Radio and TV station history in Canada

A look back at various radio stations

Radio and TV station history in Canada

Postby Mike Cleaver » Wed Jan 28, 2009 11:33 pm

Due to the increasing interest in the history of Canadian radio and tv stations as many of them go dark and disappear forever, I'm going to post in this forum my recollections of the places where I've worked.
Some of you may have read the CKOV piece before, either on Top Dog's BC Radio History site or that other radio board.
I'd rather it be hosted here and on Jack's site.
Because time is slipping away and broadcasting companies have done a very poor job of keeping historical notes or pictures, I urge all of you to dig into your memorabilia for pictures and stories and post them here.
In this series, which will take us across Canada, the memories and recollections are mine.
Feel free to chime in and add your experiences and suggest corrections if you think I've forgotten anything.
I hope you will enjoy reading these and recognize some of the personalities who still are with us or who have already departed.
BTW: This is all original material, written and researched by me and therefore is copyright Mike Cleaver.
I have no objection to the content being used for educational and informational purposes with appropriate credits but any commercial or for-profit use is forbidden.
Last edited by Mike Cleaver on Thu Jan 29, 2009 3:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Mike Cleaver Broadcast Services
Engineering, News, Voice work and Consulting
Vancouver, BC, Canada

54 years experience at some of Canada's Premier Broadcasting Stations
User avatar
Mike Cleaver
Advanced Member
 
