Transcript
00:00:02 Speaker 1
On term stats.
00:00:03 Speaker 1
Yes, I do not regard broadcasting as a.
00:00:05 Speaker 1
By serve I mean serve the needs of the Community precisely, not the advertiser, the advertiser who was along, if you like.
00:00:12 Speaker 1
And profits as a result of that.
00:00:17 Speaker 1
Community involvement base.
00:00:19 Speaker 1
That was so much the philosophy of what is now the Selkirk organization.
00:00:25 Speaker 1
That it’s practically past belief.
00:00:28 Speaker 1
Jim, we’ve been talking here today and I’ve been talking now for some months.
00:00:34 Speaker 1
With a great many people who have worked, most of them at some time or another in some capacity or another with the socrative organization.
00:00:46 Speaker 1
And it’s predecessor companies and feel like tailor person and Carson.
00:00:53 Speaker 1
Loosely organized, I’m over at the start of the whole thing.
00:00:58 Speaker 1
And the Rep side of.
00:00:59 Speaker 1
The business.
00:01:02 Speaker 1
We’ve been talking about what’s gone before.
00:01:06 Speaker 1
We haven’t talked really at all about what may be.
00:01:10 Speaker 1
And prospect for the future from this point forward.
00:01:15 Speaker 1
It’s my guess and hope that.
00:01:19 Speaker 1
Modest beginnings of a history of this company will be kept updated.
00:01:28 Speaker 1
And I’m wondering what 20 years from now, we may be looking back on.
00:01:34 Speaker 1
As significant developments or changes that have happened during the interval between now and and that point in time.
00:01:42 Speaker 1
Or ****, 10 years or 510 years or five years from now.
00:01:47 Speaker 1
And I think it’s extremely.
00:01:48 Speaker 1
Useful to look into the future now.
00:01:51 Speaker 1
We are, of course, dealing in a guesses and B1 man’s opinion in each case, and I think both of.
00:01:56 Speaker 1
Us fully understand that.
00:01:59 Speaker 1
My personal view is this that radio.
00:02:03 Speaker 1
I’m talking about audio radio in the sense that CFCF is Contra distinct from CFCF TV.
00:02:10 Speaker 1
As the future will continue, but on a highly specialized individual basis.
00:02:16 Speaker 1
IEC radio stations addressed directly to doctors or even individual specialties in the medical profession such as ophthalmologists.
00:02:27 Speaker 1
Radio stations whose whole program day is devoted to the attention of lawyers or architects or car mechanics or whatever.
00:02:36 Speaker 1
I think television’s already dead.
00:02:39 Speaker 1
In the sense that we know television.
00:02:43 Speaker 1
Originally, the Department of Transport, which then had jurisdiction of these affairs, established, as you know, the so-called one hop policy.
00:02:51 Speaker 1
When you were importing signals from the United States, you could have one pickup tower.
00:02:56 Speaker 1
And you could extend your lines from that various homes.
00:02:58 Speaker 1
And that was that.
00:03:00 Speaker 1
Then the political pressure came on.
00:03:03 Speaker 1
And that political pressure reflects the dichotomy that has always bedeviled Canadian broadcasting.
00:03:09 Speaker 1
Most Canadians say in public and of course the artists and the politicians really believe this.
00:03:16 Speaker 1
That Canadians want Canadian broadcasting.
00:03:19 Speaker 1
The simple truth of the matter is that the entire world wants American entertainment.
00:03:23 Speaker 1
Because the Americans have a gift for entertainment in the same sense that the British have a gift for law.
00:03:30 Speaker 1
And drama and literature.
00:03:32 Speaker 1
And the French have a gift for painting, and the Italians and the Germans have a gift for opera.
00:03:36 Speaker 1
They’re the only people who really, who have produced effective operas.
00:03:40 Speaker 1
It’s not just a gift, I guess in the case of the.
00:03:43 Speaker 1
Of the United States, they also have the means.
00:03:47 Speaker 1
The means, of course, are important, but even if the United States were not a wealthy and powerful company country.
00:03:55 Speaker 1
The gift, which will be there?
00:03:56 Speaker 1
It’s no accident there bonanza.
00:03:59 Speaker 1
Became a popular program not only in Canada and England and other English speaking countries.
00:04:04 Speaker 1
But is heard in virtually every language in the world.
00:04:09 Speaker 1
Like a good many other programs.
00:04:10 Speaker 1
Mannix and Kojak and so on is running in Swahili and Urdu and Hindi and all manner of dialects, some of which I’ve never even heard of.
00:04:20 Speaker 1
That may never hear of the Americans have a gift or entertainment.
00:04:23 Speaker 1
It’s a gift.
00:04:25 Speaker 1
One of the great heresies in the 20th century, curiously supposed to be a scientific and progressive century, is more full of heresies.
00:04:34 Speaker 1
Than any century preceding it at one of these heresies is that the United States is a quote, Anglo-Saxon nation, UN quote, is nothing of the sort in spite of the fact that it was founded that way in the 18th century or prior to the 18th.
00:04:50 Speaker 1
It is noteworthy, I think, that the elements predominant in the entertainment business in the United States.
00:04:57 Speaker 1
Are mainly of Italian and Jewish background.
00:05:00 Speaker 1
These are the people with a gift for entertainment. It comes with a trade. It’s congenital. the United States is not an Anglo-Saxon country at all. It’s made-up predominantly of the German, Italian, Jewish and other strains. You mentioned the possibility.
00:05:19 Speaker 1
And I think almost probability of there being specialized radio.
00:05:27 Speaker 1
Homing in and their programming on on a specific.
00:05:34 Speaker 1
Category of of knowledge.
00:05:36 Speaker 1
If you like medicine, whatever.
00:05:41 Speaker 1
But we have the problem that’s always been with us and that is the availability of frequencies.
00:05:50 Speaker 1
Which of course your memory.
00:05:51 Speaker 1
If you’ll excuse me for interrupting you, that’s another of the heresies of the 20th century.
00:05:58 Speaker 1
There is not now and never has been a.
00:06:00 Speaker 1
Shortage of frequencies.
00:06:02 Speaker 1
As the technology improves, more frequency become available.
00:06:06 Speaker 1
When the Hoover Commission was appointed to.
00:06:10 Speaker 1
To deal with radio broadcasting in the United States in 1926.
00:06:14 Speaker 1
The best engineering minds of that time are ECU, vector and all those boys.
00:06:19 Speaker 1
Solemnly assured the Hoover Commission that the North American continent in its entirety could never have more than 600 radio broadcasting stations.
00:06:27 Speaker 1
Now, these were the brightest minds at the time. As you know, there are more than 4000 AM stations alone in the United States today, to say nothing of 900 odd television stations and two or three thousand FM stations.
00:06:40 Speaker 1
Taxi and police and fire.
00:06:42 Speaker 1
Radios unthought of at that time.
00:06:46 Speaker 1
And as the technology improves, I think we’re five years from the day when the City of Toronto for.
00:06:51 Speaker 1
Instance could have available a million.
00:06:55 Speaker 1
And indeed, I see the day when everybody will be wired.
00:06:57 Speaker 1
You’ll have a wristwatch.
00:07:00 Speaker 1
Which will enable you to pick up a radio station that will be your telephone.
00:07:04 Speaker 1
It will tell you the time.
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It will tell you the day you’ll be able to communicate with other people all over the world.
00:07:11 Speaker 1
There are millions and millions of frequencies available.
00:07:14 Speaker 1
This idea of a shortage of frequency.
00:07:16 Speaker 1
Was propagated originally by people who and believed it.
00:07:22 Speaker 1
Because at one time, frequency spilled over a wide range and no longer do and be the people who.
00:07:29 Speaker 1
We didn’t know any better, but thought of this as an excuse for state control.
00:07:34 Speaker 1
I think that yes, in radio we will get into very, very specialized frequencies.
00:07:41 Speaker 1
And an ophthalmologist, as an example, will have a wristwatch.
00:07:44 Speaker 1
And as he goes about his business, he’ll be listening carefully to all the latest developments in ophthalmology.
00:07:50 Speaker 1
He’ll be listening to a detailed operation.
00:07:53 Speaker 1
That’s going on in Bonn or Paris or Tokyo.
00:07:56 Speaker 1
And pick up this knowledge that way.
00:07:59 Speaker 1
In fact, it may replace and I suspect it will replace, perhaps in conjunction with home computers, the school system.
00:08:05 Speaker 1
Which has become increasingly inefficient and purposeless.
00:08:10 Speaker 1
People will acquire their knowledge that way instead of going to great.
00:08:16 Speaker 1
Brick and concrete buildings, which are empty for two months in the summer and Saturdays and Sundays and after 3:30 in the afternoon.
00:08:24 Speaker 1
Do you see this kind of of activity then?
00:08:28 Speaker 1
Underwritten from a cost standpoint by the municipality or province or state at large or by a profession or a union or a group of people acting together.
00:08:41 Speaker 1
Or by advertising, which incredibly is the cheapest and most effective form.
00:08:48 Speaker 1
Of funding broadcasting, as the European nations founder when they went to television.
00:08:53 Speaker 1
As you know, when few people do, the European nations regarded radio from the start as a means of propaganda.
00:08:59 Speaker 1
Really state propaganda, not entertainment or anything of that kind.
00:09:04 Speaker 1
In radio, they were able to subsist off the receiver license fee, which still exists in most European countries.
00:09:11 Speaker 1
When they got.
00:09:12 Speaker 1
Into television their normally enormously expensive beast.
00:09:16 Speaker 1
They were forced to accept advertising and there are practically no television systems in the world today in the Western world that don’t carry advertising.
00:09:27 Speaker 1
Advertising, incredibly, is still the least expensive and most efficient method of funding.
00:09:33 Speaker 1
Communication of any kind, be it newspaper, cable, broadcasting, anything else.
00:09:39 Speaker 1
And I think advertising will be the basis of that revenue.
00:09:43 Speaker 1
Now, so far I’ve confined myself to the audio of medium radio and the very limited sense, not the legal sense of the word radio.
00:09:51 Speaker 1
When it comes to television, we have to deal with the videotape.
00:09:56 Speaker 1
The video cassette, the video disc.
00:09:59 Speaker 1
In fact, the new Polaroid instant movie camera.
00:10:03 Speaker 1
I think that is the future of what we now call television.
00:10:06 Speaker 1
The television broadcasting stations, as you and I understand the.
00:10:09 Speaker 1
Term will disappear completely.
00:10:11 Speaker 1
People will have their own systems.
00:10:13 Speaker 1
Yeah, I think that’s true.
00:10:15 Speaker 1
There’ll be sort of a videotape.
00:10:18 Speaker 1
Of the month club in the Book of.
00:10:19 Speaker 1
The month club sense.
00:10:23 Speaker 1
You will buy or lease or rent.
00:10:26 Speaker 1
Unit that reproduces something.
00:10:29 Speaker 1
And once a week, somebody will send you a movie.
00:10:33 Speaker 1
And well, once a day.
00:10:39 Speaker 1
That’s part of the 30 years.
00:10:44 Speaker 1
At the central seat of government in the country.
00:10:47 Speaker 1
Which of course has as one of its.
00:10:51 Speaker 1
Self delegated responsibilities.
00:10:55 Speaker 1
The control.
00:10:57 Speaker 1
And many ways of broadcasting.
00:11:03 Speaker 1
And I’m sure that while I know you.
00:11:05 Speaker 1
Have just written.
00:11:07 Speaker 1
A book.
00:11:09 Speaker 1
That many books could be written on the topic.
00:11:14 Speaker 1
I have a personal conviction that technology.
00:11:20 Speaker 1
By virtue of its.
