Roving Mike Birthday

[cart_machine]

Around Your Radio Dial—Tonight
By DICK DIESPECKER [from column of June 7, 1950]
1500 CONSECUTIVE BROADCASTS
Tomorrow morning at 8:45, Bill Rea and His Roving Mike will take to the air over CKNW, New Westminster, for the 1500th consecutive broadcast of the series.
It is almost five years since Bill went on the air with this show, and in that time he has bumped into a lot of odd situations. He has become a regular figure on Columbia street with his hand microphone and a good length of cable so he can cover most of a city block with on-the-spot interviews. Occasionally he uses a walkie-talkie outfit and at least once, when it was too cold to go outside, he stayed in the studio and had people phone in answers to his questions.
The program is sometimes overloaded with advertising, but in spite of that, it has had its moments. One thing about Bill Rea, he is never afraid to go out on the end of a limb and saw it off behind him. Some of the questions he has asked in the past five years have made veteran radio men turn pale. But it never fazes Bill. Among other things he has asked are: “Do you think the Doukhobors should be deported to Russia?”; “Should Vancouver beaches be cleaned up?”; “Do you think there will be a lumber strike?”; “Should the toll be removed from the Patullo Bridge?”; “Would it help Bob Brown to admit New Westminster to the Western International Baseball League?”
Those are only a few of the long list. And even they are mild. On occasion he has posed questions that have just about scared the industry out of its wits. To Bill Rea, touchy questions and controversial issues are just grist for his mill. He has been asking practically anything for 1500 broadcasts and will probably go on asking such questions for another 1500 broadcasts.

[Russ_Byth]

Was it Bill Hughes that took over the broadcasts from Rea and took them to however many thousand? I seem to recall some mornings at 'NW, the broadcast number wasn't provided for the announcer to read, so they'd just make one up! Interesting to note this past week that the Armstrong Group, which bought the Gray Line Tour Bus company from Greyhound Canada a couple of years ago, shut down the Vancouver operation, citing increased competition. Armstrong also runs the Rocky and Whistler Mountaineer trains.

[Jack Bennest]

I will try to find out when Bill Hughes took over from Bill Rea but it was not long after this Diespecker column.

For the record Hughes was the youngest general manager of a Vancouver radio station - under thirty I believe. He and a cadre of
other young people like Hal Davis and Jim Cox worked at NW most of
their lives. I think if you add Barker you have the four pillars that held up
CKNW in some darker days when Rea was sick and getting ready to dump the stations to strangers.

Here is the answer Bites:

Bill Hughes - CJAT Trail BC 1944; CKWX Vancouver circa 1945; news CKNW New Westminster 1946-94; General Manager CKNW 1956 & President 1965-77; listed in 1990 edition of Guinness Book of World Records for longest running radio program, 12,000 broadcasts of Roving Mike (final total 15,083) 1950-94; President Vancouver Canucks 1972-81 and former Governer National Hockey League; provided funding for library computer system at Douglas College New Westminster which named library The Bill Hughes Family Library 1999.

[cart_machine]

I will try to find out when Bill Hughes took over from Bill Rea but it was not long after this Diespecker column.

For the record Hughes was the youngest general manager of a Vancouver radio station - under thirty I believe. He and a cadre of
other young people like Hal Davis and Jim Cox worked at NW most of
their lives. I think if you add Barker you have the four pillars that held up
CKNW in some darker days when Rea was sick and getting ready to dump the stations to strangers.

Jack, Bill Hughes was doing a different interview show at about this time; I saw a mention of it in one of the columns. It couldn't have been a difficult transition to change to Roving Mike.

What I find interesting about the column above is the content of the Rea broadcasts. Bill never dealt with issues of the day whenever I listened to him.

Of course, NW wasn't running talk shows when Bill Rea was doing Roving Mike.

cArtie 51.

[Jack Bennest]

aCart51 - were you born in 1951? or is the new handle like Fahrenheit 451 or like Biff's 33 days without a flame?

Knowing Bill Hughes I agree he would have moved from the controversial nature of roving mike to the "goodmorning friends" pretty
quick - and move over to the bus terminal out of the rain.




ennestbj47