Posts: 2085
Joined: Sat Apr 29, 2006 6:56 pm
Location: Vancouver

Re: Radio and TV station history in Canada

Postby Mike Cleaver » Wed Jan 28, 2009 11:34 pm

CKOV Kelowna, BC
630 khz 1000 watts

December, 1961 – May,1967

The station was on the second floor of a building on the east side of Pandosy Street just North of Bernard Avenue.
It was a former Onion warehouse.
It was the classic ‘40’s radio layout.
It had a raised Main Control room with a 45 degree cantilevered window looking into Studio A which had the radio station’s call letters cut into the linoleum floor.
Sloping glass windows looked into the adjoining Studios B and C.
Wall and ceiling treatment consisted of 12” square perforated ceiling tile.
The Main Control Room consisted of RCA BC-3C console, beautifully modified to add two tape machine inputs at the upper right hand corner by Art Vipond, one of the best radio engineers I’ve ever encountered.
The microphone was a radio version 77DX on a customized chromed half inch pipe swivel mount.
Remote starts had been added for the 3 16” turntables, one on the left side of the console, two on the right side.
The remote start consisted of a small momentary push-button at the bottom left of the channel fader.
It activated a stepping relay to turn on and off the turntable motor.
These relays were enclosed in foam lined aluminum boxes under the turntables so they were virtually noiseless.
Slip cueing was the method used in those days but some guys were good at timing and knew when to hit the button so the table would be up to speed when it hit the first groove.
Some were not good at this, so there were a lot of “wows” on the air.
The left side turntable was an old Presto three speed rim drive formerly used as a disc cutter with a motor that could be persuaded to run backwards if you spun the platter in that direction and hit the power switch.
The two right side turntables were idler drive, Presto Pirouettes
All three were equipped with the infamous “Grey” gouger arms with GE VR-II turnaround cartridges for 78 and microgroove recordings.
We played mostly 45’s, some 33 1/3’s and occasionally 78’s.
Above the two right hand turntables were 2 Ampex 351’s with tube electronics’.
They also had a remote start button added at the bottom left of the added faders.
Other control room gear, an old three line telephone set with the separate speakerphone box, which was wired into the console through a line selector.
We were a CBC basic station at the time, carrying a lot of network programs, but only after 7pm and on weekends.
The monitor speaker was an RCA Wedge with a 15” RCA driver.
It went to background level when the control room microphone was activated.
It was hung on the wall to the left of the operating position, about 6 feet above the floor.
Headphones for the announcer-operator were available but rarely used.
We learned the proper mix using the VU meter and using the speaker at background level, actually surprisingly loud with no hollowness or feedback.
The live commercial copy book and the telephone were on custom built holders above the console.
Commercials were filed in alphabetical order and we had a bunch of dividers for markers if several commercials had to be read in a row.
Some commercials, mostly national, came on 16” transcriptions.
Locally produced commercials were on multi cut reels of tape on the 2 Ampex 351’s.
We spent most of our on air time cueing records and tapes.
There was a big studio in front of the main control room, Studio A with the requisite grand piano, the RCA Starbird boom and other RCA floor microphone and table stands.
We could run 4 microphones from this studio.
The microphones available were three RCA 74B’s and a handful of Electrovoice 630’s.
We also had the RCA studio warning lights.
Studio A also had the same RCA Monitor Wedge on the wall.
Off to the right of Main Control Room was a small studio, equipped with a desk, a monitor speaker with volume control, and an Electrovoice 630 microphone on an Electrovoice desk stand.
There was a console type key switch, spring return, for a cough switch, a headphone jack with volume control.
We used the BC-3C’s talkback system.
This studio was used when announcers performed with an operator or outside talent.
A second, larger studio off to the left of Main Control had earlier been converted to an office but still had all the connections to be used as a two microphone studio.
Also in the Main Control Room, the transmitter control for the 1000 watt RCA Transmitter operating at 630htz into a single tower.
All this was housed in a 19” Rack panel to the right of the 2 Ampex 351’s and the turntables.
We also had an RCA limiter feeding the program line, which was open pair copper to the transmitter site in Okanagan Mission.
When the power failed at the studio, which was quite frequently, we used an old manual start generator located in the Arena Motors building across the alley.
The transmitter site had emergency power, courtesy of an old generator from a World War One battleship.
We still had the old RCA audio and transmitter control console, a big RCA monitor speaker and the required remote control and transmitter monitoring equipment.
The production control room consisted of a Gates SA40 board, two 16” turntables with the Grey arms and turnaround cartridges, an RCA 44BX, bronze model on a similar chromed pipe mount, another smaller RCA monitor speaker, one Ampex 351 with tube electronics in a roll-around cabinet, a rack mounted Ampex 601, and another Ampex 601 in a portable case that was taken out on remotes.
An adjacent small studio off to the left was used for announcing and outside talent.
It had an RCA 74B for a microphone on an RCA table stand, a monitor speaker and control and headphone and control.
The newsroom consisted of a custom built Art Vipond Console, with 4 inputs.
It had a microphone input, a telephone input and two Magnecord PT6 tape transports.
It fed line level signals to the line selector in the Main Control Room.
The newsroom had a monitor speaker and control, headphone outputs and controls on both sides of the desk with an Electrovoice 630 on a boom arm that could be used on both sides of the desk.
An old teletype clacking away in the background provided newsroom ambience to broadcasts from this location and was the only source of news copy, save local correspondents and newspaper scalps.
Behind production control was the rack room with remote control equipment, various amplifiers and other equipment.
It would later house STL equipment and remote pickup equipment.
Early remotes consisted of a custom built control desk by Art Vipond.
It was a thing of beauty.
It consisted of a custom built four channel console with two Neat turntables one on each side, a microphone input and a line input for the portable Ampex 601.
We would take a tape with all the produced commercials on it and the records needed for the remote show.
The 601 was also used for remote recording where power was available.