00:11:23 Speaker 1
Of very nature.
00:11:26 Speaker 1
Is almost inevitably ahead.
00:11:31 Speaker 1
Any government body or government trying to control it?
00:11:35 Speaker 1
Certainly, I believe that to be true in the whole field of of what we loosely call broadcasting or electronic communications.
00:11:42 Speaker 1
Agree to 100% say for one thing you used the word almost.
00:11:48 Speaker 1
Apart from that, I agree with you.
00:11:51 Speaker 1
Technology has always outstripped not only governments, but society, and it will continue to do so.
00:11:58 Speaker 1
In fact, it has become fashionable to assume that if something can be.
00:12:02 Speaker 1
Done. It should be done.
00:12:04 Speaker 1
And without any particular examination of it, somebody invents the Concorde, a plane that flies between New York and London in three hours.
00:12:13 Speaker 1
Nobody asked if somebody wants to fly it in three hours, or whether it’s really useful.
00:12:19 Speaker 1
To do it in three hours, maybe we don’t need airplanes at all.
00:12:23 Speaker 1
Nobody really knows what the hurry is.
00:12:25 Speaker 1
Everybody thinks he’s in a great hurry.
00:12:26 Speaker 1
You want to get to Vancouver in seven hours instead of four days.
00:12:30 Speaker 1
Do we really have to?
00:12:32 Speaker 1
Technology has always outstripped not only governments.
00:12:36 Speaker 1
Which are invariably well behind the technology.
00:12:39 Speaker 1
It’s outstripped.
00:12:40 Speaker 1
The whole of society.
00:12:43 Speaker 1
Society decides because The thing is there, we’ll find a use for it and they never say that we really need it.
00:12:49 Speaker 1
Is it really useful?
00:12:50 Speaker 1
Is it worth all the money?
00:12:53 Speaker 1
It just happens.
00:12:54 Speaker 1
Nobody decided nobody said.
00:12:56 Speaker 1
Somebody should invent a thing called the refrigerator.
00:12:59 Speaker 1
Somebody did.
00:13:00 Speaker 1
Had everybody bought refrigerators and nobody’s ever said that we really need?
00:13:05 Speaker 1
Refrigerators or automobiles or Concordes?
00:13:08 Speaker 1
Now, in the telecommunications field, we’re still in the Model T stage of development.
00:13:14 Speaker 1
Do you see a continuing role for government in the field or broadcast?
00:13:20 Speaker 1
I have a feeling that Lenin.
00:13:24 Speaker 1
Much as I disagree with what’s totally disagree.
00:13:28 Speaker 1
With what’s evolved in Russia sense.
00:13:33 Speaker 1
Had a correct vision of the future when he talked about the withering away of government.
00:13:40 Speaker 1
Even now, ****, we see that governments are more and more powerless to control.
00:13:45 Speaker 1
Or even guide events.
00:13:48 Speaker 1
We have unemployment which is considered undesirable.
00:13:51 Speaker 1
We have inflation, we have all manner of problems.
00:13:54 Speaker 1
And all governments are powerless to deal with them.
00:13:57 Speaker 1
These problems, no matter what they do.
00:13:59 Speaker 1
And I I think Lideen was right that governments ultimately would wither away.
00:14:04 Speaker 1
Except perhaps at the municipal level, we’ll have police forces to keep.
00:14:09 Speaker 1
A comparative degree of peace and order in the streets, so I’m not certain even that can be done.
00:14:15 Speaker 1
And fire departments and ambulances and St.
00:14:18 Speaker 1
But apart from that, yes.
00:14:20 Speaker 1
I think we’re in the process of seeing the effective disappearance of government, who sort of paint a picture of civilization as we know it being hell bent in a basket on self destruction.
00:14:31 Speaker 1
I think we have these choices.
00:14:33 Speaker 1
I don’t disagree with them necessarily, but that’s the way it comes out.
00:14:36 Speaker 1
One we can and some of us probably will learn to live cooperatively, which can be done.
00:14:44 Speaker 1
And indeed a great.
00:14:45 Speaker 1
Many of the things that make our cities and our provinces and our countries workable.
00:14:51 Speaker 1
Is a sort of consensus, if you will, of agreement.
00:14:54 Speaker 1
It is, of course, against the law to go through a red light.
00:14:58 Speaker 1
But the real reason that a red light is effective is that you and I and 20 million other Canadians have agreed to stop at a red light.
00:15:05 Speaker 1
If we didn’t do that, and in some Latin American countries, this happens.
00:15:10 Speaker 1
The the whole army, let alone the police force.
00:15:12 Speaker 1
Couldn’t keep water in traffic.
00:15:15 Speaker 1
Now to that degree and extent, we’re already living cooperatively.
00:15:18 Speaker 1
We’ve we’ve learned that much that I give way when I’ve got a red light.
00:15:22 Speaker 1
You’ve got a green light.
00:15:23 Speaker 1
And gradually, the power of government to control anything.
00:15:28 Speaker 1
Is diminishing rapidly.
00:15:29 Speaker 1
I do see withering away of government.
00:15:32 Speaker 1
We will either learn to live cooperatively and I think some societies will.
00:15:37 Speaker 1
Or we live under a total dictatorship, utter and total, where everybody’s life is 1984 completely controlled.
00:15:46 Speaker 1
Or, of course, we disappear.
00:15:49 Speaker 1
We, after all, are not the last of nature’s experiments, only the latest.
00:15:55 Speaker 1
Yeah, Nick, you may decide to replace her.
00:15:57 Speaker 1
So she replaced the dinosaur.
00:16:00 Speaker 1
Who control this planet for a million years?
00:16:03 Speaker 1
A lot longer than the human being has been on Earth.
00:16:06 Speaker 1
With something else.
00:16:08 Speaker 1
Some other form of life that could happen.
00:16:11 Speaker 1
Certainly we see signs of decay in the Western civilizations.
00:16:16 Speaker 1
All around us, it may be that you and I are the last of our kind.
00:16:20 Speaker 1
And that Western civilization will totally and completely disappear as the Romans disappeared and the Greeks and the Persians and the Assyrians.
00:16:29 Speaker 1
The Egyptians good, many highly advanced societies and people have forgotten how advanced these societies were in some respects more.
00:16:36 Speaker 1
Than our own.
00:16:38 Speaker 1
That after all the.
00:16:42 Speaker 1
The inhabitants of what’s now the island of Cyprus had indoor plumbing and indoor heated baths some 3000 years ago.
00:16:51 Speaker 1
Their civilization disappeared, as did the Cretan civilization, which was extremely highly advanced.
00:16:57 Speaker 1
The Athenian civilization was highly advanced, although was based in slavery.
00:17:05 Speaker 1
Which is 1.
00:17:05 Speaker 1
Way of making a civilization work, we have substituted machinery for slavery because it’s cheaper.
00:17:12 Speaker 1
And more efficient.
00:17:14 Speaker 1
But one of these days, the machines may betray us.
00:17:18 Speaker 1
As slavery ultimately betrayed his masters.
00:17:25 Speaker 1
So all these things will have an impact on the the ultimate development of telecommunications.
00:17:32 Speaker 1
But whatever civilization evolves or lack of civilization, even if we get into a state of total anarchy.
00:17:39 Speaker 1
Radio in one form, another will survive.
00:17:42 Speaker 1
Television, on the other hand, I think is already on its way out.
00:17:45 Speaker 1
It will be replaced by the the Polaroid instant camera, the video cassette.
00:17:51 Speaker 1
The video disc.
00:17:54 Speaker 1
It will become more analogous to the newspaper or the book.
00:17:59 Speaker 1
Than it is to telecommunications and there will be great centers of production.
00:18:02 Speaker 1
There will be local centers of production.
00:18:04 Speaker 1
There may be individual centers of production.
00:18:07 Speaker 1
It may be that you.
00:18:08 Speaker 1
Would decide three or five years hence.
00:18:11 Speaker 1
To set up a production company, and by that time the mechanics would be such that you could turn out maybe two or three movies a day.
00:18:17 Speaker 1
And you will sell or lease or rent those movies to people like myself or others.
00:18:22 Speaker 1
Who want to see them?
00:18:24 Speaker 1
The technology is already there.
00:18:26 Speaker 1
We’re just beginning.
00:18:27 Speaker 1
I learned it.
00:18:29 Speaker 1
You see, technology **** has always produced results that nobody visualized.
00:18:35 Speaker 1
The man who invented the typewriter thought that he was merely making it easier to produce letters faster.
00:18:41 Speaker 1
He brought women into business.
00:18:44 Speaker 1
For the first time, he was the great.
00:18:47 Speaker 1
Women’s Liberator, the original second reason sonographers were men.
00:18:51 Speaker 1
But then they thought it was a hell of a lot.
00:18:54 Speaker 1
Cheaper to hire Welland coincidently are much more efficient at this kind of thing.
00:18:59 Speaker 1
Any kind of detailed work and women are much more loyal.
00:19:03 Speaker 1
Than men and considerably less lazy.
00:19:06 Speaker 1
The telephone accelerated the process.
00:19:09 Speaker 1
The original telephone operators, you know, were young men.
00:19:13 Speaker 1
But they were rude to the customers, so the telephone companies decided to hire women.
00:19:18 Speaker 1
The automobile, designed as a means of improved transportation, destroyed the church.
00:19:25 Speaker 1
When you lived in small communities and there was no way of getting away from your neighbors, you had to go to church on Sunday.
00:19:32 Speaker 1
Otherwise questions were asked.
00:19:33 Speaker 1
You became an outcast very quickly.
00:19:36 Speaker 1
When the automobile was developed and you could motor 40 or 50 miles out of the city.
00:19:40 Speaker 1
Nobody knew where you were.
00:19:43 Speaker 1
And the decline in the influence of the church was due almost entirely to the to the automobile.
00:19:49 Speaker 1
Radio and television brought everybody into communication with a much wider world and changed their views than any other subject on any subject.
00:19:58 Speaker 1
The Black Panthers would not have been possible.
00:20:03 Speaker 1
In a non radio and non television age, in fact the whole civil rights movement.
00:20:07 Speaker 1
Wouldn’t have been conceivable.
00:20:09 Speaker 1
Before radio or television, because with radio and television, they could bring their message to an entire continent, which they couldn’t possibly have done before that.
00:20:21 Speaker 1
Nobody can ever anticipate the effects of technology.
00:20:26 Speaker 1
We are just beginning to see the possible impact of the video cassette the video disc.
00:20:31 Speaker 1
The Polaroid instant movie camera.
00:20:34 Speaker 1
Wind lands doctor lands now.
00:20:36 Speaker 1
It’s an honorary title, by the way.
00:20:38 Speaker 1
He never went to university.
00:20:40 Speaker 1
Brought out the first Polaroid he thought he was merely producing an improved method of photography.
00:20:48 Speaker 1
He produced a permissive society.
00:20:51 Speaker 1
Because the Polaroid camera meant instant ***********.
00:20:56 Speaker 1
You didn’t have to send your films away to a distant lab to be developed.
00:20:59 Speaker 1
They were developed on the spot.
00:21:02 Speaker 1
And I suppose that within within a year of the introduction of the first Polaroid camera, there were more shots of naked dames around the world than there had been in the preceding 10,000 years.
00:21:13 Speaker 1
So that lands produce the permissive society people became accustomed to certain things it was not in lands of mine, he thought he was simply improving the photographic process.
00:21:25 Speaker 1
Now we can’t really begin to see the potential of everybody being able to produce his own programs.
00:21:34 Speaker 1
But that’s what we’re heading into.
00:21:37 Speaker 1
Indeed, even the the film of the week club, the film of the day club, may be a temporary or passing measure.
