Transcript
00:00:05 Speaker 1
Well, you started with CKCK and Regina, when was that?
00:00:10 Speaker 2
Well, Ken is quite a few years ago actually 1931.
00:00:15 Speaker 1
And were you out of high school or where have you been before?
00:00:18 Speaker 2
Well, I’d been in in high school and got out of high school and there was no opportunity to go to university so.
00:00:27 Speaker 2
The YMCA had a very interesting program called find yourself, and I guess there would be about 45 young fellows that went to the Y at that time.
00:00:38 Speaker 2
So we all put in an application.
00:00:39 Speaker 2
We filled out a copious form questions and the end result was that they had a big banquet.
00:00:47 Speaker 2
And then they had leading men in various industries and professions, and fellows were allocated to each of these men, and then it was kind of, you know, career counseling and so on.
00:00:59 Speaker 2
Well, I watched all these fellows disappear.
00:01:03 Speaker 2
And I was the last one sitting and somebody said, oh, your name wouldn’t be call your with it.
00:01:08 Speaker 2
And I said yes, it is.
00:01:10 Speaker 2
Oh, well, a fellow that we’ve got earmarked for, you couldn’t make it tonight.
00:01:14 Speaker 2
He’s he’s working.
00:01:17 Speaker 2
And so I wondered what this is all about.
00:01:19 Speaker 2
And so they motioned me to come up.
00:01:21 Speaker 2
So I went up and it’s Horace Stoven over at CKCK.
00:01:28 Speaker 2
So the idea was then that I would sit down and have a talk with Horace and he asked a lot of questions and I didn’t have a lot of answers, but I guess he was mainly interested in seeing why they picked me for the radio business.
00:01:42 Speaker 2
And I sometimes wondered this thing, but nonetheless I did get picked.
00:01:48 Speaker 2
And then the job was to.
00:01:53 Speaker 2
Get some work.
00:01:55 Speaker 2
And oh gosh, I can remember going up and talking to Horace and I sometimes what made me wonder what made me so persistent, but.
00:02:03 Speaker 1
What jobs were hard to come by?
00:02:06 Speaker 2
But they finally said OK, come on in.
00:02:09 Speaker 2
And of course, I had no background at all in broadcasting and I found out that I wasn’t.
00:02:16 Speaker 2
Really the only one because there were no schools.
00:02:18 Speaker 2
It was just a case of.
00:02:20 Speaker 1
Well, you were sort of inventing where you went along, really in those days.
00:02:22 Speaker 2
This is right, this is right and.
00:02:25 Speaker 2
Oh, it was most interesting, and I’d like to tell the story about having to go after the the accountant at the leader post.
00:02:35 Speaker 2
In order to get $20.00 the odd month in order to to kind of.
00:02:39 Speaker 2
Carry on. You were not.
00:02:40 Speaker 1
I was going to ask you what you’re getting paid, but obviously you weren’t getting.
00:02:43 Speaker 2
Paid regularly?
00:02:45 Speaker 2
Well, if you could catch him when he wasn’t in his office because you never had enough nerve to.
00:02:49 Speaker 2
Go in his office.
00:02:51 Speaker 1
So you got you got paid when you could, when you could get him, when what were you doing?
00:02:55 Speaker 1
Through all of this money.
00:02:57 Speaker 2
Well, actually, when I think back on it, I worked a lot with with Burt Hooper.
00:03:06 Speaker 2
I did a certain amount of announcing in those days.
00:03:08 Speaker 2
Really just as a kid, I didn’t have too much, but I did a certain amount of it.
00:03:16 Speaker 2
Oh, there were certain filing to be done.
00:03:19 Speaker 2
You know, you were Jack of all trades.
00:03:21 Speaker 2
I think we had one girl who actually did some typing and answered the phone and it wouldn’t be any more than about five or six people.
00:03:29 Speaker 2
Around the station.
00:03:32 Speaker 1
Or what sort of announcing are we doing this record programs, record programming and.
00:03:41 Speaker 2
You see, we shared the day or the whole week 5050 with another station, CHWC, which was owned by the RH Williams Store. So we’d come out at 9:00 o’clock in the morning and go till 10.
00:03:55 Speaker 2
And then we would sign off and the other station would come on and we’d alternate like this throughout the day.
00:04:01 Speaker 2
And then we would share time at night.
00:04:04 Speaker 2
I think we had three nights a week.
00:04:06 Speaker 2
They had three nights a week and then we split Sundays.
00:04:10 Speaker 1
I’ve been trying to.
00:04:10 Speaker 1
I’ve been asking people why why these shared frequencies, because they were the, you know, they were more common than exceptional when radio started was a matter of economics or was it a matter of regulation?
00:04:26 Speaker 2
Can I really don’t know that and that that’s a question that’s never entered my mind.
00:04:31 Speaker 2
I do know that.
00:04:34 Speaker 2
CKCK in the early days operated on about four different channels, so the Department of Transport, I would imagine, would be the the allocator of frequencies in those days.
00:04:47 Speaker 2
Why it was shared I don’t know.
00:04:50 Speaker 1
Because it was. It was.
00:04:52 Speaker 1
It was.
00:04:52 Speaker 1
It happened all over the place.
00:04:53
Yeah, that’s right.
00:04:54 Speaker 1
But it was very common.
00:04:55 Speaker 2
You know, it was odd the station started up in 1922 and it didn’t go commercial.
00:05:02 Speaker 2
Until 1929.
00:05:05 Speaker 2
While the other station that we shared time was CHWC, they want commercial 1925.
00:05:13 Speaker 2
But we went commercial in 29. Well, I wasn’t there then, but that’s when Horace Stoven, who was well known in the industry and you’ve likely had this mentioned many times to you, Horace, who was a druggist, and Unity, Saskatchewan.
00:05:29 Speaker 1
I didn’t know that that I hadn’t heard.
00:05:32 Speaker 2
You know, and he he came in and made an arrangement to lease the equipment.
00:05:40 Speaker 2
And leased the the studios as they then existed and the revenue which was sparse, believe me, a dollar for announcement and if you can get $0.50 that was worthwhile went to the leader post and they had an arrangement like this and he operated that for.
00:05:59 Speaker 2
29 I believe about four or five years of my memory. Serves me right.
00:06:05 Speaker 1
So he was the one that really put it on the commercial basis.
00:06:07 Speaker 1
What kind of studio space did you have in control room space?
00:06:11 Speaker 1
Did you have?
00:06:13 Speaker 2
The control room space would be roughly an area about this size.
00:06:18 Speaker 2
What would that be 9 by about 12 and the transmitter was right in the in the control room.
00:06:21 Speaker 1
Probably not married.
00:06:25 Speaker 1
How many watts was it?
00:06:27 Speaker 2
We had, well, the station started out with 50 when I went there we had 500 and we didn’t move into increased waddies total much much later. And then we had two turntables.
00:06:45 Speaker 2
I think of it now by comparison to wonder. They’re just ordinary 78 revolutions per minute.
00:06:52 Speaker 1
They they were had by Hope had been electrified by that time.