For truly portable recording, we had two old spring motor driven Wirek machines with battery powered tube electronics.
They looked a little like a Magnecord PT6 in a box and used paper tape on 7” reels.
They were originally designed to be used with wire but had been converted to use the paper tape.
The control desk also included headphone and monitor feeds, including a monitor amp that fed two large EV Musicaster Speakers, line output amp and talkback facilities to the station.
Remotes were first by telephone line, later by RPU, which Art Vipond created from some surplus taxi cab radios.
It sounded pretty good from anywhere in the Kelowna area.
The only thing was, the station was on the second floor and the control desk had to be lugged up and down a flight of stairs.
It was transported in the station’s van, one of the first Ford Econolines.
We used to do 2 or three hour shows with this unit, with everything but newscasts coming from the remote location.
Remember, all this equipment is single channel monophonic, all tubes.
In 1962, we added RCA RT7A cartridge machines.
We had three of them, one record/play and two playback only.
All three were installed in the main control room so all could be available for playback.
An RCA switcher was used to bring the three outputs into one.
A remote control was crafted so the record machine could be fired from the production control.
This meant the on-air personality in Main Control had to load cartridges for the producer in Production Control.
Later, the record/play unit was moved to production and the machines were upgraded to RT7C’s
All the carts were stored in racks at the back of the control room.
I remember on Deejay who was fired who picked up the handheld bulk eraser and ran it down the backs of all the carts before he left!
Everything had to be re-carted.
We also tried various other types of gear.
Anyone remember Ampex CueMats?
They used flexible12” magnetic discs that looked like LPs and the machine that recorded and played them which looked like a turntable.
Or how about that Gates thing that looked like an Edison Cylinder?
Thankfully, we didn’t buy any of those.
Around 1963 or ’64, CKOV obtained an FM license.
CJOV-FM went on the air I think in ’64 or ’65.
The transmitter was on Okanogan Mountain, reachable in summer only by 4 wheel drive or helicopter and during winter, by helicopter or snow mobile.
The site had a short antenna, which was felled by ice early one winter.
The station transmitted through that winter with the antenna lying on the rocks.
The site was powered by three diesel generators, running eight hours each.
There was a huge fuel tank to keep them running for months.
During the day, it simulcast the AM programming.
However, when we got into network and religious programming from 7pm to 11pm Monday to Friday, we programmed it separately but from the same control room!
How this was accomplished was a minor miracle.
We used the B side of the board, or audition channel as RCA billed it, as the FM program source.
We’d simply put an LP on the third turntable on the B side of the board, throw the control room microphone over to B, announce the album and roll it.
We’d roll the entire side and sometimes forget about it.
The record would run out and the phone would ring, usually the FM manager, Charles Patrick, likely the only listener, to tell us to turn it over.
Later, one of the Ampex 351’s was used for tape programs.
It was not unusual to be running a religious tape on AM and a taped program on FM on either Ampex.
Later, the production studio was used for live programming after 7pm at night until 11pm.
After I left the station in 1967, the RCA BC-3C was swapped out and replaced with a transistorized RCA BC7 Stereo Console.
Turntables were replaced with McCurdy idler drives and Micro-track wood arms.
The electronics in the 351’s were upgraded to Inovonics.
The station dabbled with IGM automation for awhile, set up in Studio A but later scrapped it as unworkable.
It ran on IBM punch-cards and had Reel to Reels and cartridge carousels.
I worked there from December 1961, starting as go-fer and high school reporter for the sum of 50 cents an hour, graduating to remote operator, control room operator, assistant engineer, teen show deejay when John Tanner left to go to CFUN, Vancouver, now at a dollar an hour, night operator and deejay, moving to afternoon drive deejay and morning show host before leaving in April of 1967 to move to Lethbridge, Alberta.
At that time, I was making $350 a month!
I got my first on air break on Christmas Eve, 1961 when the operator called in sick.
I was so nervous, I forgot to shut off the transmitter at 1am.
When I started at CKOV, it was owned by Jim Browne Jr. who was the GM, Walter Grey was the morning deejay, Jack Cooper did mid-mornings.
Girlfriend Gloria (Gloria Mildenberger) did afternoons.
John Tanner did afternoon drive and we had operators at night.
After 11, it was a live deejay show until sign off at 1am.
Others who passed through the doors, Cal Coleman, Wayne Barry Heinrich,
Al Jensen and his son, known as Kid Jensen for his Radio Luxemburg days,
Greg Acres and many more whose names I can’t remember.
Jack Bews was the News Director and Morning Newscaster.
Bob Hall did sports
During those early days, we picked our own music, listened to every disc that came into the station and had distinct day parts as far as music was concerned.
We had specialty programming with guest hosts.
Scotty Angus did “Echoes of the Highlands” every Saturday night.
On New Year’s Eve, the widow of the station’s founder, “Mother Brown” would show up with her ‘78’s and a bottle and do a live show with guest drop ins and phone inserts.
It got pretty wild.
We also did a regular remote church broadcast and regular studio broadcasts for the Salvation Army.
The piano often was used live for these shows and sometimes didn’t sound very good.
We used to hide our empties in there.
At about 10pm many nights, we’d get local bands into Studio A to record them.
We’d gather up all the microphones after sign off, use the production board and the main control room board and mix live to the Ampex machine in the control room, using the second Ampex for effects, ie: reverb and phasing.
We’d usually isolate the vocalists in Studio B and put the drums in the production Studio.
We had a 77DX, a 44BX, 4-74B’s and a handful of Electrovoice 630’s to work with as well as the grand piano in Studio A.
We made some pretty good recordings, some of which actually made it to vinyl.
In the early ‘60’s, your show was your own.
There were no consultants or music directors.
Your teachers were your peers or the big US and Canadian stations you could pick up at night.
There were no broadcast schools and you were hired on talent alone.
You learned how to do everything.
The only radio or television job I’ve never done is Sales.
I remained at CKOV, rising to the post of Chief Announcer and left in April of 1967 to move to Lethbridge, Alberta.
Mike Cleaver Broadcast Services
Engineering, News, Voice work and Consulting
Vancouver, BC, Canada