00:21:43 Speaker 1
The day may come when everybody produces his own programs.
00:21:47 Speaker 1
And simply watch as always.
00:21:50 Speaker 1
Jim, you’re some.
00:21:53 Speaker 1
3 decades of an involvement close to the center of.
00:22:00 Speaker 1
Broadcasting and.
00:22:04 Speaker 1
And government together trying to hammer out some kind of.
00:22:09 Speaker 1
Viable thing?
00:22:13 Speaker 1
Has been very rewarding for you.
00:22:18 Speaker 1
That sound?
00:22:19 Speaker 1
That sounds trite, but few people that I had met in a long time.
00:22:25 Speaker 1
Appear to have done quite the thinking that you’ve evidenced in the last few minutes.
00:22:31 Speaker 1
About just a host of things that.
00:22:34 Speaker 1
In a funny way, are related directly to the thing we’re talking about here, broadcast.
00:22:40 Speaker 1
An aspect of the application of technology **** ** a very real sense.
00:22:44 Speaker 1
He was forced to.
00:22:45 Speaker 1
Because even in day-to-day negotiations with the government, we found that the technology was outpacing us.
00:22:51 Speaker 1
We could agree on certain things.
00:22:55 Speaker 1
Before those agreements could be translated into regulation or the repeal of a regulation.
00:23:01 Speaker 1
Or legislation, or the repeal of legislation.
00:23:03 Speaker 1
The technology would change the whole picture.
00:23:06 Speaker 1
Even if it takes 48 hours to get a statute through the House of Commons and the Senate.
00:23:12 Speaker 1
And get the royal assent.
00:23:14 Speaker 1
It will be obsolete.
00:23:18 Speaker 1
Very the sheer advance of technology and the the pace of technology as a matter of fact, very few people realize.
00:23:26 Speaker 1
The technology that surrounds us as of this moment, either of us, we have a certain kind of.
00:23:31 Speaker 1
Master charge card.
00:23:33 Speaker 1
Could walk a block down the street and punch that card into a machine and get $50.00 in cash.
00:23:38 Speaker 1
Sounds simple until you realize that the transaction is governed by a computer in Phoenix, AZ via satellite satellite.
00:23:48 Speaker 1
It’s true that they have backup on the microwave just in case something goes wrong with the satellite.
00:23:52 Speaker 1
But a good many people caught short of cash on the weekend, the time when they usually run short of cash.
00:23:58 Speaker 1
Go down and push their.
00:23:59 Speaker 1
Cards in and I suppose they have a vision of the whole thing being controlled by by a little man inside the the machine.
00:24:08 Speaker 1
It’s done by satellite instantly, no matter. It takes about four seconds to pick up $50.00 and the whole transaction is controlled in Phoenix, AZ by satellite.
00:24:19 Speaker 1
Now all the banks are in line.
00:24:21 Speaker 1
If you have a savings account.
00:24:23 Speaker 1
In North Bay or Vancouver?
00:24:26 Speaker 1
And you take some money and or take some money out.
00:24:29 Speaker 1
The teller puts your bank book in her machine and the transaction is completed in Toronto.
00:24:33 Speaker 1
All the banks are wired in Toronto.
00:24:36 Speaker 1
As you know, all grocery products have these funny little lines on them now.
00:24:42 Speaker 1
And where some supermarkets already have the automatic checkout system, there’s a scanner that rings up the name of the product, the quality, the price, and so on.
00:24:51 Speaker 1
What is more, the machine automatically reorders.
00:24:56 Speaker 1
And it can debit to your bank account. You don’t pay any cash at all, just debits your bank account and credits. The company’s bank account.
00:25:02 Speaker 1
Now we’re within five years and then old supermarkets do this.
00:25:07 Speaker 1
It will be extended to other fields.
00:25:11 Speaker 1
It may well be.
00:25:13 Speaker 1
And the technology is already present.
00:25:16 Speaker 1
In existence, they will add the visual element to this as you go through the checkout counter with your groceries, there will be little machine that sends your photograph back to a computer in Phoenix or Tokyo or Bonn or Mexico City.
00:25:29 Speaker 1
Just as a double check.
00:25:32 Speaker 1
They may even of a palm print.
00:25:33 Speaker 1
System, who knows?
00:25:35 Speaker 1
Jim, I think we better wind this up before we both start to look to each other like Dodo birds.
00:25:42 Speaker 1
I’ve been talking with Jim Allard.
00:25:45 Speaker 1
Citizen at large today.
00:25:51 Speaker 1
Executive head and Senior Operating Officer of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters.
00:25:57 Speaker 1
Thank you, Jim.
00:25:58 Speaker 1
Thank you Dick, very much.
00:26:01 Speaker 1
This interview was recorded in 1978 by Dick Meisner.
Part 2
00:00:04 Speaker 1
The Selkirk collection.
00:00:09 Speaker 1
Of The Pioneers of Selkirk communications.
00:00:14 Speaker 1
The following interview with TJ Allard was recorded in January 1978 by **** Meissner.
00:00:25 Speaker 2
This now will be.
00:00:28 Speaker 2
April the 16th, I guess.
00:00:33 Speaker 2
In Montreal and my guest today is none other than Mr. TJ Allard.
00:00:41 Speaker 2
Better known throughout the industry and elsewhere as Jim.
00:00:47 Speaker 2
Jim was until his retirement recently.
00:00:52 Speaker 2
Executive Vice president of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters.
00:00:58 Speaker 2
I wound up about a 30 year history with the organization.
00:01:04 Speaker 2
30 years, right?
00:01:08 Speaker 2
Gentlemen, we could be here for days talking about those 30 years.
00:01:14 Speaker 2
Give me some small beginnings.
00:01:17 Speaker 2
My impression is that you started in the business in.
00:01:21 Speaker 2
That is correct. On July 1, 1934, I went to work for CDCI in Edmonton. At that time owned outright to 100% for the Edmonton Journal and operated by a tender person, Carson.
00:01:34 Speaker 2
Which at the time was their style.
00:01:37 Speaker 2
As you know, they later bought the station.
00:01:39 Speaker 2
I was intrigued when I was in Edmonton in recent months to find out that they had it one time or another on each of the three stations in Edmonton.
00:01:50 Speaker 2
Not quite.
00:01:51 Speaker 2
The price has one of them today and has had Lily many years.
00:01:56 Speaker 2
The way it happened.
00:01:58 Speaker 2
Over the other CHCT was it?
00:02:03 Speaker 2
The the first of the trio.
00:02:06 Speaker 2
To get into the radio broadcasting business was Harold Carson in Lethbridge.
00:02:11 Speaker 2
Jim Taylor.
00:02:13 Speaker 2
That Hugh Pearson had known each other when they were serving together in what was then known as the Royal Flying.
00:02:19 Speaker 2
Corps in World War One.
00:02:21 Speaker 2
Two more diverse people conspired to be imagined, right?
00:02:26 Speaker 2
Hugh E Pearson was and is very epitome of a gentleman.
00:02:31 Speaker 2
He was in some senses more British **** than Canadian.
00:02:33 Speaker 2
Yes, yes.
00:02:34 Speaker 2
And he had a very British manner.
00:02:37 Speaker 2
He was a man of moderation and prudence in every respect, unlike the other two.
00:02:44 Speaker 2
Hugh didn’t even smoke, let alone drink.
00:02:47 Speaker 2
He would occasionally have a glass of Sherry on the occasion of the opening of.
00:02:51 Speaker 2
A new 50,000.
00:02:53 Speaker 2
What transmitter?
00:02:55 Speaker 2
And one glass of Sherry is a literal description.
00:02:59 Speaker 2
He was an extremely prudent and careful mayani, superb administrator and I’ve never seen accountant.
00:03:06 Speaker 2
I guess his history speaks well for the values of abstinence.
00:03:10 Speaker 2
He’s still with us and I believe he’s 90 years of age at least, and still in excellent health.
00:03:17 Speaker 2
I still I saw him in Edmonton and I had an interview with him.
00:03:20 Speaker 2
He’s still charming, right?
00:03:25 Speaker 2
Now, like so many.
00:03:27 Speaker 2
Albertans, he originally came from Ontario.
00:03:30 Speaker 2
He went W after World War One, where he had served in the Royal Flying Corps to pursue his original occupation surveyor at his first job out there was to lay up the boundary lines for the university developer.
00:03:48 Speaker 2
He told me that he had pretty well walked every foot of northern Alberta one time.
00:03:54 Speaker 2
This is true both professionally and personally, was extremely fond of walking and building a boat, and knows a great deal about the geography in the background.
00:04:06 Speaker 2
Indeed, of the country.
00:04:08 Speaker 2
Then he and Jim Taylor.
00:04:11 Speaker 2
Decided to go into the automotive wholesale business together at that time, the automobile.
00:04:16 Speaker 2
Was beginning to become generally accepted.
00:04:21 Speaker 2
Hitherto, most people had regarded the automobile as an act of the devil.
00:04:26 Speaker 2
Certain to disappear in a short time if there was any justice in this world.
00:04:31 Speaker 2
They took a different view that the automobile was here to stay and in a very small way indeed.
00:04:36 Speaker 2
They went together into the automotive business.
00:04:39 Speaker 2
This was.
00:04:39 Speaker 2
In the early.
00:04:40 Speaker 2
20s the very early 20s, it would be about 1921.
00:04:45 Speaker 2
Point of fact.
00:04:47 Speaker 2
Now Jim Taylor’s a totally different type from you person.
00:04:54 Speaker 2
In many people’s minds, time has a tendency to mellow memories.
00:05:00 Speaker 2
Jim Taylor.
00:05:02 Speaker 2
Abused alcohol and abuse degree badly.
00:05:06 Speaker 2
He was a completely ruthless man.
00:05:09 Speaker 2
He was extremely bad tempered.
00:05:11 Speaker 2
He was a skirt chaser of the 1st and worst order.
00:05:15 Speaker 2
And in the day and age, when the employment of women was by no matter of means as common as it is now.
00:05:22 Speaker 2
There was, in my view, when I was later to go to work for the company further to automotive relationship between Jim Taylor and many of the female employees.
00:05:33 Speaker 2
On the other side of the coin, he was a superb salesman.
00:05:38 Speaker 2
Absolutely superb.
00:05:40 Speaker 2
A man of imagination of considerable vision.
00:05:44 Speaker 2
And a man who fulfilled his civic duties.
00:05:48 Speaker 2
Far past the normal point.
00:05:51 Speaker 2
That he was connected not only with service clubs such as the Rotary and the Kiwanis, and that kind of thing, but with a good many important.
00:06:02 Speaker 2
Civic functions that are recuited nanotime.
00:06:05 Speaker 2
The automotive business got up to a.
00:06:08 Speaker 2
I’m sorry.
00:06:09 Speaker 2
Forgive me.
00:06:09 Speaker 2
Interrupting that was in Edmonton.
00:06:12 Speaker 2
I linked Jim Taylor with Victoria, but that was much later.
00:06:16 Speaker 2
Later, he retired there very much later.
00:06:19 Speaker 2
At the time he was in.
00:06:21 Speaker 2
A poor health.
00:06:23 Speaker 2
He ceased active connection with the business and decided to go to a warmer climate.
00:06:27 Speaker 2
The Canadian climate generally is not a particularly kind one.
00:06:31 Speaker 2
Edmonton is the is the worst example of it.
00:06:34 Speaker 2
It has a really vicious climate, especially in winter.
00:06:39 Speaker 2
No, I had that partnership described that triumvirate.
00:06:45 Speaker 2
As Harold Carson, the entrepreneur Jim Jim Taylor, the gambler, and Hugh Pearson, the bookkeeper.
