From Broadcast Dialogue
ARTICLE
I REMEMBER CHUM
by: J. ROBERT WOOD
I arrived at CHUM on Valentine’s Day 1968. I was hired by Alan Waters and Larry Solway to assist Larry with his responsibilities as VP Programming so that he could devote more time to his telephone talk show, Speak Your Mind.
I had had a lot of exposure to some incredible top 40 radio stations before coming to CHUM, including CKY Winnipeg, CHED and CJCA in Edmonton. CHUM could not hold a candle to any of them at that time.
In fact, CHLO St. Thomas – where I served as a rookie program director prior to coming to Toronto – would have given CHUM a run for its money thanks to a terrific signal, beautifully sung PAMS jingles, production by Bob Greene and the late Chuck Riley, and outstanding on-air personnel including Arlene Dee, Hal Weaver, Paul Ski and Chuck McCoy.
I had heard CHUM briefly in visits to Toronto prior to 1968. I always found the station to be very hokey sounding, with a poor technical sound, weak format execution and a number of jocks whose sound was not suited to Top 40.
So it came as no surprise when I arrived to discover that the internal operation of the station was in disarray. When the legendary Allan Slaight departed a few years earlier, Mr. Waters appointed a committee to oversee the operation of the station. It didn’t work. Things didn’t get much better under Larry Solway, who was simply too busy with his talk show and other responsibilities to devote the time and attention needed to produce great programming.
Before we knew it, Foster Hewitt’s CKFH had begun to make inroads. In order to blunt the impact it was having in the market, we hired Jack Armstrong – arguably the most electrifying and fastest talking DJ in America – to do evenings. From the first moment Jack went on the air, he was a BIG hit with listeners.
The “quick fix” worked. Jack single-handedly turned things around for us at a time when CHUM was vulnerable.
Mr. Waters initiated other key changes to further strengthen the station. He brought in Fred Sherratt from the Halifax operation as vice-president, and hired Ted Randal as program consultant, to help lead the re-building process.
Unfortunately, Jack’s time at CHUM was short-lived. In a pre-emptive strike against CKFH, we decided to adopt many of the trappings of the Drake format. The free-wheeling, unstructured CHUM sound that varied wildly from jock to jock was replaced by a more disciplined, uniform approach with more emphasis on music. Though he could have executed the new format better than anybody, Jack had no interest in this style of radio and soon left.
Birth Of A New Era
Enter Tom Rivers.
I had heard Tom Rivers on a monitor trip to Windsor/Detroit. He was doing evenings at WKNR. I knew from the moment I heard him that he would be the perfect replacement for Jack. He was young, hip, fast. And he sounded like a rebel, which is precisely what he was!
Rivers was a great discovery for us (like finding a number one draft pick that everyone else had overlooked). Tom took over the key 6-9 pm slot, and would quickly “own” Toronto in that time period.
Other great talents followed: Roger Ashby, J. Michael Wilson, Johnny Mitchell, Hal Weaver, Scott Carpenter, Terry Steele, John Rode, Duke Roberts, Chuck McCoy, Mike Cooper, John Majhor, Dude Walker, Pat Riley, Daryl B, Jim Van Horne, Mike Holland, Bob Magee, Don Reagan, JD Roberts, Steve Elliot, Dave Charles and Russ McCloud. Only Jay Nelson, Bob Laine and Duff Roman remained from the old regime.
Jay Nelson did the morning show for many years, and was the franchise before we were able to build a team around him. Laine did mid-days before becoming Manager of CHUM-FM and later CFRW Winnipeg. He is one of the funniest public speakers I’ve ever heard. Why he never pursued a career in mornings is still a mystery to me. Duff Roman would eventually become program director of CHUM-FM and later served as point person to the CRTC and the industry, but it wouldn’t matter where he was assigned he could do it all.
Many of these great performers came to CHUM when they were still in their early 20s and relatively inexperienced. But, oh, how they could entertain. In those days, the announcers talked over the intros and extros of 12-15 songs per hour. Still, they managed to make each of those intros and extros interesting and entertaining in some way, yet scream with excitement!
Recruiting Top Talent
We always tried to hire “morning men” for every shift. One of the jocks we discovered in Detroit sounded good on tape, but failed the interview when we brought him to Toronto to meet over lunch. He simply did not have the personality, sense of humour or presence that our guys had. So when he called back a week later, we had to tell him we did not feel his sound was right for us. His name was Howard Stern.