54 years experience at some of Canada's Premier Broadcasting Stations
User avatar
Mike Cleaver
Advanced Member
 
Posts: 2085
Joined: Sat Apr 29, 2006 6:56 pm
Location: Vancouver

Re: Radio and TV station history in Canada

Postby Mike Cleaver » Wed Jan 28, 2009 11:38 pm

CJOC Lethbridge, Alberta 1220 khz 10,000 watts

May, 1967 – July 1971



I first arrived in Lethbridge to begin work at CJOC as evening disc jockey on May 2nd, 1967,
This was two days after a massive snowstorm had dumped 10 feet of snow on the city and surrounding area.
The station had been on the air non-stop for more than 72 hours, broadcasting emergency messages to the area.
By the time I arrived, all the snow was gone and it was like spring.
The station was located in a storefront on 3rd Avenue South.
The front of the building was all glass, with the copy, traffic and management offices along the front of the building
The main control room, talk booth and production control room were arranged right to left with a large studio on the extreme left.
You could look out onto the street from all of them.
The control rooms and talk booth were elevated 3 feet above floor level with space beneath for wiring and a large collection of vintage beer and liquor bottles, obviously dumped down a hole beneath one of the big old RCA washing machine type 16” turntables in main control.
The control rooms, on-air and production consisted of Gates SA-40 consoles.
The one on production was virgin, untouched and stock from the factory.
The main control one had been butchered by a series of amateur engineers, including one who removed the monitor control pot and replaced it with an on-off switch!
The board was canted at a 45 degree angle, giving the front panel a slope of perhaps 20 degrees.
A bud box had been added to the right side with a series of line selector switches.
Some of the wiring inside had been replaced with plastic lamp cord.
Of course, with the heat the thing generated, all the insulation had hardened and crumbled to the touch.
There was a lot of black tape inside that thing.
Somewhere along the line, someone had disconnected the console safety chains, which allowed you to tilt the thing up to service the tubes and pots and switches.
Much to my chagrin, I found this out one morning at 1am Sunday when we signed off.
It was time to change some tubes.
I tilted up the console, expecting it to catch on the safety chains.
No such luck!
The whole thing went over backwards, ripping off every unlabelled connection to the board.
Guess who sat there all night with headphones, wire strippers and a soldering iron trying to get it back ready for air at 6am?
I got most of it done in time for sign on but it never really was the same after that.
There were some leftover wires that didn’t seem to do anything.
Oh.
The safety chains went back on as well.
The tubes didn’t get checked and replaced until next Sunday.
There was a glass copy board over the console that slid back and forth on drawer slides and some sort of fixed microphone mount which could only swing from side to side.
The glass was so you could see into the talk studio, if it wasn’t cluttered with paper and the copy book.
On either side of the board, two of the aforementioned RCA 16 inch transcription turntables with the infamous Grey “gouger” viscous damped arms and GE turnaround cartridges.
They were operated by flip switches on the turntable deck.
These things had the motor in the base of the pedestal and were built like tanks with a clutch assembly and the whole works.
Above the console in a ceiling mounted cabinet were two RCA RT7A cartridge machines and two Ampex 351 tape machines, one modified to act as a tape delay with the extra playback head and pulleys using an endless loop of tape.
This cabinet also contained the very low quality monitor and cue speakers.
To the right of the console in a standard rack were the transmitter controls and monitoring equipment.
Tapes, carts and records were stowed in various areas of the control room and there was a rudimentary play list attempt by programming but for the most part, it was still select your own show and mix in these numbers.
There was also a multi line telephone/speakerphone setup for putting calls on the air.
The microphone was an AKG chrome thing I’ve never seen before or since.
It looked and sounded as if it had been used to drive nails.
In fact, the first thing I told the manager when I arrived was that the station sounded like it had 25 per cent distortion on air.
I asked him about the engineering staff.
It was two old guys who used to baby-sit the transmitter and another slightly younger guy who wasn’t too bright.
The two older guys were fired after I fired up the distortion analyzer and showed the manager my findings.
It was actually more like 27 per cent distortion at 85 per cent modulation.
The turntables produced more rumble than sound and the cart machines sounded like telephones.
The caps had all dried out.
The younger former chief engineer was demoted to Farm Director and I became interim engineer until the new one was lured away from the other radio station in town.
More about the transmitter site later.
The talk booth consisted of a telephone and two nondescript mics with cough switches and a volume control for the monitor and another for the headphones.
All these could either be switched to master control or production.
The production control room faced the street.
It had the Gates SA-40 in front, flanked by two turntables.
They were 12 inch models of some sort with the smaller Grey Arms.
The mic was the same unknown AKG but in slightly better condition than the main control room mic.
At the rear of the room were two disc cutters with matching 30 watt McIntosh MC30 tube amps to drive the cutters.
Above those in a wall mounted rack were 2 Ampex 351’s and an RCA RT7A cartridge machine and record unit.
The monitor speaker hung over the front window and to the right was the large unused studio which was filled with junk, except for an original Starbird boom stand with an RCA 44bx on it.
My brother later scored the mic for helping re-wire the control rooms.
He (at 13) was the only one who would crawl under the control rooms to string the wires!
There was a phone in there that could be used to record calls.
The newsroom and studio were at the very back of the building.
The studio was a large sized one but only a small table was used by the newscaster.
It had a reading light and a mic, a 635 on a table stand and a row of switches to fire the tape machines, five Magnecord PT6’s out in the newsroom.
It also had a cough switch.
All levels had to be preset out in the newsroom on an awful homebrew console.
The news studio had a monitor speaker with volume control and headphones with volume control.
If you wanted to put a phone call on the air, main control had to do it.
You could record phone stuff at two racks in the newsroom, using the same console and Magnecord machines.
Portable news gathering machines consisted first of Uher reel to reels and later cassette machines.
Audio clips were recorded on separate reels and cued up in the newsroom.
You’d then mark your script machine one through five and use the lever switches to fire the machine motors as they were left in play mode with the motor off.
Needless to say, if you didn’t leave enough run up time or cued the tape too tightly, you’d get a neat wow-in on the air and a wow out if you cut power before the clip ended.
Emergency power consisted of a portable gas powered generator you put outside the back door and ran an extension cord down the hall to the control room.
The audio and control lines to the transmitter were open pair copper and underground telephone pairs.
The transmitter site was down the highway towards Taber.
In the transmitter building was a generator that could run the transmitter at 5000 watts only.
We had a Continental 10kw for the main and the standby was an old 5kw/1kw Marconi.
It was three or four huge cabinets with round porthole windows.
A family could have lived inside.
When that baby was fired up, the whole building hummed.
The inside of the Continental was a nightmare!
When a part had failed, they’d hang a replacement by pigtails with the part swaying in the blower breeze.
The transmission line to the towers, there were two, was above ground.
It had at one time sustained a lightening hit, burning a hole in the line.
It had been “repaired” by putting copper screen over it and covering it with electrical tape and tar!!!!
For processing, we were using CBS Audimax and Volumax, later replaced with some updated Gates/Harris stuff after the other equipment was fried by a huge hydro line spike.
Remote gear was some old home made mixers.
For local stuff, they fed dc down the line to activate a light on the mixer when you were on air.
The only RPU we had was an old modified taxi cab unit.
It was crap.
When I rolled the van on the way to a remote one day, that unit flew out the window and embedded itself in the frozen field.
Unfortunately, it still worked.
So the new engineer and I went to work on it with rubber hammers to collect the insurance to buy a real RPU.
I went on to do news at the station as well as at the TV affiliate where I had started as the booth announcer.
At one time, I was doing noon news on radio, working at TV and doing the 6pm and 11pm local news while doing a 2 hour deejay show on radio in the evening.
The radio station was owned by Selkirk Holdings.
The manager was a great guy, John McColl.
Bob Lang was Program Director and Jack Innes was the Sales Manager.
Morning Man was Jim Elliott, Gerry Givens did mid mornings, Ken Tremaine was mid-afternoon host while Jack Thys did afternoon drive and I originally did evenings.
Later, Jim Jackson, who later would move to CKLW. the Big 8, joined the staff as evening DJ and Wayne Barry Heinrich showed up to do mid days.
He was such a shit disturber that John McColl once said he’d be great if we could keep him in a cage for 20 hours a day and just let him out to do his show.
The music director owned the local record store and always held back playing anything new until he had it in stock.
News Director was Bill Skelton and Brent Seeley was Sports Director.
Others in the newsroom included Ed Robinson, who did the talk show with Bill Matheson who was also the TV weatherman.
Radd Whitt also worked in news along with Ron Lowe.
One of the best gags we ever pulled was to play “Harper Valley PTA” over and over and over again for 4 solid hours!
When callers would phone in to complain, we’d have the song we’d announced on air playing in the background.
We kept announcing different records but kept playing “HPTA”!
We told the listeners on the phone that the radio must be too near their sink or any other thing we could make up at the time.
It was a huge promotion done for fall ratings and got everyone in the city and surrounding area talking.
After a couple of years of upgrades to the main control room, which included installing new turntables, 12 inch McCurdy idler drives with Microtrak 303 wood arms and a remote start trough in front of the console, as well as replacing control room and studio mics with Sony C37’s and the newsroom mikes with AKG 202’s, the decision was made to build a new master control.
We decided to convert the unused studio to the new master control room.
We purchased a new McCurdy Solid State Console, 10 mixers dual channel with the rotary pots, 2 new McCurdy idler drive turntables with Microtrak arms,
4 Gates/Harris Cart Machines, and two Ampex AG440’s
The cabinetry was custom designed and built by Bob MacDonald and myself.
We made the entire control room out of cardboard first and allowed the deejays to move stuff around till they found the ideal setup.
We then made the console cabinetry based on these decisions.
The console was along the front, facing the street.
Two McCurdy Studio Monitor Speakers were hung over the window in front of the console.
A trough was constructed to hold remote controls in front of the console.
We used lighted switches under each pot for the designated channels and the associated machinery.
A turntable was mounted on each side of the console.
Three Gates cart playback machines were mounted on a shelf above the turntables on pipes which contained the necessary wiring.
The two Ampex’s were in custom canted enclosures at each end of the horseshoe.
There was a rack at the right hand end to hold processing and monitoring gear as well as the station’s remote control.
We used a Flexo arm to mount an announcer and guest mic, again using the Sony C37s.
Remember those two old RCA 16” tables?
They were converted into circular cart racks on either side of the console just in front of the turntables.
They were constructed using the turntable, 400’ film cans free from the TV station, old 16” transcriptions and milled pieces of plywood, notched to fit the transcriptions and the whole thing was covered with the same wood grain
Formica as the console cabinetry.
Each ended up holding 400 carts and could easily be spun for access to the desired cart.
The cabinetry had access panels all along the sides which could be removed for maintenance work and permanent lighting was installed inside.
The old main control room was scheduled to be re done as a production room but I left before that was completed.
The newsroom was upgraded to carts and two mics before I left.
I left the station in 1971 to move to morning news at CKXL Calgary.
Mike Cleaver Broadcast Services
Engineering, News, Voice work and Consulting
Vancouver, BC, Canada

