
In addition to that, there was then, as there is not now.
00:22:42 Speaker 2
Our reservoir of live talent available in more cities.
00:22:47 Speaker 2
This came about because of the isolation of cities prior to broadcasting.
00:22:52 Speaker 2
Every city had a number of music teachers, piano teachers, organ teachers, singing teachers.
00:22:58 Speaker 2
These people supplemented their income by playing in churches and at concerts.
00:23:04 Speaker 2
They gave theatrical performances.
00:23:08 Speaker 2
There were still a few live theatres, even in Western Canada.
00:23:13 Speaker 2
Where live performances went on.
00:23:16 Speaker 2
Even large orchestras you have dance bands all over the place.
00:23:19 Speaker 2
People went out dancing in those days, much more than they do now, especially on Saturday nights.
00:23:25 Speaker 2
Even a city like Edmonton, a remote and isolated as it then was in the 20s and 30s.
00:23:31 Speaker 2
Probably had 2022 places where people could and did go dancing on Saturday nights, so the talent was there.
00:23:42 Speaker 2
And broadcasting stations could drop from that.
00:23:45 Speaker 2
There were also a number of dramatic groups.
00:23:48 Speaker 2
For identical reasons.
00:23:51 Speaker 2
The thing that first eluted that reservoir of talent was the introduction of the motion picture.
00:24:00 Speaker 2
And particularly, of course, when the the so-called talkies came in.
00:24:05 Speaker 2
Most theaters prior to the talkies had at least one pianist who played appropriate mood and sound effect music.
00:24:13 Speaker 2
In the PET, as the film was being run.
00:24:16 Speaker 2
As soon as the movies came in, the opportunities for talent began to diminish, and they tended to drift to the bigger cities.
00:24:23 Speaker 2
That was where the movement started.
00:24:26 Speaker 2
Then of course, network broadcasting itself accelerated that trend because the opportunities to get on the network.
00:24:36 Speaker 2
This represented a magnificent temptation for most talent.
00:24:40 Speaker 1
And in the early days, much of that local talent you’re talking about was only too happy to appear, either for nothing or for very little on the local radio.
00:24:47 Speaker 2
Station yes, indeed, partly because of the exposure.
00:24:50 Speaker 2
They regarded this as advertising.
00:24:53 Speaker 2
And not him properly, and partly because of the natural desire of any talented person to have his or.
00:24:59 Speaker 2
Her talents known.
00:25:03 Speaker 1
OK, one minute you have.
00:25:08 Speaker 1
Where where we’ve gotten to.
00:25:10 Speaker 1
We tell you what the equipment wasn’t till after the.
00:25:13 Speaker 1
Essentially, after the Second World War, the where the large acetate recordings.
00:25:17 Speaker 1
And then you had the blatent from the wire recorders.
00:25:21 Speaker 1
Actually prior to the war, but now they weren’t terribly effective until after the war that we got into tape.
00:25:28 Speaker 2
That is right and tape was developed primarily for military or war purposes.
00:25:36 Speaker 2
During a war, there is no shortage of funds for military purposes.
00:25:41 Speaker 2
Experimented development and there was a tremendous amount of breakthrough.
00:25:46 Speaker 2
In electronic equipment during World War Two, as a result, prior to that we only had the standard commercial recording, and in those days they were all 70 eights.
00:25:56 Speaker 2
They were primarily designed to play on a wind up home gramophone.
00:26:00 Speaker 2
About 1935 or 36, the electrical transcription, which was designed primarily in fact solely for broadcasting, came into being.
00:26:10 Speaker 2
They ran 15 minutes or half an.
00:26:13 Speaker 2
Either a single dramatic or musical program, or a series of cuts of two or three minutes length on the transcription.
00:26:21 Speaker 2
They were very, very big, 16 inch things and rather thick could be used only by broadcasting stations.
00:26:28 Speaker 2
And the recordings were acetate recordings of the cut.
00:26:33 Speaker 2
And didn’t cut too well and didn’t have good quality.
00:26:38 Speaker 2
Oh, in fact, we were using.
00:26:40 Speaker 2
We were experimenting with steel.
00:26:43 Speaker 2
Paper and glass.
00:26:47 Speaker 2
And the Blattner fulner wire tape with the the only thing close to modern day tape we had.
00:26:54 Speaker 2
Then of course, the war introduced the beginnings of the present day tape recorder.
00:27:03 Speaker 1
What was from the?
00:27:06 Speaker 1
In the early days of broadcasting, there were two there appeared to have been two currents 1I support, exemplified by the aired report and spry and the Radio League for a totally national system and the other one, of course, because broadcasting did get started as a private deal for.
00:27:26 Speaker 1
If you like all private, or at least a mixed system, and then the CBC CRBC and then the CBC came along and became, as you said earlier, most competitive and regular.
00:27:38 Speaker 1
Not a happy situation from the private broadcasters point of view. OK, by 1958 you finally succeeded in getting a separate regulatory body.
00:27:49 Speaker 1
Now, in retrospect of 15 to almost 20 years now, was that a good idea, or was it better, really?
00:27:58 Speaker 2
I think it’s a better idea a much better idea from the viewpoint.
00:28:04 Speaker 2
Of the Canadian public.
00:28:07 Speaker 2
And that really was what was at issue in the first instance.
00:28:12 Speaker 2
And I want to be very, very careful not to be misunderstood here because the position of the private broadcasters was constantly misrepresented in this context, frequently deliberately.
00:28:24 Speaker 2
Most private broadcasters, probably 90% of them, would share my view.
00:28:30 Speaker 2
That is, a is a programming organization.
00:28:32 Speaker 2
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has a much better record than it’s generally credited with.
00:28:39 Speaker 2
They produced and still produced a great many useful and interesting programs, frequently under difficult circumstances.
00:28:47 Speaker 2
The private broadcasters never had any quarrel with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
00:28:52 Speaker 2
Much less the CBC.
00:28:55 Speaker 2
As a programming body, not even the concept of the CBC, let alone a programming CBC.
00:29:03 Speaker 2
It simply happened that the private broadcasters, because they were close to the situation and knew what broadcasting was, is and could be.
00:29:13 Speaker 2
Had to carry the ball on the question of a regulatory body that was also not an operating body.
00:29:21 Speaker 2
Broadcasters knew the background, the CRBC, and later the CBC had been brought into being, really.
00:29:29 Speaker 2
Almost single handedly by Graham Spray and Allan Plant.
00:29:34 Speaker 2
Now I will give Graham Spry full credit for what he is, a very genuine individual whose sole interest was and is a dominant Canadian motif in Canadian broadcasting.
00:29:48 Speaker 2
A viewpoint that I think most of us 1995% of us would share.