00:06:55 Speaker 1
Some stations actually used the old.
00:06:55 Speaker 2
Oh yes.
00:06:57 Speaker 2
There was no crank where we no no crank and then the studios.
00:07:03 Speaker 2
The studios are quite interesting.
00:07:05 Speaker 2
Because we had the the usual big window to look into the.
00:07:08 Speaker 2
Studio and these studios, they occupied an area, a big room where the editorial staff and the and the reporters or the leader post were.
00:07:20 Speaker 2
And they had taken some straw from the prairies and through some pressing machine, and they pressed straw bats that were about 3-4 inches thick. And they put these on the wall.
00:07:32 Speaker 2
Then they drink them and this is the way the studio was.
00:07:35 Speaker 1
Set up and that’s what it had.
00:07:37 Speaker 1
Its usual piano and potted.
00:07:39 Speaker 2
There was a piano and all that.
00:07:40 Speaker 2
It was too dark for a potted plant to plant.
00:07:44 Speaker 2
Would have died.
00:07:45 Speaker 2
But I must tell you.
00:07:48 Speaker 2
Both this straw we had.
00:07:51 Speaker 2
This is, oh, I guess being the 30.
00:07:55 Speaker 2
Early 30s thirty 13233 buddy and booty and Buddy Matheson, and this was a girl sister act and they played two pianos.
00:08:10 Speaker 2
And I could remember this one day they were on the air and the announcer was standing up and introducing this next number, and then all of a sudden the mouse came out.
00:08:19 Speaker 2
Well, that’s it.
00:08:21 Speaker 2
Everybody in in hysterics, especially the two girls, and there had to be a lot of explaining why the girls weren’t.
00:08:28 Speaker 2
In the high shirts.
00:08:30 Speaker 1
Well, of course everything was done live in those days.
00:08:33 Speaker 1
There were no no recording facilities.
00:08:35 Speaker 1
Well, no recording facility.
00:08:37 Speaker 1
Had the big transcriptions that if you didn’t delay your program at all, no.
00:08:41 Speaker 2
No living on there were.
00:08:44 Speaker 2
Recordings or tapes it all had to be done right on the.
00:08:48 Speaker 1
Spot what sort of programming were you doing?
00:08:50 Speaker 1
You mentioned the girl piano duo, and what else did you have on?
00:08:55 Speaker 2
Well, there was.
00:09:01 Speaker 2
Helen and Bill Morton, which is a brother and sister act Helen.
00:09:09 Speaker 2
Actually, she was the gal around the studio that did the typing and she was also quite an accomplished singer.
00:09:15 Speaker 2
And her brother Bill was a tenor, and they performed on a regular basis.
00:09:24 Speaker 2
Gee, now you’re asking me to reach.
00:09:28 Speaker 2
I know we did some broadcasting from.
00:09:33 Speaker 2
Dark Hall, we would have an organ.
00:09:40 Speaker 2
Chapay name is Cheryl Hampshire.
00:09:41 Speaker 2
I believe he’s now down in eastern Canada playing Oregon for one of the churches down there.
00:09:50 Speaker 2
That would be Oregon, piano Helen and Bill Morrison from the Dark Hall, which is a concert.
00:09:57 Speaker 2
Concert area.
00:10:01 Speaker 2
But frankly, most of it.
00:10:02 Speaker 2
Was records you know?
00:10:06 Speaker 1
Well, the people who did appear live on the program on on air.
00:10:10 Speaker 1
Were you paying them by that time?
00:10:12 Speaker 1
Where they’re still doing it mostly for the love of the.
00:10:15 Speaker 2
Exposure. Oh, there was that.
00:10:18 Speaker 2
A little I.
00:10:19 Speaker 2
Get a kick out of Helen Morton telling the story about Horace trying to get her to come down and do some singing and he says I’ll even pay you $5. Beyond that it it, it was just a token payment really, because the the money that was coming into the station.
00:10:39 Speaker 2
Was not sufficient to warrant it.
00:10:41 Speaker 1
Was fully newspapers, although they got into the broadcasting business, by and large, never seemed to be convinced that radio was here to stay.
00:10:51 Speaker 2
I sometimes wonder whether they got into it because they felt it was here to stay, or whether it was because if they got control over it.
00:10:59 Speaker 2
Then this big ugly thing called Radio wouldn’t become too competitive.
00:11:04 Speaker 1
Well, this is what John Baldwin was saying this morning that what they really wanted to do was to hang on to that.
00:11:10 Speaker 1
As he said that one advertising dollar, they didn’t realize that there wasn’t one.
00:11:14 Speaker 1
There were several advertising dollars.
00:11:19 Speaker 2
You know, I was thinking about this.
00:11:20 Speaker 2
Coming down and I can remember.
00:11:23 Speaker 2
Bert Hooper, particularly.
00:11:26 Speaker 2
Oh, we had to have new tubes and it was hard to get money out of the leader post even to buy a a tube for the transmitter.
00:11:36 Speaker 2
Well, there was a lot of different things that he wanted to do around there and he just couldn’t get the money.
00:11:41 Speaker 2
And it wasn’t. I don’t believe that they didn’t have it. But of course prior to 1929 it was a non commercial operation and be considered basically an expense item.
00:11:57 Speaker 1
So once you had your apprenticeship served and there, what did you move on?
00:12:01 Speaker 1
Did you eventually became managers CKCK, did you?
00:12:04 Speaker 2
Know no, I I didn’t.
00:12:09 Speaker 2
All we carried on there and then the Old Canada Group of which you mentioned, Johnny Baldwin, he was with the Old Canada group.
00:12:16 Speaker 2
But that was Harold Carson and the group from Calgary.
00:12:19 Speaker 2
And they moved in.
00:12:22 Speaker 2
About 1936.
00:12:26 Speaker 2
And this then made it really commercial after Horace Stoven left and they came in.
00:12:32 Speaker 2
And I left CKCK 1949. Ohh and I went up to manage CK.
00:12:41 Speaker 2
Cjob in North Battleford.
00:12:45 Speaker 1
Well, I presume by the time you left, you’d been through all phases of the operations and done just about everything.
00:12:50 Speaker 2
Well, I was getting itchy and I wanted to get higher and.
00:12:55 Speaker 2
There wasn’t the opportunity at that moment and so I just decided the best thing to do.
00:12:59 Speaker 1
There’s still.
00:13:00 Speaker 1
Would be to move on.
00:13:01 Speaker 1
Was still being managed by the.
00:13:03 Speaker 2
Old Canada.
00:13:04 Speaker 2
Yeah, that’s right and.
00:13:09 Speaker 2
I’ve never regretted it, and I I would make a suggestion to any man in any business move.
00:13:17 Speaker 2
Because when that happened, as far as I was concerned, this has opened up that I.
00:13:22 Speaker 2
Never even imagined.
00:13:24 Speaker 1
What it gives you?
00:13:29 Speaker 2
I must say this is good coffee.
00:13:32 Speaker 2
Now that you let the machine turn.
00:13:39 Speaker 2
But I did want to mention to you about the equipment we got into these large transcripts.