54 years experience at some of Canada's Premier Broadcasting Stations
User avatar
Mike Cleaver
Advanced Member
 
Posts: 2085
Joined: Sat Apr 29, 2006 6:56 pm
Location: Vancouver

Re: Radio and TV station history in Canada

Postby Mike Cleaver » Wed Jan 28, 2009 11:41 pm

CJLH-TV (CJOC-TV) Lethbridge May 1967 – 1971.

Shortly after my arrival at CJOC, Lethbridge, I was offered an additional job at the local TV station, CJLH-TV, at that time jointly owned by the Lethbridge Herald Newspaper and CJOC’s parent company, Selkirk Holdings.
The job was booth announcer, reading tags, promos, bumpers etc onto an Ampex 351.
I’d record the day’s run shortly after nine each morning from a booth just off the main control room, using an EV 666.
Recording would be done in the main control room as they had only the one tape machine!
Later, an audio studio was built in the basement with a small McCurdy board, reel to reel and cart machines, where the newsroom, photo shop and studio, art department and lunch room were located along with a couple of dressing rooms.
The sub basement contained storage and a huge Trane air conditioning system.
Air conditioning was blown into all the equipment racks (tubes) and in the winter, the heat from those racks would warm the entire building!
There was a large main studio with white cyclorama all around and a prop storage area off to the side.
We had one studio camera, an old RCA fitted with a zoom lens.
The studio had those huge old Kleig Scoop lights and when one of them blew, it sounded like a gunshot.
We had some other lights, not many though and the studio and art people made a lot of use of handmade filters to throw patterns on the cyclorama or backdrops.
We had an EV boom mike and a lot of RCA lavalieres.
The microphone on the newsdesk was an RCA BK5B.
The control room consisted of home made video and audio boards, a couple of RCA 16mm projectors, a balop machine (you pasted photos onto four by four glass slides) and later a huge Ampex 2” black and white videotape machine purchased from the CBC delay centre in Calgary.
It took 10 seconds to lock up!
If the studio camera crapped out, you did the news over a slide.
The news set was a curved desk in front of a back drop with what looked like a large screen TV.
It was in reality made of cardboard with a rear projection screen with a Kodak Carousel 35mm Slide projector behind, activated by a foot switch to change the slides.
Later, a second projector with dissolve unit was added, still activated by the foot switch, made out of a 100’ 16mm film can with an Ampex momentary switch mounted in it.
I moved into the TV news area, starting with anchoring the 11:20 pm local package and eventually moved into the 6pm slot when then news director Gordon Colledge went to teach at the local community college.
We did the two shows a day seven days a week.
The newsroom was small, with two work stations which comprised of manual typewriters, a radio, and a teletype.
We’d get copies of the local stories from the CJOC radio newsroom and put the whole thing together with the CBC video news feed and our local film to produce the two daily newscasts.
The news film allotment was 100’ per day!
For the uninitiated, that’s 2 and a half minutes running time if you used every millimeter of the film.
We had 16mm Bolex wind up cameras with zoom lenses, I think about 3 of them.
For sound on film, we had two Auricon’s.
One took the 100 foot reels with magnetic stripe.
The other would take the 400 foot reels.
These things weighed a ton along with the transistorized amps and home made battery belts.
We used the Auricon version of the EV 630 to capture sound with these.
We used to put the 100’ model on a porta brace with a lav mic so I could shoot and ask the interviewee questions from behind the camera.
Our chief photographer was Howie Stevenson, a giant of a man who was a genius at making something out of nothing.
We had our own 16mm film processing unit, an old chain drive thing with open tanks and editing facilities.
To make maximum use of your film allotment daily, you learned to edit in the camera, planning your shots and shooting in order if possible to minimize editing time.
I also learned to shoot, process and edit both silent and sound 16mm as well as to shoot, process and mount 35mm slides.
I also learned to operate master control and that huge beast of a VCR, push camera and do studio lighting and audio.
Around 1970, we received a prototype Sony backpack Black and White VCR/Camera combo to try out.
It too had a huge battery belt and weighed a ton and it left a lot to be desired.
It went back to Sony pretty quickly.
We had a lot of fun back in those days.
If we had to appear on camera, we’d dress top half, ie: shirt, tie and awful coloured magenta station jacket (remember this is B&W so the audience never saw how terrible it looked) with shorts and running shoes below.
There were no prompters, you learned to read with your eyes one line ahead of your mouth so you could make eye contact with the camera.
We made huge cue cards to hold under the lens of the camera for commercials though.
Bill Matheson was our weather man, he shows up again later in my Edmonton days.
Bill was a riot, the consummate entertainer and forerunner of today’s personality weathercasters.
He also did the talk show on CJOC.
In the latter part of my time at the TV station, we moved in a CTV affiliate for one of the first twin stick operations.
We recorded the CTV local cast on that old VCR and I did mine live.
We used the same copy, just a different newscaster and slightly different set.
If the network feed ever failed and it happened a lot, you’d see an old episode of
“The Donna Reid Show.”
Sure hope those folks collected royalties!
Colour never did arrive when I was there.
I left the station in 1970 after a dispute with CJOC News Director Bill Skelton who was the head of the TV news department as well.
He was the President of the local Cancer Society Chapter and ordered me to use my entire film allotment that day for the Daffodil Parade.
I said there were other things to cover but was fired by Skelton, Bob Johnston, the TV Manager and Bob Lang, the radio program manager.
Manager of TV and Radio, John McColl was on vacation when this happened and tried to re-hire me when he came back.
It was too late.
I’d already agreed to move to Calgary to do morning news at CKXL.
Mike Cleaver Broadcast Services
Engineering, News, Voice work and Consulting
Vancouver, BC, Canada

54 years experience at some of Canada's Premier Broadcasting Stations
User avatar
Mike Cleaver
Advanced Member
 