00:29:54 Speaker 2
Now it also happened that at that time and it may.
00:29:56 Speaker 2
Still be true.
00:29:58 Speaker 2
Graham Spry hewed to the CCF political philosophy.
00:30:09 Speaker 1
I think you were saying that you have the private broadcasters no objection with the point that you got on.
00:30:15 Speaker 1
You’re talking about Sky and his philosophy, yes.
00:30:21 Speaker 2
If you happen to follow the CCF now, the NDP line of thinking you would, you would naturally think.
00:30:27 Speaker 2
That the only way to protect a Canadian theme, a Canadian motif in Canadian broadcasting would be to have a high degree.
00:30:35 Speaker 2
Of government intervention.
00:30:37 Speaker 2
And indeed, Graham was impressed with the BBC.
00:30:40 Speaker 2
With whom he’d had a number of contacts.
00:30:43 Speaker 2
Now Graham’s position was that he is quite sincere and genuine.
00:30:48 Speaker 2
Alan Plant, a millionaire dilatant of Ottawa, was a different quintal of fish entirely.
00:30:55 Speaker 2
Plant whose political connections were awesome.
00:30:59 Speaker 2
He was probably closer to Mackenzie King than anybody that saved the Prime Minister’s mother.
00:31:06 Speaker 2
I am told and of some reason to believe it, that he was the only man who could see Mackenzie King at any hour of the day or night without an appointment.
00:31:14 Speaker 2
Now plant had very definite views on everything.
00:31:20 Speaker 2
The fact that these two men worked together is a fascinating thing in itself.
00:31:26 Speaker 2
Graham Spry tends to be or a bit of a Commonwealth man.
00:31:31 Speaker 2
That at least he certainly has no objections to Great Britain existing.
00:31:36 Speaker 2
Alan Plot had a sacred for all things British that verged on the psychopathic.
00:31:43 Speaker 2
He tried very hard to keep Canada out of World War Two and came within 7/8 of an inch of succeeding.
00:31:49 Speaker 2
Because Mackenzie King agreed with him.
00:31:52 Speaker 2
And plant.
00:31:55 Speaker 2
Formed a league in 1937.
00:31:59 Speaker 2
Devoted to the entire purpose of keeping Canada out of World War Two.
00:32:03 Speaker 2
And in return and I have the documentation that I’ve been through the plant papers at UBC.
00:32:09 Speaker 2
He was prepared to go a third degree in the direction of what’s called Continentalism today, except that plot, I think, went further.
00:32:17 Speaker 2
Incredibly, this chap who was promoting the idea of a CBC to make.
00:32:23 Speaker 2
Broadcasting Canadian did not shrink from the idea of virtually a zoler vein or customs union with the United States to keep Canada’s World War Two.
00:32:34 Speaker 2
And possibly was prepared to go further.
00:32:37 Speaker 1
He didn’t think the United States would be elected to get into.
00:32:39 Speaker 2
The war at the time, he thought not.
00:32:42 Speaker 2
As indeed I suppose a good many people dead because the isolationist feeling was running very high in the United States until Pearl Harbor.
00:32:52 Speaker 2
After the CBC was.
00:32:54 Speaker 2
Spry and plot between them brought the CRBC into being, and the CRBC failed for a number of very complicated reasons, and then single handedly together with the Austin Weir and the Don Manson.
00:33:10 Speaker 2
And with a bit of a help from August and free gun.
00:33:14 Speaker 2
They created the CBC.
00:33:16 Speaker 2
And plot went on the Board of Governors of CBC.
00:33:19 Speaker 2
Now it is quite obvious that plant was using the CBC to propagate his views.
00:33:27 Speaker 2
And amongst those views was a high degree of CONTINENTALISM and a desire to keep Canada out of what he consistently referred to as the European War.
00:33:37 Speaker 2
Because the CBC had control over the private stations, the private stations were circumscribed from presenting alternative use.
00:33:46 Speaker 2
Particularly with Alan Font on the Board of Governors.
00:33:50 Speaker 2
Then plant made a number of mistakes.
00:33:54 Speaker 2
I still think those mistakes were due to the fact that although he didn’t know at the time, he was very seriously ill. He was to die prematurely of cancer in about 1941 or 1942.
00:34:06 Speaker 2
That he tried to keep the Conservative Party of Canada off the air.
00:34:12 Speaker 2
At this time, his liberal connections had become very, very strong.
00:34:16 Speaker 2
For a while, he was toying with a new party.
00:34:20 Speaker 2
And he had high hopes that his good friend Vincent Massey would be the leader of that.
00:34:23 Speaker 2
And he very nearly succeeded.
00:34:25 Speaker 2
It’s a very interesting sidelight of Canadian history on which little work unfortunately has been done, and I hope to do it one of these days.
00:34:33 Speaker 2
This brought the Conservative Party into the fray.
00:34:36 Speaker 2
Because they did not like the idea of.
00:34:40 Speaker 2
Plot succeeded, for instance, in keeping me in off the air on 2 occasions.
00:34:46 Speaker 2
He succeeded in keeping drew off the air.
00:34:49 Speaker 2
He succeeded in keeping John Bracken’s acceptance speech off the air when Bracken became the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, and indeed he was the guy who tacked the word progressive on to the title.
00:35:02 Speaker 2
That brought the Conservative Party into the fray.
00:35:05 Speaker 2
And it also completely smashed the careful link that Gladstone Murray had skillfully built up.
00:35:13 Speaker 2
Between the CBC and the daily newspapers.
00:35:16 Speaker 2
Up until that time, the dailies had editorially vigorously campaigned for the CBC and against the private broadcasters.
00:35:23 Speaker 2
As a matter of principle.
00:35:25 Speaker 2
Now they began to worry.
00:35:28 Speaker 2
And I must give them credit.
00:35:29 Speaker 2
While some of them took a rather narrow view.
00:35:33 Speaker 2
Others were saying and quite properly.
00:35:36 Speaker 2
It is a dangerous situation when a state owned broadcasting system can begin to control opinion in this country and decide whose opinions will and will not be heard.
00:35:48 Speaker 2
And some of the dailies began to support the view that there should be a separate regulatory body for that purpose.
00:35:56 Speaker 2
The view was later to be shared by an astonishing number of people.
00:36:01 Speaker 2
In fact, the desire for a separate regulatory body and private television was what defeated the coalition government.
00:36:10 Speaker 2
In British Columbia and put Bennett the senior Bettet into power in the first instance.
00:36:15 Speaker 2
That election was really fought on that issue.
00:36:18 Speaker 2
And by this time, the young Liberal Group had come out in favour of a separate regulatory body.
00:36:24 Speaker 2
The Liberal legislature of the province of Manitoba, several liberal Western groups and all on the issue of principle.