00:06:54 Speaker 2
I think that’s an accurate description.
00:06:56 Speaker 2
Hugh Person was a superb administrator, a superb accountant.
00:07:01 Speaker 2
In every sense of the word, he was an extremely prudent man.
00:07:07 Speaker 2
Contrary to legend.
00:07:10 Speaker 2
He was not a tight man.
00:07:12 Speaker 2
He was careful with the dollar.
00:07:15 Speaker 2
But he always rewarded his people, in my view, extremely well, and people have forgotten that the value of the dollar in those days is considerably different.
00:07:24 Speaker 2
From what it is now and what looks in 1978 like a very low salary.
00:07:30 Speaker 2
Could in the 20s or 30s be extremely generous?
00:07:34 Speaker 2
And the Taylor Pearson Pearson Organization was I think the 1st.
00:07:39 Speaker 2
Broadcasting organization and probably the first organization outside the railway business.
00:07:45 Speaker 2
To introduce fringe benefits for its employees, they later, when they got to the broadcasting business, set up a pension scheme.
00:07:53 Speaker 2
They had group health insurance, group life insurance, an astonishing range of fringe benefits.
00:08:02 Speaker 2
Very, very shortly after they got the automotive business.
00:08:07 Speaker 2
Radio hit this country with a tremendous.
00:08:13 Speaker 2
And practically all automotive dealers began selling batteries.
00:08:19 Speaker 2
Because unless you have the popular crystal set.
00:08:23 Speaker 2
Your set was operated off batteries.
00:08:26 Speaker 2
And it immediately occurred to them that the cell radio batteries it would be advantageous to have radio stations that the receivers could pick up.
00:08:36 Speaker 2
And they got a license for a very, very small station.
00:08:40 Speaker 2
I’m not certain of the call letters.
00:08:42 Speaker 2
I think they were.
00:08:44 Speaker 2
They are written from an old hotel.
00:08:47 Speaker 2
And Edmonton, the hotel of dubious reputation and appearance.
00:08:52 Speaker 2
From a very small studio for about a year, as that precede Harold Carson’s involvement with the station and leverage.
00:08:59 Speaker 2
It was almost simultaneously oddly, at the time they did not know Harold Person again, contrary to the legend that says all three of them served together in the RSC right in point of fact, they all did serve in the RSC.
00:09:12 Speaker 2
Not together, yeah.
00:09:14 Speaker 2
And Taylor and person had not met Harold Person.
00:09:18 Speaker 2
While they were serving together in Europe.
00:09:21 Speaker 2
Now, why don’t tailor in person?
00:09:24 Speaker 2
We’re in the automotive business in Edmonton, Harold Pearson.
00:09:28 Speaker 2
Almost simultaneously.
00:09:31 Speaker 2
After a very engaged career.
00:09:35 Speaker 2
As a bootlegger and a purveyor of condoms had also gone into the automater business.
00:09:44 Speaker 2
The Edmonton station, which Taylor and Pearson jointly owned outright.
00:09:50 Speaker 2
Ran into difficulties in those days.
00:09:52 Speaker 2
It was not at all easy to sell radio time.
00:09:55 Speaker 2
Nobody really believed it was here to stay, and most businessmen regarded it as not respectable.
00:10:02 Speaker 2
It was part of the quote, entertainment, UN quote business. And you went to work for a radio station. If you couldn’t find a job, that was a book.
00:10:10 Speaker 2
Was about it.
00:10:13 Speaker 2
As the right amount of business expanded, they naturally ran into financial difficulties.
00:10:19 Speaker 2
And in about 1922, they needed the bank loan of $2000 to keep the automotive business afloat.
00:10:26 Speaker 2
In order to raise this, they were forced to sell the radio station and incredibly, there were no takers.
00:10:32 Speaker 2
Nobody really wanted to get into the radio business.
00:10:35 Speaker 2
The only buyer they could find was the University of Alberta.
00:10:40 Speaker 2
Which paid them the $2000.00 for the station, which became CUAA and remains to this day in business under those call letters.
00:10:50 Speaker 2
It was originally licensed the University of Alberta’s many years later.
00:10:55 Speaker 2
The Social Credit government of Alberta was to make several unsuccessful attempts to turn it into a commercial station.
00:11:03 Speaker 2
The attempts have never been successful, but as part of that effort they transferred the license from the University of Alberta to Alberta government telephones.
00:11:12 Speaker 2
Then is now owned outright by the government of the province developer, and indeed the the ownership remains there.
00:11:20 Speaker 2
There was in about 1923 or 1924 a convention.
00:11:26 Speaker 2
Of automotive dealers in Chicago.
00:11:29 Speaker 2
Which is where Taylor and Pearson met Harold Pearson.
00:11:32 Speaker 2
I yes, he was also selling batteries.
00:11:37 Speaker 2
And was greatly impressed with the need for a broadcasting station in Lethbridge, where he was operating.
00:11:44 Speaker 2
There was a station there named CJ OC, which is owned by a rather unusual fellow named Jacques Plummer.
00:11:51 Speaker 2
And he ran out of the tall and Arden build.
00:11:56 Speaker 2
Tall and Arden, who later were to have an interest in a broadcasting station in Red Deer, AB.
00:12:02 Speaker 2
Where Norm Botwell got his start as a schoolboy, right?
00:12:05 Speaker 2
He did, announcing part time after school and on the odd day.
00:12:08 Speaker 2
When he played hockey.
00:12:13 Speaker 2
Person in order to sell radio batteries.
00:12:17 Speaker 2
Started buying time on Cgoc.
00:12:20 Speaker 2
The results were so successful.
00:12:23 Speaker 2
That he decided to buy the station.
00:12:25 Speaker 2
Which I’ve totally acquired for the magnificent princely sum of about $200.00, probably.
00:12:30 Speaker 2
It was in that neighborhood.
00:12:32 Speaker 2
It certainly was less than $1000 and the owners probably thought that they’d found themselves a sucker.
00:12:38 Speaker 2
They were delighted to unload it.
00:12:40 Speaker 2
All right.
00:12:41 Speaker 2
For many, many years, indeed, until well after World War Two, it was the only station that the tailor person person organization owned outright.
00:12:49 Speaker 2
Because Harold Order bought all 85 and 90% of it.
00:12:53 Speaker 2
He had effective ownership.
00:12:56 Speaker 2
Having decided that the radio broadcasting business is a good thing to be in.
00:13:01 Speaker 2
Carol Carson had gone up to Calgary.
00:13:06 Speaker 2
There, the Calgary Herald of Southern newspaper owned and operated a very successful station called CFAC.
00:13:13 Speaker 2
Harold Carson made attempts to buy Cfac from the Southerns.
00:13:19 Speaker 2
Like most newspapers in the early days, the Calgary Herald had taken the license out as insurance.
00:13:26 Speaker 2
They were saying, in effect, we don’t think that this new thing called ready was going to work.
00:13:31 Speaker 2
But just in case it displaces the newspapers.
00:13:35 Speaker 2
We had better be in the business and they were reluctant to part with it, but Harold.
00:13:42 Speaker 2
Who is an extremely imagined the character?
00:13:46 Speaker 2
In his later years, Harold, who had a real alcohol problem.
00:13:52 Speaker 2
And in his later years became extremely corpulent and smoked cigars and gave the impression of a hard shelled.
00:14:00 Speaker 2
Hard nosed business tycoon Right, was actually an extremely sensitive man in the best sense of the word, sensitive.
00:14:08 Speaker 2
He had a high degree of feeling for other people.
00:14:12 Speaker 2
A high regard for other people’s feelings and sensitivities.
00:14:17 Speaker 2
And he was a very imaginative man, very imaginative, great vision.
00:14:22 Speaker 2
That he foresaw a great many things.
00:14:25 Speaker 2
That later were to happen some of them after his death.
00:14:29 Speaker 2
I wondered, you know, recently.
00:14:32 Speaker 2
Talking with people like yourself.
00:14:36 Speaker 2
Whether Carsons vision was wide enough.
00:14:45 Speaker 2
In 19591960 when he departed.
00:14:51 Speaker 2
To envision just where this one company, Selkirk Holdings.
00:14:56 Speaker 2
Has arrived today.
00:14:59 Speaker 2
Indeed not the ultimate.
00:15:00 Speaker 2
I mean, they’re still very much on the move.
00:15:02 Speaker 2
Of course.
00:15:02 Speaker 2
Oh, yes, yes.
00:15:03 Speaker 2
You know, they’re known.
00:15:04 Speaker 2
Extremely big company with holdings in in Europe as well and in the states as in North America, right. And we’ll know about expand and I think that was part of Harold Parish’s master plan had he lived.
00:15:17 Speaker 2
I think the company would have.
00:15:18 Speaker 2
Been much bigger than it is.
00:15:20 Speaker 2
And probably would have rivaled the Thompson Empire.
00:15:25 Speaker 2
Harold has tremendous vision now since the Calgary Herald was unwilling to sell the station.
00:15:33 Speaker 2
He arrived at an operating deal with them, which is very simple.
00:15:37 Speaker 2
He was to run the station with complete autonomy.
00:15:41 Speaker 2
The Calgary Herald was to retain ownership and at the end of the year, the profits.
00:15:47 Speaker 2
Which in the early years are very slim. Where do we split 5050?
00:15:52 Speaker 2
It was at that point of his development that he met Taylor and Pearson at the Chicago Convention of Automotive Theaters.
00:15:59 Speaker 2
They talked together a great deal, he told them about Cgoc and cfac.
00:16:05 Speaker 2
And they, of course, had already had limited experience with their very small station, and the Prince George Hotel.
00:16:09 Speaker 1
Right.
00:16:11 Speaker 2
That Edmonton.
00:16:13 Speaker 2
They decided originally to go into the automotive business together in Calgary.
00:16:18 Speaker 2
Taylor and Pearson were in the automotive business under the style of Taylor and Pearson Limited in Edmonton.
00:16:24 Speaker 2
Cursed into the style of each person.
00:16:26 Speaker 2
Limited in Lethbridge.
00:16:28 Speaker 2
They decided to go into the automotive business in Calgary under the joint title of Taylor Pearson Pearson Limited.
00:16:35 Speaker 2
Which is where the partnership was born.
00:16:37 Speaker 2
But person had also mentioned his radio experience.
00:16:42 Speaker 2
Tailored person interested, applied again for license.
00:16:46 Speaker 2
And obtain one under the name of CFTP.
00:16:51 Speaker 2
Ian, Edmonton.
00:16:53 Speaker 2
Then they decided that they would repeat the Calgary experiment.
00:16:57 Speaker 2
The Edmonton Journal.
00:16:59 Speaker 2
Was also owned by the Southern Company.
00:17:02 Speaker 2
Taylor, Pearson and Pearson jointly approached the Edmonton Journal to make an operating deal with them, identical to that which Carson had with the Calgary Herald in the more southern city.
00:17:15 Speaker 2
Although licensing in those days was.
00:17:17 Speaker 2
More theoretical than practical.
00:17:20 Speaker 2
The licensing authorities blocked by this time the.
00:17:25 Speaker 2
The government was beginning to move into the business fairly heavily and the regulatory sense of the word indeed to a limited extent in the ownership.
00:17:33 Speaker 2
I sense.
00:17:35 Speaker 2
And they said bluntly that no one organization could have two stations in one city.
00:17:42 Speaker 2
So the TPC group was confronted with the choice, and they made the choice.
00:17:47 Speaker 2
They decided that they would make their operative deal.
00:17:49 Speaker 2
With the Edmond Journal.
00:17:51 Speaker 2
At that time, the manager of the Edmonton Journal station was **** Rice.
00:17:56 Speaker 2
Now Doctor GR rice.
