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I was pleased to get an e-mail last week from a friend
informing me that CBC Radio is celebrating its 40 year anniversary in Northern
Ontario. I am happy to say I was a small
part of that, having spent a few years as an associate producer and producer of
the morning program, Morning North.
Then, many years later, after my stint with CTV, I was invited back to
CBC as a contract producer and editor.
But let me get to the heart of the story about one of the
best days we ever enjoyed with live radio. It didn’t start out very pleasantly.
It was September 7, 1990. It was the morning after the
Ontario Election when a huge upset had taken place. Bob Rae had defeated
Liberal premier David Peterson. Now you have to understand that elections are
big things in the news business. Whoever
gets elected sets the game for your city, your province or your country for the
next few years.
Okay so in the days leading up to our election results
broadcast I have to say we were stunned to learn that CBC Toronto had been
given approval to cover the province. This was ignoring CBC Thunder Bay, CBC
Windsor, CBC Sudbury and CBC Ottawa.
This meant our morning show would be pre-empted in favour of
giving the Toronto crew the broadcast from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. Of course, the journalists in the smaller
stations such as ours were livid. We protested, but without any backing from
management, we got nowhere.
Only CBC Ottawa was able to complain loud enough to get back
the right to cover its own territory. Not us. We would be allowed roughly five
minutes each hour to insert news from our region.
That morning we all arrived for work well before 6 a.m. Of
course we were excited at the news of the political upset. But that was soon tempered
by the fact we pretty well had to sit on our hands and listen to Toronto. We
were told to be ready in case Toronto gave us the right to switch back to our
own station. Fat chance that would happen. There was clearly a line between broadcasters
and the bureaucrats.
So there we were; myself, host Peter Williams, newsroom staffers
Bill Catalano and Sherry Drysdale, noon show host and producer Benita Hart and
our technician and operator Kenny Kauffeldt.
We sat in the front office with the big window overlooking
Mackenzie Street and griped and moaned about not being able to do our own
broadcast.
Little did we expect how bad it would be. Just as the 6 a.m.
World Report news package ended, CBC Toronto came online with a quick wrap of
the election upset the night before. Part of the coverage including breaking
away to a live report from London, Ontario the hometown of defeated premier
Peterson.
Imagine our surprise when the poor reporter described he was
broadcasting live from a local arena in London where the Liberals had been
expected to celebrate Peterson’s victory. The reporter said there was no one
else there. Just him. Well Duhhhh! It was so embarassing to listen to this.
So the hour progressed. At 6:30 we did our own regional news
wrap and then a brief insert on the local election results.
I remember clearly as we sat there around 6:45 a.m. griping
how bad the Toronto broadcast was. Sherry said something like I wish we could just
do our own show. Kenny said, “we can”.
I looked at him with surprise. He looked back at me and said
anytime you want to switch back to local just tell me and we can go to a local
broadcast. I thought, well they keep
telling us to be “risk takers”. So let’s see how this works.
I quickly looked at the faces around the room and asked, do
you think we could pull off a good local show?
The response was immediate. Of course, and then they began
jumping in with names, phone numbers and story lines and interviews. It was
exciting as hell. I looked at the clock, knowing we had about 20 minutes before
going live.
One of the reporters was already on the line to Nickel Belt
MPP Floyd Laughren to get Bob Rae’s private phone number.
So things were in motion. We pulled together a bunch of live
interviews, including an exclusive with the new Premier BEFORE CBC Toronto got
him on live. We had live chats with all the newly elected candidates. We didn’t look back. It was a great program.
For the next two hours we did seat-of-the-pants live radio and it worked.
Just before 9 a.m. our host Peter was wrapping up the show
with final comments. Kenny was rolling the music to mark the end of the show.
The boss came into the studio with a big smile commenting on how good the show
sounded.
“When did Toronto give you the okay to cut away to local?”
he asked.
“They didn’t,” I replied.
His face dropped. He was horrified.
I knew my ass was in trouble, but I have to say, it was so
worth it. It was the best day.