00:36:33 Speaker 2
And this has not been generally understood.
00:36:36 Speaker 2
You do in fact have a dangerous situation.
00:36:40 Speaker 2
What an operating body which decides what opinions will or will not be heard in its own air.
00:36:46 Speaker 2
Can also decide what views will and will not be heard on a possible alternative.
00:36:51 Speaker 1
How did fund go about achieving this prohibition of maritime?
00:36:56 Speaker 1
Because that one member of the Board of Governors wouldn’t thought his influence would be that great and about the.
00:37:01 Speaker 2
He had several things going for him.
00:37:04 Speaker 2
In the first place.
00:37:06 Speaker 2
He had Mackenzie king.
00:37:11 Speaker 2
Paul Merton.
00:37:13 Speaker 2
Brooke Claxton, who was counseled legal counsel of the Radio League, and Alan Plotts personal legal counsel in his pocket, literally.
00:37:22 Speaker 2
He was a very forceful, domineering, dominating character and obviously had what is today called Charisma.
00:37:31 Speaker 2
That it’s astonishing how popular he was amongst the people who knew him.
00:37:36 Speaker 2
In the 2nd place he dominated.
00:37:38 Speaker 2
The CBC Board of.
00:37:40 Speaker 2
Unfortunately, most of the CBC board at that time was made-up of either second graders who didn’t really care.
00:37:48 Speaker 2
Or rather, wide eyed woolly idealists who really didn’t know what was going on at any point in time, so plot could dominate the board.
00:37:58 Speaker 2
He also had direct access.
00:38:01 Speaker 2
To the operating end of the CBC.
00:38:04 Speaker 2
He also had control of the CBC’s key officers, who were reporting to him.
00:38:09 Speaker 2
Not to the board and not to Gladstone, Murray, then the general manager.
00:38:15 Speaker 2
Now here we must go back a point or two because all these factors by number matter of means insignificant.
00:38:22 Speaker 2
The so-called aired Commission was made-up of Sir John Aird.
00:38:26 Speaker 2
Then chairman of the Bank of Commerce, who at that time.
00:38:31 Speaker 2
Let’s put it charitably, was past the peak of his powers.
00:38:35 Speaker 2
The other two members were doctor Freegan and Charles A Bowman, then the editor of the Ottawa Citizen.
00:38:40 Speaker 2
Then, as now the most virulently anti private broadcasting newspaper in North America.
00:38:46 Speaker 2
At the time, Bowman, by the way, was flirting with the CCF.
00:38:49 Speaker 2
He was later to become a social creditor.
00:38:51 Speaker 2
It’s amazing the secretary of that Commission and anybody who knows anything about royal commissions knows that that’s really the important post.
00:39:02 Speaker 1
You’re saying the secretary of the Air Commission?
00:39:04 Speaker 2
Was John Benson now Benson has started with Marconi.
00:39:09 Speaker 2
In Nova Scotia, he was a Marconi operator and Marconi’s first ship to ship ship to Shore station. And then he got into the Department of Reed and Fisheries.
00:39:21 Speaker 2
Then the licensing authority and he was with the.
00:39:25 Speaker 2
Licensing authority during the war and afterwards.
00:39:31 Speaker 2
Manson became.
00:39:34 Speaker 2
Of secretary to the CBC Board of Governors.
00:39:38 Speaker 2
Which is a powerful position.
00:39:41 Speaker 2
And free gun had become assistant general manager of the CBC.
00:39:47 Speaker 2
Now these are both key possessions and both of these people recording directly to Alan Plant.
00:39:52 Speaker 2
Not the Gladstone, Murray.
00:39:54 Speaker 2
In fact, they were both, to be blunt about it undercutting Gladstone.
00:39:57 Speaker 1
Murray, while this may have been a good part of the problem that he later ran into, coupled with the gather whether awesome liking for the the joys of the grief.
00:40:08 Speaker 2
That was the unfortunate part of it.
00:40:10 Speaker 2
Gladstone Murray was an easy man to get.
00:40:13 Speaker 2
For two reasons.
00:40:15 Speaker 2
He was a magnificent programmer, imaginative, creative and outgoing.
00:40:21 Speaker 2
But he had very little business sense.
00:40:24 Speaker 2
He was a little too trusting, and when he was away from home, there were times when he had a fondness for the bottle.
00:40:31 Speaker 2
Now, Murray’s tendency to get drunk has been greatly exaggerated.
00:40:35 Speaker 2
And part of this was deliberate.
00:40:38 Speaker 2
He had been very badly banged up in World War One and he suffered a great deal of pain.
00:40:43 Speaker 2
Most of his skull had been shot away.
00:40:46 Speaker 2
That he had served in both the infantry and the Old Royal Flying Corps and had gongs beyond measure.
00:40:53 Speaker 2
That he had a very distinguished career in World War One, Murray.
00:40:58 Speaker 2
He even got a gun for dropping a wreath.
00:41:01 Speaker 2
He flew a light plane over and dropped a wreath on the grave of the Red Baron, Baron von Richthofen.
00:41:08 Speaker 2
In a very daring and dramatic gesture.
00:41:11 Speaker 2
And then he had an extremely distinguished record.
00:41:13 Speaker 2
Later in the newspaper world in Britain, and with the British Broadcasting Corporation.
00:41:17 Speaker 2
Now, incredibly, it was spry and plot, who wanted Murray as.
00:41:23 Speaker 2
Chief executive officer of the CBC and fought hard.
00:41:27 Speaker 2
To get him there in conjunction with Vincent Massey and Vincent Massey’s, then executive assistant, Mike Pearson.
00:41:37 Speaker 2
I have done in my basement copies of a Blizzard.
00:41:41 Speaker 2
Of correspondence and telegrams between plant in Canada and Massey and Pearson and young Bob Bowman, RT Bowman’s son, the yard Commission. Bowman in Breton.
00:41:54 Speaker 2
Making all the arrangements to get a grad student, they wanted him as head of the CRBC and didn’t succeed.
00:41:58 Speaker 2
But they did get him in as head of the.
00:42:01 Speaker 2
Of the CBC.
00:42:03 Speaker 2
And Murray had a great many advantages, no question about that.
00:42:12 Speaker 2
Like Graham, Spry was a Commonwealth man.
00:42:16 Speaker 2
And during the war, it is now obvious, in retrospect, that Murray was part of the Stephenson Intelligence network.
00:42:23 Speaker 2
You will find a vague reference to this in the first book, the Quiet Canadian.
00:42:28 Speaker 2
And there is a much more explicit reference in the intrepid Canadian.
00:42:34 Speaker 2
And glad, said Murray, obviously was working closely with this dirty trick school and the high-powered transmitters at Oshawa and so on.