00:17:58 Speaker 2
He had been manager of the station since it opened in 1922.
00:18:03 Speaker 2
Having settled in Edmonton the year before.
00:18:06 Speaker 2
He’d come there from Britain.
00:18:08 Speaker 2
**** had served incredibly in World War One and the British Navy.
00:18:11 Speaker 2
As the Marconi wireless operator, Marconi was so I think the word I’m looking for is jealous.
00:18:21 Speaker 2
Of its prerogatives.
00:18:23 Speaker 2
In the wireless field which it originated, of course.
00:18:27 Speaker 2
That even in the service of the British Navy, they wouldn’t permit the British Navy to operate their machines.
00:18:35 Speaker 2
The operators from our Corning employees, even during the war on British battleships and cruisers and wherever else they had the equipment.
00:18:42 Speaker 2
Right.
00:18:46 Speaker 2
So when the Edmond Journal opened its station, **** became its first employee.
00:18:50 Speaker 2
He was manager, announcer, and so on.
00:18:53 Speaker 2
**** also was an extremely.
00:18:56 Speaker 2
Imagine the fan innovator broadcaster.
00:19:01 Speaker 2
That he had programmed ideas in Edward in the 1923 and 24.
00:19:06 Speaker 2
That were considered sensational when they were introduced in Ontario in 194849 and 1950.
00:19:13 Speaker 2
However, Tinder person person did not want **** race.
00:19:18 Speaker 2
As their manager.
00:19:20 Speaker 2
But being very, very fair people and they always were when it came to their employees, in my experience.
00:19:27 Speaker 2
They offered CFTP to degrace.
00:19:32 Speaker 2
They were not in the business simply firing him and putting in.
00:19:35 Speaker 2
Their own manager.
00:19:37 Speaker 2
**** was extremely reluctant to take over the station.
00:19:40 Speaker 2
And my memory is if they threw in $10,000 in cash as a sweeper were able for him to take over, the state should have even sold.
00:19:44
OK.
00:19:51 Speaker 2
**** still nervous?
00:19:53 Speaker 2
Took Hans Nielsen, who ran a chain of dry cleaning stores in Edmonton, a partnership.
00:19:59 Speaker 2
And change the call letters to CFTP to CFRN the R for rice, the N for Nielsen.
00:20:05 Speaker 2
Hans Nielsen.
00:20:05 Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah.
00:20:06 Speaker 2
And still operates under those call letters.
00:20:09 Speaker 2
Tailored person person took over CGCA had operated it.
00:20:14 Speaker 2
On the same basis as with the Calgary Herald, 50%.
00:20:19 Speaker 2
And it was at that point that the radio business in Western Canada really began to take off.
00:20:25 Speaker 2
It happened that the symptoms.
00:20:28 Speaker 2
Had already got to the broadcasting business largely by accident.
00:20:33 Speaker 2
The exceptions are we never really liked radio.
00:20:36 Speaker 2
Newspapers were very much in their blood myth.
00:20:40 Speaker 2
Sir Clifford Septon was minister of the Interior.
00:20:44 Speaker 2
In Sir Wilfrid, Laurier’s government had founded the Great Winnipeg Free Press.
00:20:49 Speaker 2
Which for many, many years was the most significant daily newspaper in Western Canada and had had some influence under the leadership of John Daker Wall, who did not believe in radio at all and thought it should be destroyed.
00:21:04 Speaker 2
Had a tremendous influence on the Government of Canada.
00:21:08 Speaker 2
Tremendous influence.
00:21:10 Speaker 2
And indeed, Daffo was one of the people responsible for the Air Commission.
00:21:15 Speaker 2
The CRBC and the formation of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
00:21:20 Speaker 2
His view was that if radio was to be permitted to exist at all.
00:21:24 Speaker 2
It should be a state monopoly in the same fashion as the British Broadcasting Corporation and a non commercial state monopoly.
00:21:32 Speaker 2
Right.
00:21:34 Speaker 2
This is an indication of how much autonomy the symptoms gave their editors.
00:21:39 Speaker 2
Do you remember the political clout that the the Free Press has through it?
00:21:48 Speaker 2
It’s cartoonist Archdale, indeed.
00:21:52 Speaker 2
Just immense.
00:21:53 Speaker 2
Just immense.
00:21:55 Speaker 2
The septons themselves did not believe in the government ownership of anything.
00:22:01 Speaker 2
And they did not believe in Monopoly.
00:22:05 Speaker 2
In fact, they were strongly opposed to any form of monopoly, so much so that preference septin was even opposed the patent system.
00:22:11 Speaker 2
And on one occasion, or a series of pamphlets attacking the patent system outright.
00:22:16 Speaker 2
Nonetheless, they prevented the depo to use the editorial columns of the Winnipeg Free Press to advocate a state owned broadcasting monopoly.
00:22:25 Speaker 2
They never interfered.
00:22:27 Speaker 2
With their editors at all.
00:22:29 Speaker 2
But they four had complete autonomy.
00:22:33 Speaker 2
They had bought a station called CCJR.
00:22:39 Speaker 2
From the Richardson family, the green merchants it was then located at Belle Plaine in Saskatchewan.
00:22:46 Speaker 2
And they were successful in moving it to Winnipeg.
00:22:50 Speaker 2
Then later they got into a station in Regina, SK.
00:22:56 Speaker 2
Which they had also bought from the Richardsons CJ RM.
00:23:00 Speaker 2
They changed the call letter to CKRM.
00:23:03 Speaker 2
And they also operated the station, called CKCK.
00:23:06 Speaker 2
In this case, the government stood still.
00:23:09 Speaker 2
For one set of interests operating two stations in one city.
00:23:13 Speaker 2
The Septons bought, as I recall. CJ, RC and Winnipeg.
00:23:19 Speaker 2
CJ RM from Richardson.
00:23:22 Speaker 2
Had to the Richardsons refused to sell one station without the other.
00:23:25 Speaker 2
Right.
00:23:26 Speaker 2
The Septons did not want to buy the Regina station, but they had no choice.
00:23:29 Speaker 2
And then they changed the collars and JCK.
00:23:31 Speaker 2
That is correct.
00:23:36 Speaker 2
Knowing of the.
00:23:41 Speaker 2
Tutor person person to you with the southerns they approached tutor person person.
00:23:47 Speaker 2
And asked that that group operate their stations for.
00:23:51 Speaker 2
Them in Regina.
00:23:53 Speaker 2
And in Winnipeg, and as it turned out, a little later in Hamilton.
00:23:58 Speaker 2
The original owner of CKAC Elenic, Herbert Slack.
00:24:03 Speaker 2
Had died.
00:24:05 Speaker 2
And his company went with broadcasting, was in the state of considerable disarray.
00:24:10 Speaker 2
The acceptance bought a majority control in Ckoc and asked Taylor person Person to operate that for.
00:24:17 Speaker 2
That came considerably later.
00:24:25 Speaker 2
The beginnings of Jim Allard.
00:24:29 Speaker 2
At Cja in Edmonton, my recollection is that you started as or we used to call a A continuity editor.
00:24:38 Speaker 2
Which means, as you wrote, advertising, coffee and whatever as one of the things that you did that as a matter of fact came a little later like so many people.
00:24:47 Speaker 2
I was a child of the depression.
00:24:50 Speaker 2
During the depression years, I was out of work more often.
00:24:52 Speaker 2
Than I was in it.
00:24:54 Speaker 2
He belonged to a large club and did a great many things like driving trucks and shipping out ice from the river.
00:25:02 Speaker 2
Worked for a packing plant, a coal mine.
00:25:05 Speaker 2
It’s difficult after all these years to remember the various people one did work for because many of them had a tendency.
00:25:10 Speaker 2
To go broke.
00:25:11 Speaker 2
Right.
00:25:11 Speaker 2
Three days after you started working for the milk connection, it was just the firms are going broke.
00:25:16 Speaker 2
All over the place, right?
00:25:18 Speaker 2
CJ, CA in the early part of 1934.
00:25:23 Speaker 2
Actually carried ads in its own air.
00:25:26 Speaker 2
Asking for people to come down and audition as announcers.
00:25:30 Speaker 2
Naturally, intrigued, I went down 1 evening and went through the then Standard edition, but this time CJC was being managed jointly.
00:25:40 Speaker 2
By rather unusual gentleman by the name of Percy Gaynor. Yep. Little well, like many of TPC’s managers, an excellent man imagining a very good administrator, but extremely short in the temper.
00:25:58 Speaker 2
First Gainer, rightly or wrongly, was impressed with me.
00:26:02 Speaker 2
And said he would call me.
00:26:05 Speaker 2
I think he knocked out.
00:26:07 Speaker 2
But in those days he didn’t take any chances.
00:26:11 Speaker 2
I was not working at the time and I said I was prepared to come and do odd jobs around the station at no remuneration whatsoever.
00:26:20 Speaker 2
And on that basis, I started on July 1, an easy day to remember in 1934 and for six months, I did practically anything there was to do a bit of announcing, a bit of fighting of records helped to clean the place up at night, went out and bought coffee for people. This kind of thing.
00:26:38 Speaker 2
And for approximately 4 months, I wasn’t paid at all.
00:26:42 Speaker 2
Then their switchboard operator and many switchboard operators in those days were males.
00:26:48 Speaker 2
Women got to the business area in Western Canada very, very slowly.
00:26:52 Speaker 2
It really wasn’t until after World War Two.
00:26:54 Speaker 2
That’s true, that women in Western Canada were generally employed.
00:27:00 Speaker 2
Their switchboard operator laughed at the request of Persky and her in a burst of.
00:27:06 Speaker 2
He had disconnected the purse gainer on a long distance telephone call to Harold Carson, Calgary.
00:27:13 Speaker 2
And in those days it took him with three days to place a long distance call.
00:27:18 Speaker 2
Edmonton and Calgary are about 100 and.
00:27:19 Speaker 2
20 miles apart.
00:27:21 Speaker 2
But such was the state of Alberta government telephones at the time.
00:27:25 Speaker 2
And I became CJC switchboard operator at $50.00 a month. Hey, which in those days was a great deal of money. One dreamed of putting the down payment on the Queen Mary.
00:27:36 Speaker 2
Kind of thing.
00:27:39 Speaker 2
I had been there a very short time when on the switchboard.
00:27:44 Speaker 2
When a most unusual woman wins, Sutton, who was the station’s, continue with the editor.
00:27:51 Speaker 2
Asked if I would give her a hand with writing some of the commercials because they were overburdened.
00:27:57 Speaker 2
I did that between telephone calls.
00:28:02 Speaker 2
Winn was impressed, had asked that I be transferred to the Continuity department and I was.
00:28:08 Speaker 2
Very shortly after that tourney of 1935, when Sutton got an offer from CF Iran.
00:28:15 Speaker 2
Being run by **** Rice had moved over there.
00:28:18 Speaker 2
Simultaneously, Jack Black entered the employee of CFRN as a continuity writer.
00:28:26 Speaker 2
Jack Black had been a school teacher up until that point in a small town outside of Edmonton.
00:28:32 Speaker 2
So I became continuity editor of the station at a very early age in 1935.
00:28:40 Speaker 2
And it carried on the Continuity department, expanded rapidly when I entered it, I was the only writer they had.
00:28:48 Speaker 2
In a short time, business had built up to quite an extent and we had a department of five writers.
00:28:54 Speaker 2
Hey, that’s a big time.
00:28:56 Speaker 2
Yes, there was, of course a great deal more local production in those days than there is now.
00:29:01 Speaker 2
In addition to writing commercials, we wrote plays and skits, yeah, and frequently acted in them and did one thing or another.