00:13:48 Speaker 2
And this was mainly because the RCA Victor people down in the states came out with a service called Thesaurus.
00:13:56 Speaker 2
You’ve possibly heard it mentioned and well, they had top stars and there was bands of music on these large records well.
00:13:56 Speaker 1
When we program.
00:14:05 Speaker 2
This equipment came from the northern electric people.
00:14:08 Speaker 2
And it took up a space about 9 feet by 9 feet, two big tables, and in order to move the program from 1 turntable to another, you had to have somebody outside the control room turning this great big what we call a rheostat to one side or the other, and make sure that the music was coming from the right turntable.
00:14:29 Speaker 2
It was the most cumbersome thing.
00:14:31 Speaker 1
Well, why? Why?
00:14:32 Speaker 1
Would they have to be outside doing?
00:14:33 Speaker 1
This because there wasn’t room for it.
00:14:34 Speaker 2
Well, because this was something new, so we had to make room for it in another.
00:14:34 Speaker 1
Makes sense.
00:14:40 Speaker 2
Area away from the transmitter and the control room.
00:14:44 Speaker 2
And it was really part of the of the General Office.
00:14:49 Speaker 2
Space. Was it?
00:14:50 Speaker 2
This was a very premium, believe me.
00:14:52 Speaker 2
But you know, there was a chap and I, I must mention this because I know a lot of the fellows were this fellow, Morris Wetzel.
00:14:59 Speaker 2
Morris Wetzel was out of Chicago and he represented.
00:15:04 Speaker 2
The Thesaurus Program library and this man would come to town on a yearly basis and he had an old broken down hat and as soon as you saw that man, regardless of what city in.
00:15:16 Speaker 2
Canada and you walk up behind them.
00:15:19 Speaker 2
You could guess that it was Morris Wetzel.
00:15:20 Speaker 2
He was a character from, I don’t know where, but he did a tremendous job of selling this service all across Canada.
00:15:27 Speaker 1
Well, prior to that, the only recordings you had you said with the old 70 eights, many of which I assume you board from the local music store.
00:15:35 Speaker 2
Well, you hit on a very good thing.
00:15:37 Speaker 2
You know, because we used to go down, there was WGF size and company right next door to the leader post building.
00:15:45 Speaker 2
And we had permission to go down to to their music library and pick up some of the the records and take them up and play them and then take them back.
00:15:54 Speaker 2
And of course, they received a credit and this assisted them in in selling some.
00:16:00 Speaker 2
Of the records.
00:16:01 Speaker 2
I’m glad you brought that up.
00:16:02 Speaker 2
I forgot all about that one.
00:16:05 Speaker 2
There’s many little tricks of those days that you kind of forget about.
00:16:08 Speaker 1
Well, did did you get older?
00:16:09 Speaker 1
And one of the big features of radio in those days and earlier was going going out to the local churches and dance halls.
00:16:15 Speaker 1
We were involved in the remote part of this operation.
00:16:19 Speaker 1
It’s all.
00:16:20 Speaker 2
Well, I I can say this that.
00:16:24 Speaker 2
And CKK was the 1st.
00:16:27 Speaker 2
Broadcasting station in the world.
00:16:31 Speaker 2
And this is documented by some clippings I have here from the paper.
00:16:35 Speaker 2
They put the first church broadcast on in the world, and if you just don’t mind me leafing through these, come up with it here and there.
00:16:48 Speaker 2
Mozart was here. Here we are here. And that was on February the 11th, 1923.
00:17:01 Speaker 2
A long time ago they don’t cast 2 services that day, the morning and the afternoon or the evening, and they were from Carmichael Church.
00:17:11 Speaker 2
And the minister was Reverend JW Willans. WHILLANS.
00:17:21 Speaker 2
And they worked with the Department of Telephones, who were very interested in radio in those days and.
00:17:28 Speaker 2
Then it goes on to tell the story here.
00:17:37 Speaker 2
A few months later, a Toronto station broadcast from a Toronto theater on a on a remote control arrangement.
00:17:47 Speaker 2
And then it was not until a year after that that the first church service was broadcast in the British Isles.
00:17:54 Speaker 2
And this is amazing.
00:17:55 Speaker 2
And the service originated in Saint Martins Grand Church in London.
00:18:01 Speaker 1
I would have thought that KDKA or somebody in the states would have hit on this church broadcast idea long before.
00:18:08 Speaker 2
Well, I’ve heard you know, Bert and some of the other people in those days talk about these first broadcasts and.
00:18:17 Speaker 2
So you you take a look at the company from the paper here, I can only go along with them.
00:18:21 Speaker 2
It’s a good story.
00:18:23 Speaker 1
Well, the those we most were interesting in in view of the fact that.
00:18:30 Speaker 1
The equipment really wasn’t portable, and yet you carried it around from place to place and must have presented some interesting problems to you.
00:18:38 Speaker 2
Like, well, I can imagine it.
00:18:40 Speaker 2
It’s hard for people to realize when they see the microphone.
00:18:43 Speaker 2
When you take the one we’re using here.
00:18:45 Speaker 2
It’s not larger than the average man’s thumb.
00:18:48 Speaker 2
And yet in those days, the.
00:18:50 Speaker 2
The only way they could pick up the.
00:18:53 Speaker 2
Or any music.
00:18:55 Speaker 2
They took a telephone transmitter and.
00:18:58 Speaker 2
And you know, they were pretty raspy in those days.
00:19:01 Speaker 2
And then they had the old Victor funnel.
00:19:06 Speaker 2
Remember the effect and they have this adapted to the.
00:19:07 Speaker 1
Yeah, very.
00:19:12 Speaker 1
The telephone we sleep, we’re really.
00:19:13 Speaker 2
The the telephone mouthpiece and this is the way they they were able to.
00:19:19 Speaker 1
Well, that and that was even before the carbon mics, then you know.
00:19:20 Speaker 2
To pick up the boys.
00:19:24 Speaker 2
Yeah, that’s right.
00:19:25 Speaker 1
Which would come along.
00:19:25 Speaker 2
It wouldn’t be until.
00:19:27 Speaker 2
As I recall talking about it 1926, when the carbon likes come along, you know that around there anyway.
00:19:36 Speaker 1
Going back to your wife, the YMCA career counseling situation, how had you come to express an interest in broadcasting to them?
00:19:46 Speaker 1
You must you must have had a leaning in that direction.
00:19:50 Speaker 2
I can only conclude I I did, Ken.
00:19:54 Speaker 2
I can remember I was always down at the library reading.
00:20:02 Speaker 2
I was always doing this and possibly that showed up.
00:20:08 Speaker 1
You had.
00:20:08 Speaker 2
I can remember picking up CK.
00:20:12 Speaker 2
We lived in southern Saskatchewan.
00:20:16 Speaker 2
Prior to moving to Regina in 1926.
00:20:20 Speaker 2
So this would be a 1923 and 1924.
00:20:25 Speaker 2
There was a chat by the name of it’s amazing how names come back, fella by name of Tom Heenan.