00:42:41 Speaker 2
When he was chief executive officer of the CBC, indeed part of the funds used for that operation were channeled through the CBC.
00:42:52 Speaker 2
That’s the Crown corporation referred to in the book man called Intrepid.
00:42:57 Speaker 2
Now plot found out about this.
00:43:00 Speaker 2
And with his views on the British connection in World War Two, he determined to get Murray and he got him.
00:43:06 Speaker 2
With the assistance of MJ Coldwell.
00:43:09 Speaker 2
With whom?
00:43:10 Speaker 2
By this time the plot, incredibly, had become very friendly.
00:43:14 Speaker 2
Their political views differed and differed widely, but they were working together on this particular point.
00:43:21 Speaker 2
I think that Coldwell, oddly, in spite of his British background, had a bit of an anti British bias.
00:43:28 Speaker 2
And a bit of a.
00:43:29 Speaker 2
Distaste for World War Two.
00:43:32 Speaker 2
Although he voted against his leader on the on the Canadian entry into World War Two, he voted in favour of it.
00:43:38 Speaker 2
Woods versus the only member of the CCF voted against.
00:43:43 Speaker 1
Been following the following Murray it was.
00:43:47 Speaker 1
How we met the words became president.
00:43:49 Speaker 2
Much later, much later, after they got married, they brought in a fellow called Thompson.
00:43:56 Speaker 2
A clergyman, a well meaning clergyman from Saskatoon who had been a member of the CBC Board of Governors.
00:44:02 Speaker 2
Thompson once described himself to me as being a beat of an Edwardian the beat of a Victorian, the beat of a Mystic.
00:44:09 Speaker 2
And I think he was right on all three counts and described 100% of himself.
00:44:15 Speaker 2
Later they brought him free gun.
00:44:17 Speaker 2
As general manager and chief executive officer.
00:44:21 Speaker 2
And still later, the government made the only sensible move it had made in that view, for since year one.
00:44:28 Speaker 2
When they brought in Dave Dutton as CEO and Chairman of the board.
00:44:33 Speaker 2
And by that time, if they hadn’t had somebody like Dutton, the CBC would have foundered.
00:44:37 Speaker 2
Unquestionably, it was in that bad shape.
00:44:41 Speaker 2
Now plant also had tremendous control.
00:44:46 Speaker 2
Over the program, producers in Toronto and Montreal that he was really the CBC.
00:44:51 Speaker 2
Now this is where the demand for a separate regulatory body came from.
00:44:57 Speaker 2
We had seen what could happen.
00:44:59 Speaker 2
We had known for years, of course, that the BBC had kept Winston Churchill off the air quite deliberately.
00:45:06 Speaker 2
You see, we’ve seen later instances, although they’re more overt. I was in France in 1962.
00:45:13 Speaker 2
When Charles the goal decided that the opposition spokesman could have time on French television, provided that the sound was turned down to 0.
00:45:25 Speaker 2
And they went through that particular campaign on that basis.
00:45:29 Speaker 2
Now it was on this basis of principle that a separate regulatory body was fought.
00:45:35 Speaker 2
It has since been alleged and wrongly, that the private broadcasters felt that a separate regulatory body would be more favorable to their interests.
00:45:43 Speaker 2
We knew from the start that it might or might not be, and it frequently has not been.
00:45:48 Speaker 1
Or certainly it’s likely to be further removed from programming and from an understanding of the operations of a.
00:45:55 Speaker 2
Broadcasting this is so, but it is also completely divorced from the possibility of keeping.
00:46:02 Speaker 2
Specific views off the earth.
00:46:05 Speaker 2
A separate regulatory body cannot move without a public hearing.
00:46:09 Speaker 2
When it makes regulations.
00:46:11 Speaker 2
It is also subject to true parliamentary scrutiny.
Part 2
Transcript
00:00:02 Speaker 1
It is also subject to true parliamentary scrutiny.
00:00:06 Speaker 1
The CBC has always been in this curious possession that it is said to be, quote, responsible to Parliament, UN quote, which means that it’s responsible to nobody.
00:00:14 Speaker 1
Because Parliament is not set up as an administrative body, it’s a political body and quite properly, that’s its whole purpose.
00:00:22 Speaker 1
A separate regulatory body is subject to scrutiny.
00:00:25 Speaker 1
And it has no means of keeping an opinion off a specific number of stations, and if it tries to do it on either the CBC or the privately owned stations.
00:00:36 Speaker 1
And indeed.
00:00:38 Speaker 1
Apart from keeping the privately owned station straight in this context, it keeps the CBC Strait.
00:00:43 Speaker 1
If the CBC today decided to keep a certain viewpoint off the air, the critc could and would move.
00:00:51 Speaker 2
They’d be forced to by public opinion.
00:00:54 Speaker 1
Public opinion and they would have the possibility of moving the thing now becomes obvious.
00:00:59 Speaker 1
And the big.
00:01:02 Speaker 1
Problem with anything is to make it obvious.
00:01:05 Speaker 1
Once the public knows there is a problem.
00:01:07 Speaker 1
Then something can be done.
00:01:10 Speaker 1
But when the CBC was the regular trip you see, we had a very, very difficult time.
00:01:15 Speaker 1
We we had much difficulty getting the CBC to hold public meetings.
00:01:19 Speaker 1
It wasn’t until Dave Dutton took over that we finally got it.
00:01:25 Speaker 1
Originally, if you were appearing before the Board of Governors, the meeting was private.
00:01:30 Speaker 1
You did not know what your opponents had said, nor did they know what you said.
00:01:35 Speaker 1
Add more to the governors while they’re bored or rude.
00:01:39 Speaker 1
You are making a presentation in the middle of hostile sarcastic remarks with half the board reading newspapers and one of them is a matter of a of standing joke asleep. About 90% of the time.
00:01:52 Speaker 1
So the decisions were being made in camera.
00:01:54 Speaker 1
We were up against the Star Star chamber kind of thing.
00:01:59 Speaker 1
And indeed, we thought a great deal had been accomplished, and something had been accomplished when we got open meetings of the CBC board.
00:02:08 Speaker 1
That was a great improvement.
00:02:10 Speaker 1
And had the Alan plant Don free gun.
00:02:16 Speaker 1
Or Don Manson in August and free gun combination not pushed their point as hard as they did.
00:02:22 Speaker 1
The demand for a separate regulatory body would have died with the appointment of Dave Dutton.
00:02:28 Speaker 1
Because the private broadcasters had a great deal of respect, indeed liking.
00:02:32 Speaker 1
Ford Dutton, who was a very fair as well as a very efficient and effective administrator.
00:02:37 Speaker 2
And you also had that.
00:02:38 Speaker 2
By that time Ernie Bushnell had been around for quite a while.