00:29:10 Speaker 2
And then per skater was transferred to Toronto to open the first of what’s known now, now known as the Representative for repos under the Style and title of United Broadcast Sales Limited.
00:29:25 Speaker 2
Harold Carson was the first man to see the possibilities in.
00:29:32 Speaker 2
In fact, one of Harold person’s big dreams never realized.
00:29:36 Speaker 2
Was to order and operate a coast to coast network.
00:29:39 Speaker 2
But since the regulations and the CBC policy for bad that he saw the possibilities and transcriptions.
00:29:47 Speaker 2
He bought, for instance, the Canadian Rights Little Ranger.
00:29:51 Speaker 2
Which became an extremely popular program.
00:29:55 Speaker 2
It was run on all the TPC stations, the stations they were operating.
00:30:00 Speaker 2
By this time, they had added CJ AT in Trail of Ccvi in Victoria and CK WX in Vancouver.
00:30:09 Speaker 2
To the list of stations they operated, although with in the case of Victoria.
00:30:14 Speaker 2
Owned then by the Victoria Times Colonist and CK TWX, owned by Sparks Balstad.
00:30:20 Speaker 2
They bought in a small interests in addition to operating.
00:30:24 Speaker 2
CJT was a straight operating deal.
00:30:27 Speaker 2
It was owned by consolidated Mining and Smelting.
00:30:30 Speaker 2
A subsidiary of CPR.
00:30:34 Speaker 2
And we ran The Lone Ranger from 12:00 to 12:30 every day on these stations, on behalf of the Great Western Garment Company.
00:30:40 Speaker 2
Then the very small operation by number matter of means the large manufacture radius has become.
00:30:48 Speaker 2
I wrote the copy for GWG.
00:30:51 Speaker 2
In point of fact, I coined some of the names and slogans that they still use.
00:30:55 Speaker 2
Such as red strap overalls, Ironman pants, they wear longer because.
00:30:59 Speaker 2
They’re made stronger.
00:31:00 Speaker 2
Yes, yes.
00:31:03 Speaker 2
And indeed, it was the fact.
00:31:06 Speaker 2
That the program was being run on so many stations that led to the first.
00:31:11 Speaker 2
Introduction I think into the broadcasting business of automatic reproduction.
00:31:18 Speaker 2
In typing up the commercials, I simply used sheets of paper and carbon CK, CK and Regina for some reason and always got about the 7th carbon.
00:31:28 Speaker 2
And we got letters, hot letters of protest from Lyman Potts.
00:31:33 Speaker 2
In Regina, who said he found it extremely difficult to read the commercials, and Lyman has always been both articulate and persuasive.
00:31:43 Speaker 2
So Taylor Pearson Carson decided there must be a better way of doing this and they found out there was a machine called the Hectograph.
00:31:51 Speaker 2
Which would reproduce documents.
00:31:53 Speaker 2
It was the purchaser of the mimeograph.
00:31:55 Speaker 2
Yeah, it was a dreadful little machine in which you poured vast quantities of blue blue.
00:32:01 Speaker 2
I remember them ran off your master copy and you came out looking as if you’d been born in in the Caribbean, and it took you half a day to get washed up.
00:32:11 Speaker 2
But it satisfied Lyman and we had readable copies of the GWG commercials.
00:32:17 Speaker 2
I think it’s interesting and I think you can take it.
00:32:22 Speaker 2
Degree of personal satisfaction out of the fact that GWG is still using broadcast advertising heavily, both radio and television, right?
00:32:31 Speaker 2
They were extremely satisfied with the results they got from radio and they had very good reason to be that I made the worst mistake of my life.
00:32:42 Speaker 2
In connection with the.
00:32:44 Speaker 2
GWG account.
00:32:47 Speaker 2
When The Lone Ranger had become extremely popular in Western Canada, there was one evening it occurred to me it would be a wonderful idea.
00:32:55 Speaker 2
If we had Lone Ranger T-shirts.
00:32:58 Speaker 2
And the idea appealed to GWG, which said we will manufacture them.
00:33:02 Speaker 2
You plug them.
00:33:04 Speaker 2
The idea was so successful that they couldn’t even handle the storage.
00:33:08 Speaker 2
At one time in in those days, as you will recall, stations went for very, very large studios, very large from which you could originate full orchestras, as we did.
00:33:18 Speaker 2
CJC in point of fact.
00:33:21 Speaker 2
Was then originating five programs a week to the Sierra BC network.
00:33:26 Speaker 2
One of these, oddly in the French language.
00:33:31 Speaker 2
And we had.
00:33:32 Speaker 2
Our large studio stacked from floor to ceiling with Lone Ranger T-shirts.
00:33:36 Speaker 2
I should have had the sense to patent the idea.
00:33:39 Speaker 2
I didn’t.
00:33:41 Speaker 2
I thought it was a one time shot after World War Two.
00:33:45 Speaker 2
You know what happened with fishing business?
00:33:46 Speaker 1
OK.
00:33:47 Speaker 2
I would probably have been a millionaire by now.
00:33:50 Speaker 2
Things I might have done there indeed.
00:33:53 Speaker 2
Then things progressed to the point originally.
00:33:58 Speaker 2
The newspapers did everything they possibly could to deny news to broadcasting.
00:34:03 Speaker 2
Yes, I remember that very well.
00:34:04 Speaker 2
Sell them in use.
00:34:07 Speaker 2
They wouldn’t permit them to use the news.
00:34:09 Speaker 2
Our original use case.
00:34:11 Speaker 2
So though the Edmond Journal owned the station, we were merely operating on their behalf.
00:34:15 Speaker 2
Were scalloped from the Edmonton Journal without their permission, and we simply bought a copy for five.
00:34:22 Speaker 2
The journal at that time, at four or five daily editions, and we would get a copy of the early Warning edition and simply read selected items from time to time.
00:34:33 Speaker 2
Finally, the newspapers decided to surrender and they set up an organization, a subsidiary of Canadian Press, known as Press news Limited.
00:34:41 Speaker 2
Under the managership of the late Great Samurai Ross.
00:34:45 Speaker 2
And we installed a marvelous new machine to us, known as the teleprinter.
00:34:50 Speaker 2
The news came in on tape.
00:34:53 Speaker 2
The machine kept pounding away and the tape piled up on the floor in magnificent mountains.
00:34:59 Speaker 2
And when it came time for a used cast, you simply went in and picked up what seemed to be about 15 minutes worth of of tape and carried it into the studio and began reading it.
00:35:11 Speaker 2
And frequently you were halfway through the newscast when you ran across a line that said delete line 2A, paragraph four above.
00:35:19 Speaker 2
And on many occasions that went on the air because you hadn’t had time to check.
00:35:23 Speaker 2
That predated, of course, the teleprinter which started turning it on the page in Page 4, which made things which made life very much simpler.
00:35:34 Speaker 2
I suppose for lack of.
00:35:36 Speaker 2
Anyone better?
00:35:38 Speaker 2
The company made me news editor and I found myself with the combined title of continuity and news editor.
00:35:44 Speaker 2
I was also doing some announcing.
00:35:48 Speaker 2
As part of my regular duties, I did a book review.
00:35:53 Speaker 2
That I read the Christian Science Monitor nightly review that was big in broadcasting, seeing it throughout North America at the time.
00:36:02 Speaker 2
And did a bit of operating as well that this is not uncommon in most.
00:36:06 Speaker 2
States in radio.
00:36:08 Speaker 2
It was not the clear cut division of duties, but there now is.
00:36:13 Speaker 2
Which in my opinion turned out well.
00:36:16 Speaker 2
I like to think of as broadcasters.
00:36:20 Speaker 2
Rather than turning out announcers or writers, they turned out well-rounded people who.
00:36:25 Speaker 1
By and large.
00:36:26 Speaker 2
Could do most things in a radio station.
00:36:28 Speaker 2
Indeed, they had a knowledge of every aspect of the business, right?
00:36:33 Speaker 2
Then person who was they say, was extremely farsighted.
00:36:37 Speaker 2
And by the way, he had in the mean time changed the title.
00:36:41 Speaker 2
Of United broadcast sales, the Rep host to all Canada Radio Facilities Limited.
00:36:47 Speaker 2
There was a chap in Manitoba named Dawson Richardson, no relation to the Richardson Green family.
00:36:53 Speaker 2
Who had run a station on behalf of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange MJX in Yorkton.
00:36:59 Speaker 2
The grain exchange wanted the station only to carry grain prices to farmers, elevator operators and dealers.
00:37:07 Speaker 2
Very important in the West at the time.
00:37:10 Speaker 2
I was going to say talking with Norm Bottrell a while back.
00:37:15 Speaker 2
In Calgary.
00:37:18 Speaker 2
It came out loud and clear, really that.
00:37:22 Speaker 2
In addition to religion.
00:37:26 Speaker 2
And the number of stations as you know so well, were started and programmed by one church or another.
00:37:34 Speaker 2
Grain prices.
00:37:36 Speaker 2
Forced the development of Radio Western Canada, unbelievably, or indeed indeed broadcasting in Western Canada grew much faster than it did in any other part of Canada until well after World War Two.
00:37:49 Speaker 2
And there were two prime reasons for.
00:37:53 Speaker 2
The prairies at that time was an even more harsh place than it is now.
00:37:58 Speaker 2
The distances were great, people were isolated and it was not uncommon in the winter for a family to see no one except themselves and really was a great blessing because it brought in voices from the outside.
00:38:09 Speaker 2
That was part of it.
00:38:11 Speaker 2
The other in a more compelling part, was the fact that the economy was totally based on agriculture.
00:38:18 Speaker 2
The Prairies really only had two sources, basically of income, agriculture and the railways.
00:38:24 Speaker 2
And to get grain prices to the farmers and the elevator dealers and so on, was essential.
00:38:32 Speaker 2
The Richardson family, Dawson Richardson not connected with the Richardson grain broker, he said.
00:38:38 Speaker 2
Had operated various forms of telephone and Telegraph.
00:38:42 Speaker 2
Communication services to the elevators and the doors.
00:38:46 Speaker 2
Radio, of course, offered even fast communication and faster communication.
00:38:51 Speaker 2
And in many cities and towns, including red Deer, where Norm Botwell started.
00:38:56 Speaker 2
The station there was originally opened by the Alberta Pacific Grain Company for the sole purpose of disseminating grain prices and and the prices as delivered by the station became the official prices.
00:39:11 Speaker 2
That at every selling point actually a farmer knew what today’s price was, that the elevator before he started exactly out with the grain wagon.
00:39:18 Speaker 2
Matter, and it was of immense importance.
00:39:22 Speaker 2
In fact, again, Carson seeing the possibilities of this.
00:39:27 Speaker 2
There had been, prior to the Advent in 1932 of the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Corporation, the purchaser of the CBC, formed in 1936.
00:39:36 Speaker 2
A number of private networks across Canada.
00:39:40 Speaker 2
One of these originated at CFCF in Montreal.
00:39:43 Speaker 2
According company.
00:39:44 Speaker 2
Yes, I know that there were two regular networks and a number of ad hoc networks.
00:39:49 Speaker 2
When the government got into this, they closed all these down and established a monopoly of networks in their own behalf.
00:39:56 Speaker 2
Yet they permitted regional networks.
00:39:59 Speaker 2
And Harold Pearson established established an outfit called the Foothills Network.
00:40:04 Speaker 2
Which took in CJC, Lethbridge, Cfac, Calgary, CCA and CKUA, Edmonton.
00:40:10 Speaker 2
In later years, CFTP and Grand Prairie were which the TPC organization established and owned.
00:40:19 Speaker 2
And it was for the sole purpose of carrying grain.
00:40:21 Speaker 2
Prices three times a day later, they added other prices.