00:20:31 Speaker 2
He was a an eccentric, but he was using the old peanut tubes and picking up KDK A and so on.
00:20:39 Speaker 2
But he was also picking up CKCK Regina and the first broadcast.
00:20:44 Speaker 2
And I can remember this.
00:20:45 Speaker 2
That’s a long time ago and he was using telephone receivers.
00:20:50 Speaker 2
Headphones, I should say in those days, and you’d put them in a big bowl.
00:20:54 Speaker 2
There was no loudspeaker.
00:20:56 Speaker 2
You just put them in a big bowl.
00:20:57 Speaker 2
And this is the.
00:20:58 Speaker 1
Way you heard it, the way you listen to it every day together.
00:20:59 Speaker 2
And I suppose.
00:21:02 Speaker 2
That this is possibly what became ingrained in me that must have shown up on the on the test in the Horn.
00:21:06 Speaker 1
You hadn’t. You hadn’t.
00:21:08 Speaker 1
On the test question here.
00:21:12 Speaker 1
Well, by the time you moved, uh.
00:21:15 Speaker 1
Out of there, your radio had really developed into pretty much its present form that as a new service and growing up during the war, it seem it became an accepted thing and gone almost into the present day.
00:21:31 Speaker 1
Disc jockey for that are you getting very close to it?
00:21:34 Speaker 1
Is away from the performance of local people, away from live performances in view.
00:21:40 Speaker 2
We got into that when I moved to Winnipeg.
00:21:44 Speaker 2
I was up in North Battleford for about four months.
00:21:49 Speaker 2
You possibly have heard the name Lloyd Moffatt, Lloyd.
00:21:57 Speaker 2
He’s quite a man.
00:21:58 Speaker 2
I sure take my hat off to him.
00:22:00 Speaker 2
He’s since passed on, unfortunately, but he came to me up in North Battleford and said say he said I’ve got an application in to get a radio station in Winnipeg.
00:22:11 Speaker 2
The end result was, it turned out, that CBW.
00:22:16 Speaker 2
In Winnipeg today took over the old CKY from the Manitoba telephones.
00:22:23 Speaker 2
And they dropped the call letter.
00:22:25 Speaker 2
So Lloyd being the the clever man that I give him credit for, decided he’d pick this up.
00:22:32 Speaker 2
So he picked up the call letter CKY, which is an old established call letter in in the Manitoba market.
00:22:39 Speaker 2
The end result we opened up this station in January the 1st 19.
00:22:46 Speaker 2
And you mentioned disc jockeys. This is then when we got into the disc jockey Operation 1950.
00:22:53 Speaker 1
The new and you abandoned really the program format with the block program idea 50 minutes.
00:22:57 Speaker 2
It developed more and more as those those days went on.
00:23:02 Speaker 1
Well, and as radio had to redefine itself after television and find some new format, if you like the new way to survive.
00:23:11 Speaker 1
It’s done very handsomely.
00:23:14 Speaker 1
I’m not too sure it’s good, but it’s there and it’s doing very nicely.
00:23:21 Speaker 1
Well, you could.
00:23:21 Speaker 1
There are two.
00:23:22 Speaker 1
I don’t know if you were involved in the sales side, but the when you started there was the and until well until you moved to North Battleford really.
00:23:31 Speaker 1
There was that prohibition against price product advertising on here that you could not mention the price of the item.
00:23:41 Speaker 1
What was the genesis of that?
00:23:49 Speaker 2
I can’t say that I really know I have my own my own feelings.
00:23:53 Speaker 2
Why again I would.
00:23:58 Speaker 2
Look right at a newspaper and say this is it because many of the the stations were owned and operated by newspapers all across the country.
00:24:08 Speaker 2
And I believe their lobby was such.
00:24:11 Speaker 2
And again, this is only personal, but I believe their lobby was sites that they decided that it would not be right that they should be able to mention price.
00:24:20 Speaker 1
On the air, in the same way that from several years earlier on, they kept Canadian Press and.
00:24:25 Speaker 1
And selling its its service to radio.
00:24:28 Speaker 2
That’s right.
00:24:28 Speaker 2
Exactly the same reason.
00:24:29 Speaker 1
OK.
00:24:31 Speaker 1
It’s CKCK.
00:24:32 Speaker 1
Ever use trans radio news that wireless service out of New York?
00:24:36 Speaker 1
I think it was out of New York was.
00:24:37 Speaker 1
Out of the United States, anyway.
00:24:41 Speaker 2
No, we used uh Press news with the Canadian Press and then there’s British united, where those are the only two services that.
00:24:46 Speaker 1
Yeah, that’d be in the 40s, so.
00:24:49 Speaker 1
Right.
00:24:52 Speaker 1
BUP got into it earlier than than Press news did, and they were. I think they were. They undercut CP.
00:24:59 Speaker 1
For a while, before CP loosened up and then decided where you really could use the information.
00:25:05 Speaker 2
Right.
00:25:06 Speaker 2
Well, the, the old story compensation is the birth of ideas and better service.
00:25:12 Speaker 1
What did you do for news in the early days?
00:25:14 Speaker 2
In case you really want to know, I bet you you can suspect, but we did.
00:25:21 Speaker 2
We used to put the news on. Let’s see, we would sign off at 2:30 in the afternoon and every day it was.
00:25:29 Speaker 2
Route that we had to put on the news at about 2:15.
00:25:33 Speaker 2
And the routine was we would go down to the editorial room of the paper and you know how they used to run off proofs.
00:25:42 Speaker 2
Where we get them run off an extra proof and put it on a spike for us, and we’d come up with rafts of.
00:25:49 Speaker 2
Of these proofs, and of course, we had to run through them.
00:25:54 Speaker 2
And this is the way the news was presented in those days, before we had any press service at all of our own.
00:26:01 Speaker 1
Or any idea of having your own news department?
00:26:03 Speaker 2
Oh, and have your own news department.
00:26:05 Speaker 2
Was just you never even thought about it.
00:26:09 Speaker 2
And a good many years went by before we really got our own news department.
00:26:13 Speaker 1
When was that, of course.
00:26:21 Speaker 2
Gosh Ken, I’m not too sure then that would be to to nail it right down.
00:26:27 Speaker 2
I would say.
00:26:34 Speaker 2
With the middle 60s or no, the middle middle 30s, I should say. Yeah, well, the middle 30s, I would say baby 3334.
00:26:39 Speaker 1
It’s going to say hope it.
00:26:40 Speaker 1
Was in the middle.
00:26:45 Speaker 2
We started getting into a little bit more of our own news.
00:26:49 Speaker 2
It sure wasn’t professional like it is.
00:26:52 Speaker 1
Well, of course there were.
00:26:53 Speaker 1
Again, there was still no recording equipment that you couldn’t.
00:26:55 Speaker 1
You get voice clips, you couldn’t get actuality, so.
00:26:57 Speaker 2
No, there’s nothing like this at all.
00:26:59 Speaker 2
No, and.
00:27:00 Speaker 2
The professionals were in those days in the newspaper business, so we always relied on them, especially when the station was associated with them.