00:02:42 Speaker 2
Yeah, again, we expected broadcaster, yes, was and years.
00:02:47 Speaker 2
Now with the.
00:02:48 Speaker 2
With this prohibition, the.
00:02:51 Speaker 2
You might almost call it censorship. This really come become a public issue as much as it did with the Mr. Sage affair in the 1935 election.
00:03:02 Speaker 1
No, that was a lot earlier.
00:03:03 Speaker 1
That was, that was a lot earlier.
00:03:05 Speaker 1
That was the the cute agras that destroyed the CRBC.
00:03:09 Speaker 1
It was on its way out anyway.
00:03:11 Speaker 1
But the Mr. sage thing.
00:03:14 Speaker 1
Destroyed it completely.
00:03:16 Speaker 2
That was simply a conservative propaganda campaign, and there they could figure.
00:03:21 Speaker 1
No question and and very badly handled very badly handled originally.
00:03:26 Speaker 1
It wasn’t even announced as a political broadcast.
00:03:29 Speaker 1
And there was a public outcry which forced the CRBC to telling the agency would have to be.
00:03:36 Speaker 1
Announced as a political broadcast now, it irritated Mackenzie King past belief.
00:03:42 Speaker 1
And when he won the 1935 election?
00:03:47 Speaker 1
He was determined to wipe out the CRBC and did, and he also introduced the 48 hour ban.
00:03:53 Speaker 1
Now a 24 hour ban, that was the reason for that.
00:03:56 Speaker 1
And he introduced the rule against dramatized political broadcasting.
00:04:02 Speaker 2
Redmond draft reached.
00:04:03 Speaker 1
And that was dropped in about 1960 more by agreement than by Fiat, but it’s now out of the regulations completely. But that was another warning illustration of what could happen.
00:04:15 Speaker 1
When the operating body is also the regulatory body, it’s too easy for the Prime Minister or somebody in the PM’s office.
00:04:22 Speaker 1
To make his views known and The thing is done overnight with no opportunity for public opinion to be brought to bear our public representations.
00:04:32 Speaker 1
There is no question about the fact that the introduction of a separate regulatory body so-called.
00:04:38 Speaker 1
Has protected Freedom of Information in Canadian broadcasting.
00:04:44 Speaker 1
And that was the real purpose of the whole drive.
00:04:47 Speaker 2
Other French periods in his book.
00:04:50 Speaker 2
Politics for Canadian broadcasting.
00:04:54 Speaker 2
Maintains a rather conspiratorial view of, particularly of license awarding and programming difference, and the whole actually the whole gamut.
00:05:02 Speaker 2
Now Bushnell and in the storyboard book says no, this wasn’t the case.
00:05:07 Speaker 2
What happened largely was that nobody was paying any attention to him, in particular in management.
00:05:13 Speaker 2
In general, and nobody would support a strong control, and which of those two views are, if either of them you subscribe to because one indicates that the government indeed, as part of what you.
00:05:24 Speaker 2
Said previously supports that there was the political interference, or at least certainly personal interference, and the other one is that no, it if it happened, it was more by.
00:05:37 Speaker 2
Accidents and stumbling than it was deliberate.
00:05:41 Speaker 1
Near the zenith of the liberal power.
00:05:46 Speaker 1
There was unquestionably straight to political influence in the grant of broadcasting licenses.
00:05:52 Speaker 2
You get some examples that you feel we’re in that.
00:05:55 Speaker 1
Well, it’s it was virtually impossible for a person to get a broadcasting license unless he was a well known liberal supporter.
00:06:02 Speaker 1
It wasn’t enough to be neutral.
00:06:04 Speaker 1
And it’s no accident.
00:06:05 Speaker 1
But most broadcasters in Canada are liberal supporters.
00:06:10 Speaker 1
Strong liberal supporters, because most of the licenses.
00:06:13 Speaker 1
Have been granted during liberal governments, in fact.
00:06:17 Speaker 1
Having anything but a liberal government at the federal level is considered an virtual accident of history.
00:06:22 Speaker 1
We haven’t had that many of them.
00:06:25 Speaker 1
That I think perhaps most dramatic illustration I ever saw was part of a drive by accident.
00:06:33 Speaker 1
The Gibson Brothers in Vancouver, a powerful political influence.
00:06:36 Speaker 1
They were the people who put Jimmy Sinclair into into politics and kept himler.
00:06:41 Speaker 1
The Prime minister’s father-in-law.
00:06:44 Speaker 1
They applied on several occasions for a radio station license in Vancouver and were turned down.
00:06:51 Speaker 1
And then I could remember one night in the Chateau Laurier. Bill Ray, then the proprietor of CK&W in New Westminster, was in Ottawa.
00:06:59 Speaker 1
For a meeting of the CEB Board of Directors and for a meeting of the Young Liberals of which I think he is unprecedent, certainly an officer.
00:07:07 Speaker 1
The President of the CEB at that time was H Tony Delphix of CKX in Vancouver.
00:07:14 Speaker 1
I was in Tania office suite in the shadow lorry in company with Bill Ray and with George Chandler.
00:07:21 Speaker 1
The President of CGR in Vancouver, who since deceased.
00:07:26 Speaker 1
Jimmy Sinclair came into the room.
00:07:28 Speaker 1
He was then the Minister of Fisheries and the Sandara cabinet in said effect.
00:07:34 Speaker 1
My friends, the Gibson Brothers want a license for a radio station in Vancouver.
00:07:39 Speaker 1
It is essential that they get it in order that we have a voice of liberalism on the lower mainland.
00:07:46 Speaker 1
And I want your support.
00:07:49 Speaker 1
In tiny, the never ending Diplomat said there’s no problem here.
00:07:53 Speaker 1
We are not going to oppose the application.
00:07:56 Speaker 1
Now, Bill Ray had already filed a letter of of opposition.
00:08:00 Speaker 1
With the CBC Board of Governors.
00:08:04 Speaker 1
Oh, Sinclair said.
00:08:05 Speaker 1
That’s not enough.
00:08:07 Speaker 1
I want you people to write a letter supporting the.
00:08:12 Speaker 1
And he went out of the room that night with the three letters of support support in his pocket, written on Shadow lorry stationery.
00:08:21 Speaker 1
And Bill Ray wired from Chicago the next day to withdraw his previous letter of opposition, and the Gibson Brothers got their station.
00:08:31 Speaker 1
They were to sell it a few years later.
00:08:34 Speaker 1
Oh, that’s the most diverse example I know.
00:08:38 Speaker 1
I will come to think of it, I was present.
00:08:42 Speaker 1
The owner of CTB in Saint Carthens died, apparently without heirs, in any event.