Posts: 2085
Joined: Sat Apr 29, 2006 6:56 pm
Location: Vancouver

Re: Radio and TV station history in Canada

Postby Mike Cleaver » Wed Jan 28, 2009 11:49 pm

CKXL Calgary 1140 kcs 10.000 watts

September 1971 – August 1972

The station was located on the second floor of a building on 17th Avenue Southwest.
We were still using manual typewriters at this point.
I don’t really remember much about the newsroom, except the teletype clacking away.
I think we had Ampex 601’s and Gates Cart machines and some homemade switchers.
The newsbooth had a beautiful old Neumann U47 hanging from the ceiling by three wires!
I think we had three cart playback units in there.
There was another U47 in Master Control.
I think the main control board was a McCurdy and we were running everything from cart, including all the music.
Rob Christie was the Morning Show Deejay.
I did morning news along with Dale O’Hara, the news director who hired me.
Wayne Bill was our Edmonton correspondent and Murray Dale and Murray Sherriffs were some of the other newscasters when I was there.
Bill Power was the sportscaster.
We used the CHUM Contemporary News Service via Broadband and had BN wire and voice.
It was a great year at CKXL.
The station won the Station of the Year award that year.
We had many parties.
Management there was generous and appreciative of the talent.
There were lots of free lunches and dinners, mostly at Caesar’s Steak House.
The staff liked to drink and smoke.
That sometimes meant I had to go through the morning news shift alone, as O’Hara often was missing in action.
This was the station where I learned to lie to wives and girlfriends over the phone.
One of the best tricks we pulled at ‘XL was when the provincial government of the day decided each radio, TV station and newspaper in the province needed its own government propaganda machine.
It shipped a teletype to each newsroom that constantly spewed government crap.
When ours arrived in a wood crate, we opened one side of it, filled it with as many large rocks as would fit, and shipped it back to Edmonton Air Priority Express Collect.
I think the government got the message, at least from our newsroom.
George Davies was the consultant at that time for both Moffat and CHUM.
George heard me in Calgary and recommended to Dick Smyth that I’d be perfect for Toronto.
A couple of weeks later, Smyth called and invited me to Toronto for the weekend.
First Class air tickets on Air Canada, a limo at the airport, a suite at the Inn on the Park with stocked bar were a part of the come on to move to the big city.
As I was preparing to leave for the Toronto trip, I received a call from Byron McGregor at CKLW.
He said as long as CHUM was paying to fly me to Ontario, why didn’t I stop in to see him at the same time because he’d like me to work at the Big 8, where Jim Jackson was working.
Jackson and I had worked together in Lethbridge.
I told McGregor I thought that was pretty cheap of him, trying to hire me on Smyth’s nickel.
Needless to say, I didn’t drive to Windsor.
When I arrived in Toronto, a limo took me to the hotel.
The next morning, Smyth arrived in a limousine to pick me up.
I had a look at the station, did a short audition, had lunch with Smyth and then met some of the staff at the local station watering hole, the Red Rooster or Crimson Cock as it was sometimes known.
That evening, Smyth took me to dinner at the swanky restaurant the top of the TD Centre.
I’d been told by Dale O’Hara that they’d offer only a certain sum of money to move to Toronto, so he told me to go and enjoy the weekend and then come back to Calgary to work.
So when Smyth asked me how much I wanted to come to work in Toronto, I doubled what O’Hara told me they’d offer.
Much to my surprise, Smyth said OK!
I went back to the hotel after that, called my father in Vancouver and told him what I’d been offered.
He told me to take it, it was more than he was making as a Manager at Canada Manpower.
So I flew back to Calgary, resigned, sold my car, packed up and headed to Toronto.
That was in August of 1972.
Mike Cleaver Broadcast Services
Engineering, News, Voice work and Consulting
Vancouver, BC, Canada

54 years experience at some of Canada's Premier Broadcasting Stations
User avatar
Mike Cleaver
Advanced Member
 
Posts: 2085
Joined: Sat Apr 29, 2006 6:56 pm
Location: Vancouver

Re: Radio and TV station history in Canada

Postby cart_machine » Wed Jan 28, 2009 11:52 pm

Mike Cleaver wrote:Because time is slipping away and broadcasting companies have done a very poor job of keeping historical notes or pictures,


Or thrown into the garbage. I won't mention the station. Fortunately, some of the artifacts were rescued by a staff member who knew the value of history and have been preserved. For now.

cArtie.
User avatar
cart_machine
Advanced Member
 
Posts: 1710
Joined: Tue May 09, 2006 12:52 pm
Location: The Past

Re: Radio and TV station history in Canada

Postby Jack Bennest » Thu Jan 29, 2009 12:01 am

Incredible memory Mike


I wish I had the memory of Cleaver and Peakins for the tech detail of
exactly what was before them as they climbed the rung from station to
station. Same goes for Lordy Lordy.

Each member of our team from Sys the thinner, Fred Lichota, Dan Roach, Victoriaradio, Gord Lansdell, Jim Bower, Chuck Davis, TW, Jim Bennie, Brian Lord, have individual talent in retaining parts of our broadcast life from the late
fifties to the turn of the century. We are all called old farts and we have to wear it.

Keep posting this stuff - we need more. Some day I will have the photographic
memory all in one place as well.

Now if we could get a Ken Hardie or a Rob Whittle to find the money that would preserve it all for posterity in a safe place. Why them? Some people from our business are now in fairly high places - close to government and corporate money that really could help us.

Just a dream!!
User avatar
Jack Bennest
Advanced Member
 
Posts: 4471
Joined: Mon Apr 17, 2006 9:25 pm

Re: Radio and TV station history in Canada

Postby mightymouth » Thu Jan 29, 2009 11:38 am

Memory is playing tricks on me too TD. But somewhere in the far reaches of my memory bank, wasn't there a guy (engineer maybe) who had a whole bunch of WX memorabilia? I seem to recall seeing his collection that was kept in a locker or a back room, either on Burrard Street in the old days, or at the new digs? Or did I just imagine it? Ring a bell with anyone from the old WX days? :?:
Don't count the days, make the days count.
User avatar
mightymouth
Advanced Member
 