00:27:12 Speaker 1
Well, the live programming you said you did some announcing when you get in front of a microphone, there’s always a good chance of getting stuck with your tongue between your teeth.
00:27:21 Speaker 1
Did you have any?
00:27:22 Speaker 1
Any problems now on air problems stand out in your mind.
00:27:29 Speaker 2
Well, I think we all did really to recall anything specific.
00:27:35 Speaker 2
I think the biggest thing that ever happened was we always like to make the other fella look like a *******.
00:27:41 Speaker 2
So we’re always anxious to make him laugh.
00:27:44 Speaker 2
And there was an awful lot of that went on and.
00:27:46 Speaker 2
It was a free.
00:27:48 Speaker 2
Easy and people would phone up and say, well, I’m glad you’re having a good time.
00:27:53 Speaker 2
You made me feel better.
00:27:54 Speaker 2
Somebody else had phoned up and say, what the hell is all that nonsense?
00:27:59 Speaker 1
You know, they didn’t understand what we were doing.
00:28:02 Speaker 2
Well, I think it was curious.
00:28:04 Speaker 2
They they couldn’t see.
00:28:04 Speaker 2
What was going on and that made them all the more curious.
00:28:09 Speaker 1
Well, again, you went.
00:28:10 Speaker 1
You went N Battleford, then into into CKY.
00:28:15 Speaker 1
Aside from television, which of course reshaped radio, really, what do you think has been the biggest change in in, in radio broadcasting from your time in it?
00:28:31 Speaker 2
Well, I believe that the greatest change.
00:28:36 Speaker 2
Is towards the talk shows.
00:28:40 Speaker 1
Of programming and sort of achieved.
00:28:44 Speaker 2
I sometimes.
00:28:46 Speaker 2
Feel that this is one of the better things that’s happened for two reasons.
00:28:53 Speaker 2
You get a good man on the end of a microphone on a talk show.
00:28:57 Speaker 2
Basically, a reporter type man and you, you get an insight into many, many things that are going on locally.
00:29:06 Speaker 2
And worldly that you’d never get any other way.
00:29:09 Speaker 2
In other words, you can get an education by listening to a good talk show today on radio that you’d never get unless you did an awful lot of reading and talking to people worldwide.
00:29:23 Speaker 2
And on top of that, there’s another axe I’ve got to grind.
00:29:27 Speaker 2
I’m out of the business.
00:29:28 Speaker 2
But the CR TC today.
00:29:32 Speaker 2
I think are doing a real injustice.
00:29:36 Speaker 2
To the listeners as a whole.
00:29:38 Speaker 2
In other words, they say to the broadcasting stations and I’m not sure, Ken what the ruling is, but I do know this, that they have to play so much Canadian content.
00:29:49 Speaker 1
30% for you for your use.
00:29:51 Speaker 2
And the end result is that this has brought along a lot of talent.
00:29:57 Speaker 2
Question mark.
00:30:01 Speaker 2
Because I like to say talent is not just strumming a guitar and singing some of these rock songs, and in my opinion, this is what’s happened today.
00:30:11 Speaker 2
Well, you know, unfortunately with me or not.
00:30:13 Speaker 1
I well, I don’t know how much got to do with the Canadian content ruling with an awful lot of big pop rock stars in the states, I don’t think.
00:30:20 Speaker 2
Well, I know, but you see the Canadian stations have to play Canadian content.
00:30:21 Speaker 1
They’re doing anything.
00:30:26 Speaker 2
Where are they going to get it?
00:30:28 Speaker 1
Well, of course, yes.
00:30:28 Speaker 2
But back back a few years ago, there was no Canadian content on records.
00:30:32 Speaker 1
Very little, but we also it also has produced, or at least given exposure to a few people that maybe if they hadn’t had it might not have gotten the exposure on Canadian radio because they were Canadian.
00:30:42 Speaker 2
Well, but it hasn’t encouraged to my knowledge.
00:30:48 Speaker 2
Light concert music.
00:30:51 Speaker 2
It hasn’t encouraged stage show music.
00:30:55 Speaker 2
Slight theatrical music that hasn’t encouraged opera or anything like this in terms of a music original composition here in Canada that that you would find on records.
00:31:10 Speaker 2
The end result is today that even a good music station.
Part 2
Transcript
00:00:02 Speaker 1
Lot of music that.
00:00:06 Speaker 1
Because of Canadian content that they can’t get their hands on.
00:00:16 Speaker 2
No, you were saying that you hear on FM at least on some FM stations.
00:00:22 Speaker 2
The kind of musical variety you were getting on radio 20 years ago.
00:00:27 Speaker 2
But wouldn’t you have to as a?
00:00:35 Speaker 2
Some FM stations, the kind of music and music variety, variety of music we used to get that radio 20 years ago and I’m just going to say as a station manager.
00:00:46 Speaker 2
In the early 50s, when the disc jockey format.
00:00:49 Speaker 2
Took over.
00:00:50 Speaker 2
Aren’t you, along with the rest of the AM industry?
00:00:53 Speaker 2
Partly responsible to the fact that we don’t get that anymore, that kind of variety, that kind of, if you like, like concert music or even classical music, because it becomes such a commercial business.
00:01:03 Speaker 1
Yeah, I like good.
00:01:04 Speaker 1
With 100% and This is why I think this such an asset, because FM today are playing the type of music.
00:01:13 Speaker 1
That well, my case today are vastly different than when I was in the broadcasting business and there are many, many people of our ages that that likes this.
00:01:25 Speaker 1
Different type of music that you get on FM and you just don’t get on am anymore.
00:01:30 Speaker 2
Well, I’ve been wondering the PRTSC has also said recently that the FM must do quote and UN quote foreground.
00:01:38 Speaker 2
Programming and I’m just wondering, do you see any possibility that this might in some form help a return even to variety shows and maybe some dramatic presentations on FM radio?
00:01:52 Speaker 2
But certainly it will never.
00:01:53 Speaker 2
Get back to AM.
00:01:55 Speaker 2
Just wondering if we might like this bring this along.
00:02:00 Speaker 1
Well, I thought you bring this up.
00:02:02 Speaker 1
I heard the manager of one of the top FM stations on the talk show.
00:02:06 Speaker 1
Not not too long ago.
00:02:09 Speaker 1
And he was telling about what they were going to do on this new format and so on and so forth.
00:02:15 Speaker 1
And the.
00:02:18 Speaker 1
The man who was heading up the the show said.
00:02:22 Speaker 1
It would seem that you fellows that old FM stations are sick and tired of carrying the station.
00:02:29 Speaker 1
Let’s say on a non commercial basis because it isn’t paying and now you want to make it commercial.
00:02:34 Speaker 1
So what are you going to do?
00:02:35 Speaker 1
You’re going to do the same with FM as what you’re doing with am now, he says.
00:02:39 Speaker 1
Does this make sense?
00:02:41 Speaker 1
And the fella sure it makes sense.
00:02:43 Speaker 1
We’ve got a pay for the operation.