00:08:48 Speaker 1
Major Burgoyne than the proprietor of the Saint Catherine Standard, I think the family still owns it.
00:08:53 Speaker 1
Thought he should take up the license, but he’s a.
00:08:55 Speaker 1
Little worried about it.
00:08:57 Speaker 1
Because he was a newspaper owner and the CBC had a great thing about newspapers owning broadcasting stations.
00:09:03 Speaker 1
By that time.
00:09:05 Speaker 1
So he got me to go around with him to CCD.
00:09:10 Speaker 1
And put his case in CD.
00:09:12 Speaker 1
As usual listened in great patience.
00:09:15 Speaker 1
And finally said, all right, Major, I will see to it to get the license.
00:09:19 Speaker 1
There’s only one thing.
00:09:21 Speaker 1
If you ever on that broadcasting station, run an editorial in opposition to the Liberal Party, I’ll cancel the license at once.
00:09:31 Speaker 2
Or some some thought too that to get him a swing around to the other side of the fence that a station for instance, such as CFRB when the second license now talking about television second license situation came up, they didn’t get it because they were not in favor with the government of the time, which of course was.
00:09:51 Speaker 2
So it maybe the word doesn’t work both ways.
00:09:54 Speaker 1
It can work both ways and it can work in some odd ways, and you see part of the situation falls in the middle.
00:10:03 Speaker 1
Let’s take a look at this and it’s one of the reasons I’m opposed to part-time appointments on regulatory bodies.
00:10:10 Speaker 1
If you’re a full time appointee, you are protected by tradition, by practice, by the civil service, as the Nathan Baker governor found, the government found out in relation to coin.
00:10:21 Speaker 1
It’s almost impossible to fire a civil servant’s.
00:10:24 Speaker 1
Quite yes.
00:10:26 Speaker 1
And if you can’t do it quietly, forget it.
00:10:29 Speaker 1
Now, part timers are different.
00:10:31 Speaker 1
Let’s suppose that you’re the Prime Minister of Canada and you call me up on the phone and say, look Allard, you’ve done great and faithful service for the party and as a partial reward, we’re going to put you on the CRT C.
00:10:42 Speaker 1
And I say Gee, thanks PM and away I go.
00:10:45 Speaker 1
Now the money is good and there’s not that much work involved.
00:10:49 Speaker 1
But if I have been working for you and the party over a number of years, I know your enemies.
00:10:53 Speaker 1
I know your friends, I.
00:10:54 Speaker 1
Know how your mind works.
00:10:56 Speaker 1
Only your friends are going to get favorable consideration.
00:10:59 Speaker 1
For me, you don’t have to tell me that you don’t have to talk to me.
00:11:02 Speaker 1
You may never speak to me again.
00:11:04 Speaker 1
But subconsciously, indeed unconsciously, I will do what is in your best political interests.
00:11:11 Speaker 1
Now there’s nothing malicious or or evil or even improper about this.
00:11:15 Speaker 1
It’s merely the way things have to work.
00:11:18 Speaker 1
And when you are appointing people to public bodies, you will naturally go to the people you know, because how else can you get anybody?
00:11:26 Speaker 1
It’s not the kind of thing you run ads in the classified section about, so that naturally.
00:11:35 Speaker 1
That element is always involved.
00:11:39 Speaker 1
I don’t very much that there has been much in the way of direct overt Google.
00:11:46 Speaker 1
Political pressure save in that period when the Liberals were riding very, very high.
00:11:52 Speaker 1
Before the 1957.
00:11:56 Speaker 1
For them, nightmare.
00:11:58 Speaker 1
But in the decade preceding 1957, there is no doubt about the fact that most key people in the liberal liberal hierarchy.
00:12:07 Speaker 1
Were carried away by a sense of power and a feeling that they would forever be in power.
00:12:15 Speaker 1
And that absorbed some part of a kindred king.
00:12:20 Speaker 1
Messiah complex.
00:12:22 Speaker 1
It is impossible to understand that king, unless you realize that he honestly believed.
00:12:27 Speaker 1
That he had been called by God.
00:12:30 Speaker 1
To serve and protect the Canadian people.
00:12:33 Speaker 1
And he felt if you opposed him, that you weren’t opposing Mackenzie King or opposing God.
00:12:39 Speaker 1
Which was what made him so ruthless.
00:12:42 Speaker 1
It wasn’t really with ruthless play, nature, character or temperament.
00:12:47 Speaker 1
It was merely that when he saw people crossing the will of God, he felt compelled to strike them down.
00:12:54 Speaker 1
And that feeling had rubbed off onto a number of his colleagues.
00:13:08 Speaker 2
One of the phenomena I’ve noticed in the early days of broadcasting, and I guess it went on.
00:13:14 Speaker 2
Into the 30s this business, the Phantom stations.
00:13:18 Speaker 2
The two stations using the same frequency, what was the?
00:13:20 Speaker 2
Reason for that?
00:13:25 Speaker 1
I think largely that some of the people who operated The Phantoms.
00:13:30 Speaker 1
Didn’t have the money to erect physical facilities.
00:13:36 Speaker 1
Or didn’t want to erect physical facilities.
00:13:39 Speaker 1
And in some cases, the physical facilities would have been impractical.
00:13:42 Speaker 1
The largest user of the Phantom Technique was Canadian National railways.
00:13:47 Speaker 1
And what happened was as their trains approached a certain city.
00:13:53 Speaker 1
That existing station became AC&R station and broadcast under their call letters while the train was approaching while it stood in the station and while it pulled out of the station and then it reverted to the the other call letters, another user of the Phantom technique, to a certain extent where the churches, particularly the.
00:14:14 Speaker 1
International Bible Students Association, the percursor of Jehovah’s Witnesses who were in large part inadvertently responsible for the aired Commission.
00:14:25 Speaker 1
But the C&R used the technique to the hilt, and there was one interesting side light in this connection.
00:14:32 Speaker 1
As you know, the the Phantom callers were exactly that.
00:14:35 Speaker 1
You had the same transmitter, the same frequency, the same power, and yet we used to get letters from people saying that C and re came in a lot better than CJ.
00:14:43 Speaker 1
OK.
00:14:45 Speaker 1
In spite of that.
00:14:47 Speaker 2
They like to put in other words, they really like the program A.
00:14:49 Speaker 2
Lot better than probably you know.
00:14:54 Speaker 2
One year we refer to the, you know, the Bible Institute, that caused quite a ruckus in 192728 in there when they took the license away from them, right?
00:15:05 Speaker 2
And CFRB was what they were CFRB’s Phantom station.
00:15:09 Speaker 2
Were they not?
00:15:13 Speaker 1
No, no, it was some other station or CJ WYSC or JYC was a physical station of the IBSA in Toronto, right?