00:40:27 Speaker 2
I became familiar with such esoteric words as canners and cutters.
00:40:32 Speaker 2
Which are a certain type of cow.
00:40:35 Speaker 2
But I think.
00:40:37 Speaker 2
We carried prices on pigs and cows and heaven knows what. Not all. But that was Harold Harrison’s style. He was always thinking well ahead of everybody.
00:40:48 Speaker 2
As you may recall.
00:40:50 Speaker 2
I spent a couple of years of my.
00:40:54 Speaker 2
Army life in the Second World War with the Canadian Army show overseas in the broadcast section.
00:41:04 Speaker 2
And we used to do live shows on average in London being built at the continent and back to North America of about one a day.
00:41:14 Speaker 2
And they refer to the elaborate things too.
00:41:16 Speaker 2
It’s fascinating.
00:41:18 Speaker 2
And we had live studio audiences because we use theaters as studios.
00:41:24 Speaker 2
And put on a skit one night based on.
00:41:27 Speaker 2
Western Canada Broadcasting theme music by Mark Kenney and things you know.
00:41:34 Speaker 2
And brought the house down with a small simulated 32nd.
00:41:39 Speaker 2
Blurb on green.
00:41:42 Speaker 2
#1 Northern 67 bid half asked.
00:41:49 Speaker 2
It must have been a solid western group.
00:41:51 Speaker 2
In the theater exploded.
00:41:52 Speaker 2
They would know exactly what you were driving at.
00:41:56 Speaker 2
About 1937, I think.
00:42:00 Speaker 2
Harold Pearson decided that the company needed the promotion manager.
00:42:05 Speaker 2
And they added that to my duties.
00:42:07 Speaker 2
And I was now news continuity and promotion manager.
00:42:12 Speaker 2
Handling all three departments.
00:42:15 Speaker 2
The news and continuity was restricted to CJ, CA.
00:42:19 Speaker 2
The promotion was for the entire trailer person person group.
00:42:24 Speaker 2
And one began to learn the mysteries of the advertising agency business.
00:42:27 Speaker 2
Because we bought ads in the Toronto.
00:42:30 Speaker 2
Newspapers and the trade press and one thing and another.
00:42:36 Speaker 2
That from the beginning I had the idea that the broadcasting industry should have much stronger political representation than it then had.
00:42:45 Speaker 2
The Canadian Association of Broadcasters was virtually a letterhead until 1941. I sense that in your narrative now you’re about to leave CJC A. How many years did you spend there? Do you recall 19 years? Seven years?
00:43:01 Speaker 2
I had suggested to Harold Carson on several occasions and Harold was a very approachable man and a very fair minded man.
00:43:06 Speaker 2
If you developed an idea, you get full credit for it that he was extremely decent in.
00:43:12 Speaker 2
That as in so many other respects.
00:43:14 Speaker 2
An amazing man, Harold, in every respect.
00:43:17 Speaker 2
I can still recall.
00:43:20 Speaker 2
That the managers meetings and incidentally the TPC managers had full autonomy, they ran their own operations and herald.
00:43:27 Speaker 2
Or tutor or person never interfered with them, and that tradition still holds today.
00:43:31 Speaker 2
Holes they had, they were almost totally autonomous.
00:43:36 Speaker 2
And we had periodic managers meetings, which normally include develops the department heads.
00:43:42 Speaker 2
And several of these occasions I had suggested.
00:43:45 Speaker 2
The the Twitter person person group should have its own office, not.
00:43:51 Speaker 2
It occurred to me that since it was a licensed business, we should get to know the politicians a lot better.
00:43:59 Speaker 2
After I had made the suggestion on him what the 4th and 5th occation, Harold Carson was the meeting of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters in Quebec City.
00:44:07 Speaker 2
That he discovered that Ken Sol at CHM L and Hamilton.
00:44:13 Speaker 2
Had developed a somewhat similar idea.
00:44:16 Speaker 2
He had established a recording studio in Ottawa and the local Hamilton members of parliament.
00:44:22 Speaker 2
Were invited to come in and record their reports to their constituents and carried the thing on a regular basis.
00:44:29 Speaker 2
So impressed, Harold came back to the West and called me UN.
00:44:35 Speaker 2
And said this, I think is the the practical answer to what you’ve been suggesting.
00:44:40 Speaker 2
We will open a somewhat similar office in Ottawa.
00:44:44 Speaker 2
And we will record members of the House of Commons.
00:44:48 Speaker 2
Who sit for ridings in which any of our stations are heard.
00:44:53 Speaker 2
And he entered into an informal basis, an informal partnership.
00:44:57 Speaker 2
Arrangement with another Rep known as Horace and Stolpen at the time, operating under the style of Stoven and Wright.
00:45:07 Speaker 2
Still, but it also started in Western Canada at Unity, Saskatchewan and later in Regina.
00:45:13 Speaker 2
He operated from Regina, another great network known as the Plainsman Network, which took in Regina, Saskatoon, Yorkton and Winnipeg.
00:45:23 Speaker 2
So why we shot down to Ottawa in 1944 in 1945 to open what was closed, simply the Radio Bureau.
00:45:31 Speaker 2
Action of that was to record the Members of Parliament at no charge.
00:45:36 Speaker 2
The stations paid a modest fee voluntarily to cover the cost of.
00:45:41 Speaker 2
The recordings and keeping the studio open.
00:45:44 Speaker 2
The tailor, Pearson Carson, supplied me as manager.
00:45:48 Speaker 2
And Horace Stovin supplied a chap named Chester Beachell.
00:45:52 Speaker 2
From CGFX Yorkton as the engineer’s brilliant engineer, Chester, he now occupies a senior position with the.
00:46:01 Speaker 2
National Film board.
00:46:10 Speaker 2
Brilliant engineer Chester.
00:46:12 Speaker 2
He now occupies a senior position with the National Film Board in a technical capacity.
00:46:18 Speaker 2
The idea was so successful that the industry decided to take it over.
00:46:24 Speaker 2
Everybody wanted in.
00:46:26 Speaker 2
And Harold being the type of fellow he was said, OK, We’re prepared to surrender it to.
00:46:32 Speaker 2
The CEB.
00:46:34 Speaker 2
And I had a decision to make and I went to see Harold and said.
00:46:39 Speaker 2
Harold, do you think I should do?
00:46:41 Speaker 2
Come back to work for the company in Western Canada or stay here and work for the industry?
00:46:46 Speaker 2
And he said, of course, the choice is largely yours.
00:46:49 Speaker 2
But you’re welcome to come back and work for the company, he said.
00:46:54 Speaker 2
We have an opening for an assistant manager in trail.
00:46:57 Speaker 2
And we’ll be glad to slot you in there.
00:47:00 Speaker 2
But Harold was greatly impressed by what he called Eastern experience.
00:47:06 Speaker 2
In the Prairie, Central Canada, Ontario and Montreal was always referred to as the east with a.
00:47:11 Speaker 2
Of resentment, fear and respect.
00:47:15 Speaker 2
And when Harold used phrase Eastern experience, you could hear literally the two capital’s.
00:47:22 Speaker 2
And he said if you get two or three years of eastern experience of your belt, you would be even more valuable to us than you are now.
00:47:29 Speaker 2
I think with that feeling of of Harold Carson’s, which.
00:47:33 Speaker 2
Among other things, attracted him in another phase of the story.
00:47:38 Speaker 2
Of course, to Brett Hall and Brett Hall was the epitome of Mr.
00:47:43 Speaker 2
Oh, I can remember when he held court at the old Mount Royal.
00:47:48 Speaker 2
Right.
00:47:49 Speaker 2
And that is right and held court is is an accurate description that was literally what he did.
00:47:56 Speaker 2
He had the advertising industry in this great city in the palm of his hand and he wanted to talk to Burt Hall.
00:48:01 Speaker 2
He turned up.
00:48:02 Speaker 2
At the Pickens only lounge at 12 noon.
00:48:04 Speaker 2
That’s right, with the extreme good fortune might be invited to join him at his.
00:48:09 Speaker 2
Table but yes.
00:48:11 Speaker 2
Man of immense, unending wit.
00:48:15 Speaker 2
As you know, and few people do.
00:48:18 Speaker 2
Bert Hall was an exceptionally gifted actor and at one time earned a very good living in New York as an actor.
00:48:26 Speaker 2
And the dancer?
00:48:27 Speaker 2
I think that is right.
00:48:28 Speaker 2
Extremely gifted.
00:48:30 Speaker 2
Then he married one of the singer sewing machine girls.
00:48:33 Speaker 2
And the marriage.
00:48:37 Speaker 2
Of talent.
00:48:39 Speaker 2
Stu Mackay, who is now the the President and Chief Executive officer of Selkirk Holdings, began his career at CDC.
00:48:48 Speaker 2
As an announcer.
00:48:49 Speaker 2
Rio Thomas.
00:48:52 Speaker 2
Started to see see Doris McKenzie was to die tragically a few years ago.
00:48:57 Speaker 2
Starting CJC a Paula Gee.
00:49:01 Speaker 2
OK.
00:49:02 Speaker 2
You had tremendous talent in.
00:49:05 Speaker 2
I have always felt that, Paul, he was the best announcer that Canada has ever produced and am aware of the talents of Charles Jennings and Lauren Green.
00:49:14 Speaker 2
My view is that Paul D was enormously superior to them, even in the English language and.
00:49:20 Speaker 2
He was fully bilingual in a day when bilingualism was much less common than it is now.
00:49:26 Speaker 2
Unfortunately, he too fell victim to John Barleycorn and had an untimely death.
00:49:33 Speaker 2
Oh, the succession of managers.
00:49:35 Speaker 2
There was really awesome.
00:49:38 Speaker 2
A purse gainer was the original Taylor Pearson, cursing manager originally jointly with Red McMahon.
00:49:44 Speaker 2
Who acted as a sort of supercar goal, but that arrangement was.
00:49:48 Speaker 2
And first went into the Rep business and then came back as manager of several Western Canada stations.
00:49:55 Speaker 2
Gordon Henry, who had an impact on the broadcasting business that isn’t fully understood to this day.
00:50:01 Speaker 1
He had come from general.
00:50:02 Speaker 2
Motors, Yes, originally went to work.
00:50:05 Speaker 2
He was hired by Harold from GM as a sales manager to see if they see you all agree became manager.
00:50:12 Speaker 2
And was transferred to Edmonton when Chris Gator left.
00:50:16 Speaker 2
He was succeeded by Tony Elfick.
00:50:19 Speaker 2
For whom I have.
00:50:21 Speaker 2
Totally undiluted regard, respect and affection.
00:50:26 Speaker 2
I think Tiny Elfick was the.
00:50:27 Speaker 2
Greatest single figure in the broadcasting industry?
00:50:29 Speaker 2
Ever produced delightful man.
00:50:31 Speaker 2
I worked for him.
00:50:31 Speaker 2
As you may recall, for about 6 years and yeah, I share your feeling.
00:50:35 Speaker 2
A man of enormous thoughtfulness.
00:50:36 Speaker 2
Years later, when I became chief executive officer of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters.
00:50:43 Speaker 2
Tiny one year was the elected president thereof.
00:50:46 Speaker 2
In those years, the President has normally served for one year.
00:50:49 Speaker 2
But Tiny was this kind of fellow that we had a great deal of business to do.
00:50:54 Speaker 2
And it would come 5:36, o’clock and tiny would say, look, I know what kind of business you’re in.
00:51:02 Speaker 2
And he said, why don’t you call your wife and the three of us will have dinner.
00:51:06 Speaker 2
Together at the shuttle grill.
00:51:08 Speaker 2
That he had that kind of thoughtfulness and immensely thoughtful and perceptive man, very forward-looking.