00:02:47 Speaker 1
And I think there is the crux of the whole situation.
00:02:51 Speaker 1
It’s a case we want to make more money.
00:02:54 Speaker 1
And I think that they’ve lobbied down East and I gathered from this broadcast that the lobby was successful.
00:03:01 Speaker 1
But now apparently CR TC has said.
00:03:05 Speaker 1
No dice.
00:03:07 Speaker 1
And so these.
00:03:09 Speaker 1
Stations are just now sitting back and they haven’t got the the OK because there was such a human cry out here.
00:03:16 Speaker 1
We get enough of that on.
00:03:17 Speaker 1
AM let’s not.
00:03:19 Speaker 1
Use the word ****** out there.
00:03:23 Speaker 1
So I don’t know, there’s that great controversy there.
00:03:27 Speaker 2
Well, you certainly, you know, can’t go back to the old days and the old ways.
00:03:31 Speaker 2
But then the man, I suspect, the man who comes up with the workable format under these regularly.
00:03:38 Speaker 2
Is going to be a millionaire and he’s going to be widely copied and I don’t really know what that form it is and I haven’t found anybody.
00:03:44 Speaker 2
Yet who does you mean?
00:03:45 Speaker 1
For a family you know?
00:03:47 Speaker 2
That is different from the AM that meets these regulations for foreground programming.
00:03:55 Speaker 2
Whatever that is, and attracts an audience.
00:04:00 Speaker 2
Because they now I mean, as you say, they now are not going to let them simulcast.
00:04:05 Speaker 2
They’ve put a a lid on the amount of commercial time that can be sold to relatively small, particularly where it’s a combined operation.
00:04:13 Speaker 2
And they’ve said you must have foreground programming, which they’ve defined in various ways, none of them very satisfactory, but.
00:04:22 Speaker 2
I I would.
00:04:22 Speaker 2
I would like to think that it may be that we’ll we will, we will get some dramatic presentations, we may get some variety programming.
00:04:32 Speaker 2
Something in fact, you know, to listen to radio, has become essentially a background.
00:04:38 Speaker 1
Are you saying to me then that AM as it is today?
00:04:43 Speaker 1
Is void of this type of programming, so let’s get on FM. The type of programming we had 2530 years ago.
00:04:51 Speaker 2
Well, the thing you can’t go back through the well, I I’d say I’d like to see some of this, some format, some in some form or other.
00:04:53 Speaker 1
Radio theater and.
00:05:01 Speaker 2
I’d like to see some of this.
00:05:02 Speaker 2
Being done.
00:05:05 Speaker 2
As you’re well aware, probably better than I.
00:05:07 Speaker 2
Am there’s quite a resurgence in the running of the old show.
00:05:11 Speaker 2
Is the Green Hornet and the Lux Ladies Theater in Boston Black if you know where to look, you can find them on radio.
00:05:17 Speaker 2
So there’s got to be some.
00:05:19 Speaker 2
Audience out there for us.
00:05:20 Speaker 2
So why not?
00:05:21 Speaker 2
Why do we run the old shows?
00:05:22 Speaker 2
Why don’t we have our new when we have?
00:05:24 Speaker 2
New shows dealing with today’s.
00:05:27 Speaker 2
Why not take the Vancouver Little Theatre or what have you and say, OK, now put us on once a week.
00:05:34 Speaker 2
Not, you know, not every night.
00:05:36 Speaker 1
And I watered her can weather.
00:05:36
Have already.
00:05:39 Speaker 1
And of course, you know, you never know.
00:05:41 Speaker 1
Today, wondrous things are happening, but.
00:05:44 Speaker 1
I have a feeling that.
00:05:48 Speaker 1
Will never move beyond where it is today because television is offering that which you are talking about.
00:05:57 Speaker 1
By of the eye and via the ear.
00:05:58 Speaker 2
But that’s the same.
00:05:59 Speaker 2
But at the sacrifice of imagination.
00:06:02 Speaker 1
Well, I agree with you.
00:06:03 Speaker 1
Ohh I agree with you.
00:06:04 Speaker 2
And can’t watch television when you’re driving.
00:06:08 Speaker 2
No, no.
00:06:08 Speaker 2
And most of our the majority of our radios today are not sitting in the living room where they were when you started when Stobert Carlson was a great big piece of furniture there in the in.
00:06:09
Right.
00:06:18 Speaker 2
The car is here.
00:06:18 Speaker 1
Well, I I was going to say something negative, but let’s put it positively.
00:06:22 Speaker 1
I think one of the great things of radio back before television.
00:06:28 Speaker 1
Was when the Green Hornet and the shadow and some of these plays came on and we used to have the the New York Philharmonic on and so on and so forth.
00:06:38 Speaker 1
And you could sit there and you could close your eyes and you could let your imagination run.
00:06:43 Speaker 2
But you didn’t close your.
00:06:44 Speaker 2
You stared at the radio.
00:06:45 Speaker 2
I still stare at the radio.
00:06:47 Speaker 2
I still stare at the radio when it’s on.
00:06:49 Speaker 2
You have to sit there and.
00:06:50 Speaker 1
Watch the video and I think it helped.
00:06:54 Speaker 1
Young people and people of all ages to to develop imagination and use their imagination.
00:07:00 Speaker 1
And I ask you today, do you think this is the?
00:07:03 Speaker 2
Case with television. No, that’s.
00:07:04 Speaker 1
I don’t think so.
00:07:05 Speaker 2
That’s what I’m saying.
00:07:06 Speaker 2
Why can’t we have a little bit of?
00:07:08 Speaker 1
This, well, maybe somebody will come along.
00:07:12 Speaker 1
I think the big thing is it’s.
00:07:13 Speaker 2
Got to paint exactly that question.
00:07:17 Speaker 2
That’s all I’m saying.
00:07:17 Speaker 2
I think there’s an audience there.
00:07:19 Speaker 2
Well, again, there’s nothing to do.
00:07:20 Speaker 2
I’m not opportunity well.
00:07:22 Speaker 2
Uh oh, exactly.
00:07:24 Speaker 2
But I think like anything else, it’s not going to your radio station didn’t pay immediately.
00:07:30 Speaker 2
You built it up.
00:07:31 Speaker 2
I don’t think this sort of thing is going to and it will never.
00:07:34 Speaker 2
Of course, you know, take the large audience away from television entertainment, but I think there’s a place.
00:07:40 Speaker 2
On part of the FMD on some stations.
00:07:42 Speaker 2
Any way to do this kind of thing not in the old format?
00:07:46 Speaker 2
Let’s say the guy who comes up with the new.
00:07:50 Speaker 2
And the guy is gonna make $1,000,000 and then so.
00:07:53 Speaker 1
Well, somebody’s going to do it because.
00:07:57 Speaker 1
You don’t have to go back too many years.
00:08:00 Speaker 1
When one man conducting a talk show for three hours was unheard of.
00:08:07 Speaker 1
Who would ever imagine that you could get the audiences they’re getting today through one man talking to people and taking phone calls well.
00:08:16 Speaker 2
I would.