00:15:19
She won’t.
00:15:23 Speaker 2
But there was but the CC DYC I recollected, was a fan of CFRB station using the same.
00:15:31 Speaker 1
No, I think that was a physical station.
00:15:32 Speaker 1
I think Jehovah’s Witnesses had or the IBSA as at the time had physical facilities in Toronto as they did in Saskatoon and three or four other city.
00:15:42 Speaker 1
They use the phantom technique elsewhere.
00:15:45 Speaker 1
They were then, as now, extremely abusive, and they made schoolis remarks not only about local, provincial and federal authority, but about other churches, which caused widespread discontent and anger.
00:15:59 Speaker 1
Petitions were taken up and sent to the Minister of Marine, who was in the licensing authority.
00:16:06 Speaker 1
Failed to reissue their licenses at one point, which would be in 1926.
00:16:11 Speaker 1
Then, to his surprise and horror, there was an equal outcry from the other side.
00:16:16 Speaker 1
The opposition took the view that if you could cancel licenses because you didn’t like people’s religious views, you might cancel them because you didn’t like their political views.
00:16:25 Speaker 1
And it was really the resulting uproar that led to the formation of the aired Commission.
00:16:32 Speaker 2
There was that, then the CPR used Phantom Coal letters from time to time when they did.
00:16:39 Speaker 1
A program?
00:16:40 Speaker 1
Yes, they did.
00:16:41 Speaker 1
As a matter of fact, they had really an ad hoc technique.
00:16:44 Speaker 1
If my memory is correct and I think it is, they only had one physical station which was CFR Y.
00:16:49 Speaker 1
In Toronto.
00:16:50 Speaker 1
The equipment, by the way, is still.
00:16:52 Speaker 1
And trained in the Royal Oak Hotel.
00:16:54 Speaker 1
The rest of it was either a phantom station or a phantom network which was a unique CPR technique.
00:17:01 Speaker 1
They originated programs in Montreal and fed them as a CPR network to existing stations in the sense that we have affiliates now.
00:17:10 Speaker 1
Really many of those programs originated from their Edward Bede home.
00:17:16 Speaker 1
They used the telephone line and it was his telephone, so the programs were sometimes interrupted by his personal telephone calls.
00:17:24 Speaker 1
A part of which could get out to the network.
00:17:28 Speaker 2
But they were never as successful, or perhaps never as serious about broadcasting to the CN and went off.
00:17:34 Speaker 2
I’ve often wondered why, because the CNN, of course, was the basis of the eventual CBC network.
00:17:39 Speaker 1
I think was largely due to the enthusiasm of Sir Henry Thornton, who was trying to build a first class railway.
00:17:47 Speaker 1
And was giving special emphasis to passenger service.
00:17:50 Speaker 1
He thought that the radio was on the club, cars would be an added incentive to passenger travel.
00:17:56 Speaker 2
Order to have the servicing needed.
00:17:57 Speaker 2
They needed station.
00:17:59 Speaker 1
So they put in a few physical stations, but in the main they were phantoms.
00:18:03 Speaker 2
They had at one time they had, I think they all actually had 11 stations of their.
00:18:07 Speaker 1
Own. Yes they did.
00:18:14 Speaker 2
There was also, I’ve been told from time to time that another reason for it was the again, at one point in this, and I’ve forgotten when it seems to me that the Department of Maine officially would only issue 1 license, or at least only permit one station in any one.
00:18:31 Speaker 2
See on that.
00:18:32 Speaker 1
One term that was the licensing policy.
00:18:34 Speaker 1
One frequency was setting and the frequency had to be shared amongst a number of stations.
00:18:40 Speaker 1
In some instances, that led to the Phantom technique.
00:18:42 Speaker 1
In other instances, it led to what were essentially 3 operations simply dividing up the time amongst them.
00:18:50 Speaker 1
They used the same transmitter, the same frequency, the same power, but it was CXXX part of the day and Cy part of the day, and CZ part of the day.
00:19:01 Speaker 1
That whole thing where the way is interesting, the state-of-the-art.
00:19:07 Speaker 1
Was even more misunderstood than than now.
00:19:10 Speaker 1
The licensing authorities actually believed for a long time.
00:19:14 Speaker 1
That you could only utilize one frequency in a setting, or to put it another way that you couldn’t utilize 2 or more will have an interference exactly.
00:19:24 Speaker 1
And when people began applying for second licenses, they were usually turned down because of a misapprehension of how the spectrum worked.
00:19:32 Speaker 1
We are, of course, still laboring under a grave.
00:19:35 Speaker 1
This apprehension, which hardly is used as the basis for fundamental philosophy or licensing.
00:19:41 Speaker 1
People talk about using the airwaves and then say that because the airwaves exist, there are natural resource that must be licensed.
00:19:50 Speaker 1
Of course, there is no such thing as an airwave.
00:19:52 Speaker 1
At least broadcasting doesn’t use it.
00:19:55 Speaker 1
If this were so, we couldn’t get messages to and from the moon or to people on route to the moon.
00:20:01 Speaker 1
It’s an electromagnetic phenomenon bounced off the heavy side layer and actually a channel is nothing more than a convenient telephone number so that you can reach a certain program.
00:20:13 Speaker 1
At a designated possession.
00:20:16 Speaker 2
I think one of the most valid reasons I’ve heard for the share at least the sharing of frequency, is the fact they often only had one station employee and you needed time to eat and sleep.
00:20:25 Speaker 1
There was a great deal of truth in that, a great deal of truth.
00:20:28 Speaker 1
The good many stations of that time were mom and pop operations, quite literally.
00:20:33 Speaker 1
And if they did have an additional employee, he was off quite often alone.
00:20:37 Speaker 1
And of course, there was the difficulty of filling the time with suitable program material.
00:20:42 Speaker 2
Because no one had had it before.
00:20:44 Speaker 2
And again, you were trying to invent it as you went along.
00:20:46 Speaker 1
Right.
00:20:49 Speaker 2
And again, we come to this to another one of these very strange things and we in Canada, there was a powder freeze.
00:20:56 Speaker 2
This was.
00:20:58 Speaker 2
One just before just after the Second World War, when the private stations, notably among them CFRB, but the private stations were not allowed to increase their power.
00:21:08 Speaker 2
Before this was a policy of the CRBC which the CBC, when it took over, followed.
00:21:16 Speaker 1
The fundamental philosophy of the aired report was that there would be a totally owned and operated state system in Canada, and Ally just completed to the BBC that the existing privately owned stations would be closed down or bought.
00:21:30 Speaker 1
Out as finance is permitted and of course in the event they never did so they didn’t want these stations increasing their power.