Posts: 769
Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2009 9:25 pm

Re: Radio and TV station history in Canada

Postby Mike Cleaver » Thu Jan 29, 2009 2:21 pm

1050 CHUM Toronto 50,000 Watts
September 1972 - 1976

It was September 1st of 1972 that I started work with Canada’s legendary Rocker.
Dick Smyth and Richard Scott did morning news, Smyth on the hours, Scott on the half hours.
Scott had the original “voice of God” and called me ‘neophyte”
Others on staff at the time included Brian Thomas who was the City Hall Reporter and Brian Williams who did sports along with Larry Wilson.
Brent Sleightholm and I shared the afternoon drive shift for the first year or so.
He did the hours, I did half hours but we switched about halfway through the year.
After the first year, Smyth moved me to half hours in the morning.
Fred Ennis was one of the reporters,
Other newscasters from this period were Marc Daily now of CITY TV fame, Ed Mason, still at CHQT in Edmonton and Dave Deloy.
Frank Gifford did overnights and morning booth operations.
He had a gift for getting tape from all around the world during his overnight shift so we usually had amazing stuff in the morning.
Other news sources were BN, UPI, ABC, CP and of course, the CHUM Contemporary News Service, with Paul Akehurst, Mike Duffy and Jack Derouin in Ottawa and all the CHUM and Moffat stations across the country.
There were about 6 teletypes clacking away in the place.
The din in the newsroom with these, monitors and scanners running all the time was amazing, not to mention the blue haze of cigarette and pipe smoke.
J Robert Wood was Program Director.
Jay Nelson did mornings.
John Gilbert did a talk show from 9 – Noon.
Others on staff: Scott Carpenter, Roger Ashby, Chuck McCoy, Duke Roberts, Tom Rivers, Terry Steele and too many others to remember.
We called the newsroom the “bowling alley”
It stretched along the front of the building on the ground floor with big windows on Yonge Street.
When you entered the room you started with the traffic desk, facing the anchor desk.
Then it was 2nd news anchor facing sports.
In the corner by the recording booths was the CHUM-FM news desk.
Then came the two news booths with sliding patio doors and Smyth’s office.
The 2 news recording booths had Ampex 351’s, cart machines, small mixers, phone patches and the Broadband and network inputs.
All clips were put on carts with a file card which went into a Smyth designed roll-around rack with slots for the carts and the cards.
The cards had the cart number, the lead, the tag and the outcue on them along with timing, where the cut came from, who’d produced it etc.
When we used a cart, we had to mark when it ran on the card.
Out in the newsroom, we had desks and racks in a long line.
We used Ampex 601s and Cart machines originally, later replaced by Revox 77s with the broadcast mod, some switching and car radios for station monitors.
Traffic was broadcast from the newsroom by Wendy Howard and Mary Ann Carpentier, using a Sennheiser 421, the microphone of choice for 1050 CHUM on air positions and a studio turret connected to master control.
Neumanns were used for production.
The main board in the early seventies was a tube type McCurdy with rotary pots.
We were still running records on McCurdy turntables for music with everything else on cart.
Similar boards were used in production but later replaced, about every three years, with state of the art stuff, usually from McCurdy.
The news booth contained two positions with turrets and 421’s and a triple decker cart machine.
That was it for the booth where those legendary casts were delivered.
We looked directly into the control room where Bob Humenik was Nelson’s op and the jock booth was off to our left where we could see Nelson at work.
Warren Cosford and Zeke Zbediak were the production geniuses.
They produced award winning commercials, documentaries and specials for CHUM and CHUM group stations across Canada.
One guy did all the carting so everything had a consistent on air sound.
Later, carts were used for music as turntables were phased out.
No story about CHUM in the ’70’s would be complete without a few Dick Smyth stories.
In those days, Dick smoked a pipe, constantly.
The newsroom was covered with pipe tobacco, pipe ashes and the air was always thick with pipe and cigarette smoke as Richard Scott also chain-smoked for the entire time he was there.
Smyth would often knock out his pipe into one of the giant waste paper baskets that held all that used teletype paper and carbons before going into the booth to deliver his casts.
Often this would result in a roaring blaze, with flames leaping to the ceiling.
The fire extinguishers in the newsroom were constantly being refilled because of this.
Smyth also had a violent temper.
He’d roar and throw things at the slighted provocation.
Carts, ashtrays, staplers, reels of tape, if it wasn’t nailed down, he’d throw it.
The original news studio door to this day bears the dent where a Royal manual typewriter bought it in a particularly violent fit of pique.
When we got the electric typewriters, Fred Ennis, one of the best shit disturbers of all time, marked out a circle on the floor around each desk with yellow tape.
That’s how far Smyth could throw the machine with the cord plugged in, sort of a no man’s land.
Smyth even once threw a loaded fire extinguisher at Ed Mason, just before Mason quit and walked out.
Other Smyth stories:
He’d often lose huge advertising accounts with his commentaries and comments in newscasts.
Gay Lea yogurt cancelled after a commentary where Smyth claimed yogurt causes cancer.
Carlsberg Beer cancelled when Smyth made fun of the actor playing Carl Holman, the company pitchperson.
But in those days it hardly mattered.
Each CHUM salesman had a list of accounts ready to buy any available airtime so the loss of a sponsor was little more than a hiccup in the day’s events.
Other Smyth bits: The Great Odeon Wurlitzer.
When Smyth learned the last of Toronto’s great movie houses with an in house organ was about to bite the dust, he rushed down to have the organist play a piece he could use as background for his commentary lamenting the fact.
After recording this and dubbing it to cart, Smyth ran around for a couple of days playing the sound of the Great Odeon Wurlitzer for anyone who would listen.
He must have played that cart a hundred times.
Comes the day for the piece to run on air:
Dick flips on the mic; “And here’s how things look to Dick Smyth today.
Another piece of Toronto dies today.
At the Odeon Theatre on Carlton, the last great theatre organ in Toronto is silent. Remember sitting in the theatre in the dark and the organ master would rise on his throne and you’d hear: (pushes cart start: Organ roars into life, sputters and dies as the cart self destructs on air.)
Loud hum then Smyth comes on, completely lost for words and says “I’m Dick Smyth!”
Everyone in the newsroom is on the floor, laughing their guts out.
Bam! goes the news booth door.
A cart flies out to bounce off the window and land on the newsroom floor.
Smyth flies out, yelling at the top of his voice, three feet off the ground and proceeds to mash the cart into oblivion.
He marches to his desk, grabs his clipboard and coffee mug and stomps down the newsroom to his office where the door is closed.
He kicks the door open, loses his footing and lands flat on his butt.
As you can imagine, the newsroom now is in total uproar with Nelson out of his booth with tears streaming down his face he’s laughing so hard.
Fred Ennis carefully gathers up the remains of the cart, has it pasted on a board, framed, with the legend: “The remains of the Great Odeon Wurlitzer” and presents it to Smyth at that year’s Christmas Party.
I did a fair amount of voice work then, including the year-end features and the returning of CFUN to the people of Vancouver after Alan Waters repatriated the call letters from a little station in the Maritimes.
CFUN had become CKVN when it did its ill fated switch to news before the Waters family acquired it.
When CHUM purchased CFUN, I asked to be transferred to Vancouver.
That request was refused.
This caused me to resign from CHUM to head out to Alberta for the second time in my career.
Mike Cleaver Broadcast Services
Engineering, News, Voice work and Consulting
Vancouver, BC, Canada

54 years experience at some of Canada's Premier Broadcasting Stations
User avatar
Mike Cleaver
Advanced Member
 