00:08:16 Speaker 2
I was wondering, too bad in the days when you started.
00:08:19 Speaker 2
Of course there was.
00:08:19 Speaker 2
There seemed to be a great deal of audience interaction with the station and all sorts of letters and all sorts of.
00:08:26 Speaker 2
Phone calls.
00:08:26 Speaker 2
People calling up and and so on.
00:08:28 Speaker 2
Was that the Genesis or was that the forerunner of today’s talk show where the letters and used to have meal bag programs?
00:08:35 Speaker 2
People would write in, you would be they.
00:08:36 Speaker 2
Would read the.
00:08:38 Speaker 2
Read the letters.
00:08:41 Speaker 2
Telephone order.
00:08:41 Speaker 1
Well, I know when we’re in Winnipeg, I think we did more down there to encourage writers.
00:08:47 Speaker 1
Mind you, here was a new broadcasting station and we had many.
00:08:53 Speaker 1
I’m going to use the word.
00:08:54 Speaker 1
Angles give.
00:08:55 Speaker 1
Me to encourage people to write in.
00:08:59 Speaker 1
Sometimes it was a contest tied in with a commercial program, which we could go out and sell because we had proof that we had a a good audience and this was the replies that were coming in.
00:09:12 Speaker 1
And then there would be the ladies programs where there were recipes and so on and so forth.
00:09:17 Speaker 1
So it could have been the forerunner.
00:09:19 Speaker 1
And yet, in those days we couldn’t.
00:09:21 Speaker 1
We couldn’t.
00:09:22 Speaker 1
See it? Mm-hmm.
00:09:23 Speaker 1
Or maybe it was just a case of the be too early in the in the business.
00:09:41 Speaker 1
And yet, in those days we couldn’t.
00:09:43 Speaker 1
We couldn’t see.
00:09:43 Speaker 1
It, or maybe it was just case, it would be too early in the.
00:09:50 Speaker 1
In the business.
00:09:50 Speaker 2
That’s really good.
00:09:51 Speaker 1
Or in the broadcasting industry, to bring that on.
00:09:54 Speaker 1
You the evolution I.
00:09:55 Speaker 2
Guess you used to be able to get mail within a.
00:09:58 Speaker 2
Reasonable time.
00:10:00 Speaker 1
Now, now, now.
00:10:02 Speaker 1
This is right.
00:10:04 Speaker 2
One story was was told to me this musical group was supposed to be on and I forgotten what station where they were supposed to be on.
00:10:11 Speaker 2
On a Saturday night.
00:10:13 Speaker 2
And at the last minute.
00:10:15 Speaker 2
The their time was preempted the the guy at I think actually sold that half hour to somebody.
00:10:21 Speaker 2
So they say you’re not going to I’m.
00:10:22 Speaker 2
Going to do something else, but you know on Monday morning they were whole batch of letters saying what a great program knows that orchestra had put on.
00:10:29 Speaker 2
They had written it all before, so.
00:10:33 Speaker 1
No, it’s it’s amazing how you get audience response and you get it on the least suspected approach or or or type of program that you’d be putting on.
00:10:46 Speaker 1
And I think that the personality that is projected on the air in those days had an awful lot to do with it.
00:10:52 Speaker 1
People seem to sense a warm voice and the attention that’s paid today to.
00:11:01 Speaker 1
Getting quality announcers on the air.
00:11:03 Speaker 1
It’s just not the same.
00:11:05 Speaker 1
Anybody that can talk is on the air today.
00:11:08 Speaker 2
Anyway, that could make noise.
00:11:09 Speaker 2
I I question whether some of what you hear is really talking.
00:11:13 Speaker 2
Agree with me?
00:11:14 Speaker 2
Oh, certainly, certainly.
00:11:16 Speaker 1
That I think are some of the fellows that they used to be the top flight announcers.
00:11:20 Speaker 1
Well, you remember Jack Bennett and Ohh a lot of these fellas.
00:11:23 Speaker 1
I guess he’s still down in Toronto.
00:11:25 Speaker 1
Then there was Barry Wood.
00:11:25 Speaker 2
Well, he’s dead.
00:11:26 Speaker 1
Was down to 12.
00:11:26 Speaker 2
Jack Bennett died last year.
00:11:31 Speaker 1
Then Jack came from Calgary and then there was Barry Wood, who started out here in Regina and did.
00:11:39 Speaker 1
Very well down.
00:11:40 Speaker 1
There, but he just had a natural knack of taking a piece of script and and putting it across.
00:11:46 Speaker 2
Back in those days, one of the things that’s come out in all these conversations is that you people worked.
00:11:52 Speaker 2
Let’s say atrocious hours by today’s standards.
00:11:55 Speaker 2
Then you weren’t in at 9 and off at 5 and Monday through Friday.
00:11:58 Speaker 2
It was 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But you had fun and I think wonder if some of this didn’t carry over.
00:12:06 Speaker 2
To the audience that you were, you weren’t in it as a business that if it made money, certainly early on, that was sort of accidental.
00:12:14 Speaker 2
And now it’s become a business and there are people in there who are doing a job.
00:12:20 Speaker 2
They’re not there because they’re really interested in broadcasting.
00:12:23 Speaker 1
No, there’s a.
00:12:24 Speaker 1
Big change there and you’re so right.
00:12:27 Speaker 1
The hours that many people put in in those days.
00:12:31 Speaker 1
It was hard to believe and we did have a lot of fun.
00:12:37 Speaker 1
It was nothing that was taken seriously, especially the one people that used to get serious was the the manager, the sales manager and the three salesman.
00:12:46 Speaker 1
They were serious.
00:12:47 Speaker 1
The rest of.
00:12:47 Speaker 1
The people never, never got too serious about it.
00:12:51 Speaker 1
But today it it has changed considerably.
00:12:54 Speaker 2
And would you say it was easier or more difficult for youngsters to get started in the Business Today?
00:13:01 Speaker 2
I know there are more stations, therefore there ought to be more jobs, but I just want, I mean, so many of you people sort of wandered in from the high school or you wandered in from NYC YMCA counseling.
00:13:11 Speaker 2
And he said, Gee, I’d like to get on here and Mr.
00:13:13 Speaker 2
and the guy said, sure, fine.
00:13:14 Speaker 2
Here’s a piece of coffee.
00:13:15 Speaker 2
We eat it and, you know, all of a sudden you were broadcasting.
00:13:19 Speaker 2
That really doesn’t happen much today.
00:13:23 Speaker 1
Back in those days, there were no schools.
00:13:27 Speaker 1
And it just seemed to be a natural ability that some fellows had to take the words off the piece of paper and make them sound alive and spontaneous.
00:13:38 Speaker 1
Of course, today there are schools all across the country and.
00:13:43 Speaker 1
I understand that a lot of these schools are able to turn out these fellows and they go out and get a job pretty quickly.
00:13:49 Speaker 1
They move into some of the smaller stations around the country, but gosh, you can’t.
00:13:55 Speaker 1
I I’m really not that close enough to it.
00:13:57 Speaker 1
But you know, when you speak of of people.