00:21:38 Speaker 1
Now, any stations already in excess of 1000 watts were left alone under a grandfather clause, were about three or four of them at that time.
00:21:47 Speaker 1
But apart from that, the privately owned stations were confined to 1000 watts in power. They couldn’t go higher.
00:21:54 Speaker 1
Canada has never recovered from the impact of that very short sighted policy.
00:22:01 Speaker 1
Under the NORBURG agreement, the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement.
00:22:06 Speaker 1
Certain frequencies are assigned to each of the signatory countries and in certain areas they are permitted in a certain designation to go to certain power.
00:22:17 Speaker 1
A Clear Channel A1A channel, for instance, may be occupied at a minimum of 50,000 watts minimum at any power above that.
00:22:28 Speaker 1
And if it’s used South of the border, it must be protected.
00:22:31 Speaker 1
The Americans can’t use it at high power.
00:22:34 Speaker 1
Within 250 miles of the Canadian US border, and in some cases not at all, they have to go further South, and even there they’re unlimited power and the channel is fully protected.
00:22:46 Speaker 1
However, it is provided that if you do not use the power to which you’re entitled in that frequency within five years, the other countries entitled to use it and then becomes the occupant of senior priority, and you must protect it.
00:23:02 Speaker 1
Because most of the stations in Canada were privately owned stations.
00:23:07 Speaker 1
Numerous American stations became the occupants of senior priority.
00:23:12 Speaker 1
They increased their power.
00:23:14 Speaker 1
Now when the freeze was finally broken and Canadian stations were permitted to increase their power, many of them actually lost coverage.
00:23:22 Speaker 1
Because most of the Canadian population is spread out thinly along the US border, so normally you have to protect southward.
00:23:32 Speaker 1
A station like Ckoc, for instance, in Winnipeg, when allowed finally to go from 1000 to 5000 watts, protecting southward, reduced its effective coverage by nearly half.
00:23:45 Speaker 1
This happened to perhaps 75% of Canadian stations and we have never fully recovered from that. You notice it particularly if you’re driving from Montreal to Toronto.
00:23:56 Speaker 1
As you leave Montreal, you can pick up Montreal stations for a certain distance and they begin to fade.
00:24:02 Speaker 1
You can get half a dozen US stations.
00:24:06 Speaker 1
As you approach Cornwall and you’re driving past it and through it you can pick up the Cornwall stations.
00:24:11 Speaker 1
They fade more US stations.
00:24:14 Speaker 1
In fact, between Ottawa and Montreal, the dominant station at the halfway point.
00:24:20 Speaker 1
Is WABC in New York City?
00:24:23 Speaker 1
It comes in like a local on your car radio.
00:24:27 Speaker 1
It was a very, very short sighted policy indeed.
00:24:31 Speaker 1
But it stemmed from the assumption that the privately owned stations would wither away, and indeed the high-powered channels were deliberately assigned to CBC stations.
00:24:45 Speaker 2
Or the air Commission.
00:24:47 Speaker 2
With the Air Commissioner recommended, the number of high-powered transmitters flung across the.
00:24:53 Speaker 1
It was their feeling that the whole of Canada could be covered with seven, 50,000 Watt stations and that that was all we would ever need.
00:25:00 Speaker 1
Of the high-powered variety of any really that was as far as their planning went. They visualised the situation in which there would be 7 high-powered stations and perhaps the odd reprod here and there to fill in a few gaps. But that was as far as their understanding of the art and science of of broadcasting went.
00:25:21 Speaker 1
And you see because of that?
00:25:23 Speaker 1
Their negotiations with the United States were were very badly conducted indeed.
00:25:29 Speaker 1
They didn’t realize that as other communities grew such as Sudbury and Timmins and Kirkland Lake, you would need local stations there.
00:25:39 Speaker 1
They they were trading off against a future they didn’t understand.
00:25:44 Speaker 1
There was another factor, by the way, at the time, the negotiations for frequencies began.
00:25:49 Speaker 1
They were conducted largely by external affairs.
00:25:53 Speaker 1
Instead of experts.
00:25:55 Speaker 1
So that most of them went through Vincent Massey, who was then the.
00:26:00 Speaker 1
The Canadian man in Washington.
00:26:03 Speaker 1
And Vincent Massey had been a member of the Spry Plant Radio League and was quite willing to see the private viewing stations disappeared.
00:26:10 Speaker 1
So we made no attempt to protect long term Canadian interest.
00:26:16 Speaker 2
Well, this is a bind that CFRB got caught in.
00:26:18 Speaker 2
Then in Toronto for many years and then didn’t they lose their frequency they had what was essentially a Clear Channel frequency.
00:26:25 Speaker 2
It was taken over by the CBC.
00:26:28 Speaker 1
It that was a slightly different situation, CFRB.
00:26:32 Speaker 1
Was on 10,000 watts before the power freeze came on and they were left alone.
00:26:39 Speaker 1
They were on 860 at the term.
00:26:41 Speaker 1
Caseys, as I recall it.
00:26:44 Speaker 1
Now they applied several times for 50,000 watts, to which they were entitled under the Narbut Treaty and domestic legislation. They were always turned.
00:26:57 Speaker 1
By this time, the CBC had established its English language coast to Coast network.
00:27:03 Speaker 1
The privately owned stations were vigorously pursuing a network of their own.
00:27:10 Speaker 1
The CBC responded by forming a second network called the Dominion, and they called their original network, the Trans Canada.
00:27:18 Speaker 1
The Dominion Network was comprised of 1 CBC station in Toronto and 41 privately owned affiliates.
00:27:26 Speaker 1
They visualized in fact CBC in Toronto became the flagship station for the Dominion Network, and they wanted CBC.
00:27:37 Speaker 1
To have CFRB’s channel, so it would have high power is the flagship station for the new network.
00:27:45 Speaker 1
CFRB, naturally, was upset about this move.
00:27:48 Speaker 1
They had not been properly notified that it would happen.
00:27:51 Speaker 1
But they were instructed to move and CJBC went on to 860 or 50K. This CFRB got 10/10. I think it was or 1050. No 1010.
00:28:04 Speaker 1
But they were allowed to go to 50K maximum.
00:28:09 Speaker 1
Had they remained in 860, they could have gone under the tree to a power higher than 50K.
00:28:15 Speaker 2
But with the development of radio and with the development of the advertising, bases are fairly local situation, are they really interested in expanding the power that is expanding their coverage or are they much more than the strong local signal?
00:28:30 Speaker 1
Today, yes, since the advent of television, local SoC is infinitely more.
00:28:35 Speaker 1
Important the only reason you need high power today is to overcome man-made interference which is not originally a problem but is a growing problem.
00:28:46 Speaker 1
Yet one time on the prairies, with 100 watts of power you could cover.