00:51:18 Speaker 2
CGC produced and ignored.
00:51:20 Speaker 2
He was succeeded by Jerry Gates.
00:51:22 Speaker 2
Who was almost as talented as tiny.
00:51:26 Speaker 2
Jerry, a man of immense talent, had one curious weakness.
00:51:29 Speaker 2
He was lazy.
00:51:32 Speaker 2
He was incapable, really, of following through many of the magnificent ideas he developed and it didn’t bother Jerry very much really.
00:51:39 Speaker 2
He had so much talent that he didn’t have to use it all, but the station produced the Jack Dawson later to become famous on CFRB.
00:51:49 Speaker 2
Started at CJC but spent most of his Western career.
00:51:54 Speaker 2
In Edmonton, yes, yes, Ed Bryant, who later became.
00:51:59 Speaker 2
Tourist promotion manager for the Alberta government and is now president.
00:52:04 Speaker 2
Of the Canadian Travel Association started at CCA.
00:52:09 Speaker 2
In Edmonton, Ernest Cote.
00:52:12 Speaker 2
He’s had a brilliant career in the Government of Canada and is now Deputy Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources.
00:52:17 Speaker 2
Began his career there as a part-time announcer in the French language.
00:52:22 Speaker 2
We carried a French language program or cleared the dune.
00:52:26 Speaker 2
To the CRBC network and he announced it.
00:52:30 Speaker 2
It was incredible.
00:52:32 Speaker 2
The the flowering of talent I thought last night.
00:52:37 Speaker 2
Of a comment that I received in the West recently when we were having a dinner, but it didn’t seem appropriate to bring it up because of the company at dinner, which included actual results.
00:52:52 Speaker 2
It was only last night how we met.
00:52:57 Speaker 2
Former head of the CBC.
00:53:01 Speaker 2
And Ernie Steele, who is now president of CAB.
00:53:10 Speaker 2
And the comment that I received in the West was that had Canadian broadcasting been headed?
00:53:15 Speaker 2
And developed and patterned blueprint.
00:53:20 Speaker 2
By Harold Carson and Davidson Dunton.
00:53:24 Speaker 2
As a as a partnership.
00:53:27 Speaker 2
With the team, if you like, we would have better vastly better system than we have today without question, without question.
00:53:35 Speaker 2
Incidentally, they both, although on different sides of the fence, so to speak.
00:53:40 Speaker 2
Had a tremendous regard and respect for each other.
00:53:42 Speaker 2
Yes, and got along extremely well.
00:53:44 Speaker 2
But they both had perception and vision.
00:53:47 Speaker 2
Harold had unlimited vision.
00:53:50 Speaker 2
He got, as you know it in the transcription business.
00:53:52 Speaker 2
Before anybody else.
00:53:55 Speaker 2
All all Canada radio facilities became a transcription company, even more than a Rep company at one stage.
00:54:02 Speaker 2
And that has led to skills, and that’s why they got into it originally.
00:54:07 Speaker 2
And they produced a surprising amount of of Canadian material.
00:54:10 Speaker 2
They did more than import from the.
00:54:11 Speaker 2
United States.
00:54:13 Speaker 2
They produced a program called Reflections and my memory is that that got Denny Vaughn started on his.
00:54:18 Speaker 2
Career it was sponsored by.
00:54:23 Speaker 2
Doesn’t matter.
00:54:24 Speaker 2
Well, they, they poured an immense amount of money into Canadian production.
00:54:31 Speaker 2
But to revert to the CAB shortly after the radio Bureau was, so to speak, nationalized, and I became an employee of the CAB.
00:54:39 Speaker 2
That organization invited me to become its public relations director, and again I was handed two jobs.
00:54:46 Speaker 2
Running the Radio Bureau for the industry and also acting as their peer director.
00:54:51 Speaker 2
The CAB at that time was in a state of considerable disarray.
00:54:55 Speaker 2
Shortly after I was appointed.
00:54:57 Speaker 2
To the position of PR director, the cab firing.
00:55:01 Speaker 2
It’s then president and general manager Glenn Bannerman, under particularly cruel.
00:55:07 Speaker 2
And I think illegal circumstances.
00:55:10 Speaker 2
The cab has always had a very bad labor record.
00:55:13 Speaker 2
It has invariably treated its employees extremely badly.
00:55:18 Speaker 2
As I was to find.
00:55:20 Speaker 2
The organization then drifted for about a year.
00:55:24 Speaker 2
The I reported directed to the Board of Directors.
00:55:27 Speaker 2
They had no chief executive officer at all.
00:55:30 Speaker 2
Of course, you know, as an extenuating circumstance, as you know, better than most people association work is at its best, thankless.
00:55:42 Speaker 2
It’s not a career I would recommend to anybody.
00:55:45 Speaker 2
And yet it has given you a rich full.
00:55:52 Speaker 2
Yes, I.
00:55:52 Speaker 2
Broadcast, yes, but with all that irritation, the the circumstances were extremely unusual.
00:55:53 Speaker 2
A full life.
00:55:54 Speaker 2
A very full.
00:56:01 Speaker 2
They drifted for nearly 18 months as no head officer at all.
00:56:06 Speaker 2
And then they brought in an engineer, Henry Dawson, from CGE with the title of general manager.
00:56:14 Speaker 2
Harry served for about a year.
00:56:17 Speaker 2
And then resigned in a burst of fury because the board of Directors reversed a decision.
00:56:22 Speaker 2
Of its own.
00:56:24 Speaker 2
He had asked him to enforce the reversal when he had considerable difficulty in forcing the original decision.
00:56:30 Speaker 2
And since he had a profession, that of engineering, he went back to CGE and is now an officer of considerable importance in that company.
00:56:39 Speaker 2
They then drifted for another 18 months with no manager at all.
00:56:44 Speaker 2
And at an annual meeting in 1948 in Quebec City, I was approached by a small committee.
00:56:51 Speaker 2
Comprised of Harry Sedgwick, George Sedgwick, the then attorney for a brilliant lawyer for the CB.
00:56:58 Speaker 2
And disgrace.
00:57:00 Speaker 2
And they said any fact, and practically in these words.
00:57:04 Speaker 2
We have talked to about 16 or 17.
00:57:07 Speaker 2
Distinguished people asking them to become head of the cab, and they all turned us down.
00:57:14 Speaker 2
We’re now down to you.
00:57:17 Speaker 2
Would you care to take on the job?
00:57:20 Speaker 2
And Joe Sedgwick had, I think, frankly referred to young as 31 or 32 at the time.
00:57:28 Speaker 2
And they invited me to become president.
00:57:30 Speaker 2
Of the cab.
00:57:32 Speaker 2
I was aware of the fact that one of the reasons that Bannerman was fired is the result of a vicious palace revolution.
00:57:39 Speaker 2
Was it a segment of the membership?
00:57:42 Speaker 2
Objected to the chief executive officer having the title and style of president.
00:57:47 Speaker 2
They felt that should be occupied by an elected person.
00:57:51 Speaker 2
So I said no.
00:57:52 Speaker 2
I was prepared to become chief Executive officer on condition that.
00:57:56 Speaker 2
The title would be general manager and I would report to an elected president.
00:58:01 Speaker 2
That I was to have full control over the hiring and firing of staff, which my predecessor did not have.
00:58:07 Speaker 2
His staff was appointed by the Board of Directors and at the head office we moved to Ottawa.
00:58:12 Speaker 2
From Toronto, where it had been.
00:58:15 Speaker 2
It was originally in the first year of the CFB’s existence 1926 in Montreal.
00:58:20 Speaker 2
They moved it to Toronto in 27. I moved it in that year, 48 to Ottawa.
00:58:26 Speaker 2
They met all those conditions and I became the the chief executive officer of the CEB.
00:58:32 Speaker 2
And continued in that post until 1973.
00:58:36 Speaker 2
At which time, oddly history repeated.
00:58:38 Speaker 2
Yes, yes, virtually the same group of people who have been responsible for Bannerman’s dismissal.
00:58:45 Speaker 2
Reversed their position.
00:58:48 Speaker 2
And felt that the chief executive officer should have the style and title of president.
00:58:53 Speaker 2
And the elected head should be known as chairman of the board.
00:58:57 Speaker 2
Some of them did genuinely believe that this was a good political move.
00:59:02 Speaker 2
By that time, inevitably I had made some enemies in the business.
00:59:06 Speaker 2
I was particularly outspoken on my views about multiple ownership.
00:59:11 Speaker 2
Which they then are paused until a pause in the broadcasting business.
00:59:15 Speaker 2
I have nothing against multiple ownership and other businesses.
00:59:17 Speaker 2
I think it has advantages.
00:59:19 Speaker 2
But in the communications business, I think it’s wrong.
00:59:22 Speaker 2
I am greatly in favor of.
00:59:24 Speaker 2
Diversified, diffused local ownership.
00:59:28 Speaker 2
And I said so frequently.
00:59:30 Speaker 2
So that palace revolution and it was not the first one.
00:59:34 Speaker 2
Was in some people’s minds merely a means of getting rid of vallard.
00:59:38 Speaker 2
Let’s just talk about that multiple ownership.
00:59:43 Speaker 2
Philosophy of yours for a moment, Jim.
00:59:47 Speaker 2
Selkirk Holdings, of course, is.
00:59:51 Speaker 2
I guess a multiple owner right indeed.
00:59:53 Speaker 2
On a large scale.
00:59:57 Speaker 2
But I’m not aware that that has.
01:00:02 Speaker 2
Being any has worked.
01:00:03 Speaker 2
Any disadvantage to the communities in which they have broadcasting operations and they probably are exceptions to that statement, but they’ve been in the case of self, you’re quite the contrary.
01:00:15 Speaker 2
But then, of course, Selkirk always had and still has.
01:00:19 Speaker 2
A tradition of almost total local autonomy.
01:00:22 Speaker 2
There’s not the ownership that bothers you so much.
01:00:25 Speaker 2
No, it’s the fact that in other cases there is no such thing as autonomy, right in the case of Selkirk, they’re still is.
01:00:32 Speaker 2
Their managers run their stations and they’re very much a part of the community.
01:00:37 Speaker 2
In the other cases of multiple ownership, everything is run from the head office and the only thing that’s important is the bottom line on the P&L statement. Yes, yes, very clearly.
01:00:49 Speaker 2
Selkirk is not unaware of the advantages of making rather than losing money.
01:00:55 Speaker 2
But it is not now and never has been.
01:00:57 Speaker 2
Their prime objective.
01:00:59 Speaker 2
Taylor, Pearson and Carson as individuals and as corporate operators.
01:01:05 Speaker 2
Were always primarily service oriented and genuinely.
01:01:09 Speaker 2
They wanted to be of service to their respective communities and were on a large scale, and that was the fundamental.
01:01:14 Speaker 2
And if they made money doing it so.
01:01:16 Speaker 2
Much the better.
01:01:17 Speaker 2
But it was not their prime objective ever.
01:01:20 Speaker 2
And I get the feeling that this is still the tradition in Selkirk.
01:01:24 Speaker 2
In the case of.
01:01:25 Speaker 2
The other multiple.
01:01:25 Speaker 2
Ownership operations the the bottom line as I put it in the P&L statement is what’s really important. Everything else is secondary.
01:01:34 Speaker 2
It sounds you know naive and and almost Pollyannaish.
01:01:42 Speaker 2
When I say that I have always believed as an individual, at any rate, that.
01:01:48 Speaker 2
In broadcasting, you will only profit as you serve.
01:01:52 Speaker 2
In any long term sense.
01:01:55 Speaker 2
Yes, I do not regard broadcasting it.