00:14:01 Speaker 1
Who come around and look for jobs in those early days in the broadcasting business.
00:14:08 Speaker 1
There are two men out here in particular, as a matter of fact is 1 doctor that I visit on a yearly basis and I can remember when we first came out here in 1962.
00:14:20 Speaker 1
That was suggested.
00:14:21 Speaker 1
Maybe this would be a good doctor to go to.
00:14:22 Speaker 1
So I was sitting in the lobby and this gentleman came out with a white coat on and he looked at me and I looked at him and I thought, Gee, who is this man?
00:14:34 Speaker 1
And he said say he said your face is familiar.
00:14:37 Speaker 1
Would you be from Regina?
00:14:38 Speaker 1
I said that’s right.
00:14:39 Speaker 1
Well, here it turns out to be a man that came up to the studios in Regina.
00:14:45 Speaker 1
Looking for an announcer’s job and he said I wanted to be an announcer so bad and he said, what color you told me I wouldn’t work out.
00:14:55 Speaker 1
So we said, I said the heck with it and I went out and I went to university and got my doctor’s degree in papers.
00:15:02 Speaker 1
And now here I am practicing another man who is a lawyer out here today.
00:15:08 Speaker 1
He’s one of the top men in the BC Forest Organization and he’s a an Alderman over in West Vancouver.
00:15:16 Speaker 1
His name is Lance Don Lanski.
00:15:19 Speaker 1
I can remember him coming up at a function and saying the same thing.
00:15:23 Speaker 1
He said. You remember when?
00:15:23 Speaker 1
I come up.
00:15:24 Speaker 1
I hadn’t because we used to get so many young fellas up in those days, but that was the thing to do.
00:15:29 Speaker 1
Anybody that could get into?
00:15:30 Speaker 1
The radio visit it was.
00:15:31 Speaker 2
A good thing?
00:15:33 Speaker 2
Well, again, it was like television back in the 50s.
00:15:35 Speaker 2
It was brand new and everybody everybody wanted to get it and wanted to get into it.
00:15:39 Speaker 2
Just to to find it interesting here this again clipping I presume from the the Calgary.
00:15:47 Speaker 2
Paper the step the Pete Parker who did the.
00:15:51 Speaker 2
What they say was the first hockey broadcast in the world.
00:15:54 Speaker 1
This is right.
00:15:55 Speaker 1
That’s right.
00:15:58 Speaker 1
And oddly enough, that man worked for a large departmental store in Regina and did this.
00:16:06 Speaker 2
Sort of in the spirit.
00:16:09 Speaker 1
That’s right.
00:16:12 Speaker 1
Here’s another interesting story here that I didn’t know about this until I.
00:16:19 Speaker 1
Had this clipping sent to me, the Duke of Windsor when he was the Prince of Wales.
00:16:24 Speaker 1
He wants to listen to CKCK with a set of gold plated headphones and he was traveling across the country, apparently on the Canadian National Railway.
00:16:36 Speaker 1
And when he arrived in Winnipeg, he wired his appreciation to the station for the program that they put on.
00:16:42 Speaker 2
For him were were you hooked up with the?
00:16:44 Speaker 2
CN network.
00:16:45 Speaker 1
Yes, yes.
00:16:47 Speaker 2
So so from time to time you cease being CKCK and became CNR CNRC.
00:16:53 Speaker 1
We used to carry a a concert half hour every morning after the time signal from the Dominion Observatory at 11:00 o’clock.
00:17:04 Speaker 1
This used to come on and then it was really the first continuous.
00:17:10 Speaker 2
Network. Well, that would be after the CND’s and when it was either the CRC or CBC. By that time I was still seeing it.
00:17:17 Speaker 1
No, no, no, no.
00:17:18 Speaker 1
This is a way before that, Oh yes.
00:17:22 Speaker 1
For instance here.
00:17:24 Speaker 1
The First Coast to Coast radio hookup.
00:17:29 Speaker 1
And transatlantic broadcast that was attempted in Canada was in 1927.
00:17:35 Speaker 1
And it was during the Diamond Jubilee of Confederation.
00:17:41 Speaker 1
And there were twenty stations all across the country, hooked up on this.
00:17:46 Speaker 1
To the proceedings in Ottawa at that time.
00:17:50 Speaker 2
Yeah, that was the first thing I noticed.
00:17:52 Speaker 2
I think it’s NBC is celebrating its 50th.
00:17:57 Speaker 2
And it’s funny because Canada had, as, as you pointed out, there, they had the coast to Coast network both the same year NBC was being formed and they were not.
00:18:05 Speaker 2
Coast to coast.
00:18:06 Speaker 2
To that time, right?
00:18:08 Speaker 1
Well, Canada, really, I don’t know whether we were, I don’t suppose necessarily first, but when you get back to the 1920s.
00:18:17 Speaker 1
I would say that there are many stations on the air ahead of the Americans which you’ve got KDP, A and some of those old stations.
00:18:25 Speaker 1
Pittsburgh was really one of the.
00:18:27 Speaker 2
It was one of the first but XOWA that is CSCF was by some time ahead of PDE, and they were actually on CF, and once we all there was known as XWA at the time.
00:18:36 Speaker 1
She she has.
00:18:41
Oh yeah.
00:18:43 Speaker 2
But it it was the first station first commercial station in.
00:18:47 Speaker 2
North America, when did?
00:18:48 Speaker 1
Startup 1819 teeth dating happy the old Marconi station? That’s.
00:18:54 Speaker 1
Right, that’s the.
00:18:56 Speaker 2
The the the the longest, the longest continually broadcasting commercial station in in North America.
00:19:04 Speaker 2
Not by much.
00:19:04 Speaker 2
You know the KDK A came on, I think sort of in the fall and they.
00:19:09 Speaker 2
The well, no, actually was a year. They were. Kitty Key came on with the Harding Cox election results in 1920 and the XW was on in 1919.
00:19:20 Speaker 1
But you mentioned what kind of programming did we do in those early days.
00:19:25 Speaker 1
This is before my time.
00:19:28 Speaker 1
But one of the the big things they apparently did was the bulletins used to come in on.
00:19:36 Speaker 1
On the news service associated with the newspaper and these bulletins would come in on the.
00:19:46 Speaker 1
The baseball games, for instance, New York Giants.
00:19:49 Speaker 1
And and the Yankees, when they were playing these bulletins used to come in and they would get a noise effect or a crowd effect in the background.
00:19:58 Speaker 1
And this announcer would simulate from these bulletins broadcasting right from the scene.
00:20:04 Speaker 1
We’ve likely heard of.
00:20:05 Speaker 2
This before and reconstruct the need.
00:20:06 Speaker 1
We reconstructed. We have.
00:20:09 Speaker 2
They they protect it.
00:20:10 Speaker 2
Now if you notice in all.
00:20:11
Of the.
00:20:12 Speaker 1
Oh yes, copyright advisements and copyrighted.
00:20:14 Speaker 2
Other users intended for the amusement of our listeners, any other uses is prohibited.
00:20:18 Speaker 1
Right.