Posts: 2085
Joined: Sat Apr 29, 2006 6:56 pm
Location: Vancouver

Re: Radio and TV station history in Canada

Postby Mike Cleaver » Thu Jan 29, 2009 2:27 pm

CJCA-CIRK Edmonton Alberta 930 khz 50,000 watts

1976 -1983

I arrived in Edmonton as Assistant News Director and Morning Newscaster for CJCA 930.
Joe Meyers was news director.
Bob Lang, who was PD at CJOC in Lethbridge was PD here now.
Terry Strain was Station Manager and Bill Matheson was a Talk Show Host along with Bill Jackson.
Fil Fraser and later Ron Collister were talk show hosts.
The Morning man was Bob Arnold, Gord Whitehead did afternoon Drive.
Glen Yost was his newscaster.
Bryan Hall was sportsmouth, salesman and seemed to be the primary commercial announcer.
Gord Skutle was Chief Engineer and Andre Picard was his assistant.
I soon joined in the engineering department part-time.
I ended up doing the morning hourly and half hourly newscasts on CJCA along with quarter to the hour ad lib newscasts on CIRK.
Upon my arrival at the station, which was fairly new, there was no news format.
Everyone basically went on and said whatever he wanted to.
The station was built in a circle.
The newsroom was the centre of that circle with a view into all of the control rooms and studios.
Arranged around that from the left, CJCA’s main Control room, the associated talk studio, the production Control room and it’s studio, the CIRK main control room and it’s associated studio and the News studio.
Offices surrounded the outer circle.
Later, we built a third control room outside the circle at the rear of the building beside the engineering shop as the CIRK production control.
We had a 50K Continental Main Transmitter for CJCA with a 10K Continental Standby and a generator that would only run the 10K.
It was a new building and tower site, the old one at Ellerslie having been abandoned a few years earlier.
It too had one of those old 5K Marconi monsters.
In the studios, it was all McCurdy boards.
The boards were slider pots.
In CJCA master, there were two ITC 3 decker cart machines on either side of the console along with 2 McCurdy 12” rim drive turntables and Microtrak 303 arms.
At that point, music was played about 50/50 between carts and vinyl.
There were two Ampex 351’s with Inovonics electronics and the various monitoring and remote control equipment.
We also used an Eventide delay unit.
FM was similar but with Panasonic Turntables and the Microtrak Arms.
We actually used Minimus 7 monitors from Radio Shack on the console meter bridge as early nearfields, with McCurdy Amplifed wedges over the window.
The FM Studio had a couple of mics and a triple deck ITC cart machine for news clips.
Later, they added a cheesy Alice board and a Revox tape machine for recording interviews.
When I arrived at the station, they were using a variety of microphones so almost every room sounded different.
There were EV RE 11s in the control rooms and studios.
An old EV 676 was in the newsbooth and couldn’t be moved!
For remotes, we used the Shure mic/line amp model SM82.
We standardized on Shure SM7 mics in the studios and control rooms and made some headset mics for the talk shows using small Sony electrets.
The talk show telephone setup consisted of the old 2 piece phone coupler and a multi line set.
The phone received a mix minus feed pre delay feed from the board instead of the internal mic on the keyset.
In the newsbooth was a triple decker ITC and a custom made board with mic on/off switch, cart buttons, monitor and headphone volume, a button to fire one of the ITC decks in Master control, and the best feature of all, a switch which would allow news to seize the program line from the control room and take over the transmitter.
It was great for news bulletins!
We could also go on air from the newsroom itself with a mic by the main work area.
There were two audio work areas in the newsroom, both with homemade boards, headphone monitoring, two Revox tape machines each and a cart record play deck.
Both stations could do phone recording and pick up the mobile units and various line feeds from city hall, police headquarters, etc.
There was a great collection of Vintage mics stored in Engineering.
They had a 44BX, a 74b, a 77DX from RCA.
There were two Shure SM300’s and a couple of RCA paintbrush models, all salvaged from the old building in a downtown hotel.
The old transmitter building at Ellerslie also was crammed with old broadcast gear.
CJCA had one of the best traffic plane set ups ever.
They had a plane and pilot supplied by the Edmonton Flying Club and got the service for the price of gas.
The pilots logged extra hours towards their licenses.
The cost was split with the Edmonton Police Force.
We had a traffic reporter with a two way radio in the plane and the police officer had his own two way connected to the police communications network.
They used it for traffic observation and crime prevention.
Once during rush hour, the plane was used to track the pursuit of some bank robbers!
We had a play by play on air from the air!
The plane was up morning and afternoon drive and Sunday or holiday Monday evenings year round.
I also was the operator for visiting radio during the Edmonton Eskimos home games during their glory years.
We worked out of Commonwealth Stadium, the plushest broadcast facilities of any stadium in Canada.
There were snacks throughout the game, delivered by hostesses and a full blown buffet at half time.
We had a custom made control surface at the stadium along with a Shure SE30 mixer/compressor and custom built talkback between me and the talent.
Broadcasts were handled by phone line.
During my seven years there, I helped design two new control rooms, one new production room for the fm station and one for the am station.
Both were four track rooms with custom McCurdy Consoles and 4track Ampex AG440c’s. as well as similar 2 track machines.
They also had ITC cart machines, the 99 series with built in erase/splice find capability and Panasonic SP10MKII turntables with the Grey wooden arms.
We also did one outside concert which was recorded to 24 track at the venue, then mixed down at one of the local recording studios for on air broadcast.
The band was awful, the name escapes me but they never went anywhere.
They couldn’t’ carry a tune in a bucket!
During my seven years there, we had 2 pretty hot radio stations but I was getting frustrated with Edmonton and especially the weather.
I was still doing the morning newscasts on CJCA and CIRK and was assistant news director.
I also worked in the afternoon for the local Muzak franchise, installing and troubleshooting sound systems and intercoms.
One June day, I decided I’d had enough and handed in my resignation.
Mike Cleaver Broadcast Services
Engineering, News, Voice work and Consulting
Vancouver, BC, Canada

54 years experience at some of Canada's Premier Broadcasting Stations
User avatar
Mike Cleaver
Advanced Member
 
Posts: 2085
Joined: Sat Apr 29, 2006 6:56 pm
Location: Vancouver

Re: Radio and TV station history in Canada

Postby Russ_Byth » Thu Jan 29, 2009 2:58 pm

mightymouth wrote:Memory is playing tricks on me too TD. But somewhere in the far reaches of my memory bank, wasn't there a guy (engineer maybe) who had a whole bunch of WX memorabilia? I seem to recall seeing his collection that was kept in a locker or a back room, either on Burrard Street in the old days, or at the new digs? Or did I just imagine it? Ring a bell with anyone from the old WX days? :?:


I think, mouth, you might be talking about the late Ron Livingston, building manager? Many of the artifacts he had are still at the station.
User avatar
Russ_Byth
Advanced Member
 
Posts: 1298
Joined: Thu Nov 16, 2006 9:08 pm
Location: West Kelowna

Re: Radio and TV station history in Canada

Postby skyvalleyradio » Thu Jan 29, 2009 3:48 pm

Mike Cleaver and Brian Lord - thanks for sharing such detailed memories of some of the great radio and TV stations & broadcasters of yesterday. There are some of us who are glad to see these stories and anecdotes get preserved for the future with the help of our excellent regional broadcast history sites. Please keep the stories coming - these are some of the BEST posts that have ever graced this board :!: :!: :!:
User avatar
skyvalleyradio
Advanced Member
 
Posts: 1109
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2006 1:16 pm
Location: The Goofy Islands


Return to Radio Station History

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 93 guests