Dick Smyth led the re-building process in news.
We hired Dick from CKLW in Windsor. He was a perfect fit for the job. He had an authoritative, Top 40 delivery, knew how to run a big league news department, and had the kind of intensity that we needed to build a great news operation. People joked about his practice of throwing typewriters across the room in a fit of anger, but I always took that as a mark of his passion for making the news great.
In sports, we were blessed with personalities who were every bit as colourful as the icon of the day, Howard Cosell. Our first hire in sports was Dave Wright, followed later by Brian Williams, Rick Hodge and Brian Henderson.
Argonaut Coach Leo Cahill and Leaf Coach Howie Meeker provided specialized coverage to augment regular reports.
Production Key Asset
One of CHUM’s greatest assets was its production department. One of the bright lights in those years was Production Director Doug Thompson. Doug had that magic touch in production, could produce incredible numbers of commercials without allowing the quality to suffer, and was in production what they refer to in jazz as a true “Master”.
Doug left to pursue opportunities in Los Angeles, but returned a few years later to play a vital role in the development of CHUM’s many rockumentaries.
Doug was followed by Warren Cosford, who played an invaluable role in rebuilding the traffic/copy/production infrastructure of the station. He was also responsible for assembling a crack team of operators who provided near-flawless execution of CHUM’s fast-paced, high-energy sound that was a hallmark of Top 40 in those days.
Warren hired guys with talent and character. They were instrumental not only in running a tight board, but in helping to inspire the jocks to give it their all every time they turned on the microphone. Colin Kennedy, Bob Humenick, Rick Hunter, John Tucker, Ken Porteous, Brad Jones, Zeke Zdebiak, Rick Hallson, Bob McMillan and many other great ops gave CHUM the execution of a winner.
We also engaged top freelance voice-over talent to narrate our music documentaries, contests and promotions and station IDs. Charlie Van Dyke (KHJ), Gary Gears (WLS) and Chuck Riley (who would go on to become the voice of ABC television) were among the great voice talents who contributed to the sound of CHUM.
CHUM was also blessed with some great writers. When Larry Solway and Garry Ferrier left, we were fortunate to be able to replace them with new, up-and-coming talents, including Bill McDonald (who would later move to Los Angeles to work with Chuck Blore), and Larry MacInnis, who had the talent, passion and tenacity to build himself into one of the pre-eminent writers in radio today.
CHUM was also a leader in adding women to the programming mix. Mary Ann Carpentier did traffic on the morning show with Jay Nelson and later co-hosted mornings with Tom Rivers. Jeannie Becker was hired as our community reporter. The great Marilyn Dennis had not yet arrived on the scene, but oh how we could have used her at different stages of our evolution.
The Power of CHUM
By the early seventies, most of the re-building process was well underway, if not complete (although we never were able to do much with that signal). At its peak, CHUM commanded an audience of nearly 1.5 million people.
We often referred to CHUM on the air as Canada’s Number One Music Station. But its influence was greater than any slogan could convey, or that any of us could comprehend.
Such was the power of CHUM that record companies lined up to have their records played and listed on the CHUM chart. With a weekly distribution of 120,000 copies, the CHUM chart was a key factor in promoting record sales. Each time a new song was added to the chart, record companies received orders from record stores all over Canada totalling in excess of 50,000 copies of the record in the first week alone.
Artists such as Elton John, the Beach Boys, the Osmonds and the Jackson Five dropped in to the station to serve as guest DJs for an hour and take requests and dedications from listeners.
Other acts such as the Rolling Stones invited us to host their famous El Mocambo appearance when they came to Toronto in search of an audience for the production of a live album. And who would believe that on at least two different occasions, CHUM attracted over 90,000 fans to see the Bay City Rollers appear live as part of its free summer concert series at Nathan Phillips Square?
CHUM was also known for non-stop contests and promotions.
One of the biggest contests we ever ran was “Don’t Say Hello”. Listeners won $1,000 by answering their phone, “I listen to CHUM” when CHUM called. The contest became so popular that by the time we had been running it for nearly a year, every fifth phone call we made was a winner. In a city of 2.5 million people, that meant that over half a million people were answering their telephone with the “phrase that pays”.
Another contest that stands out was the Five Car Giveaway. We offered a car a week over a five week period. To win, listeners simply had to be the 100th caller when we opened the lines to take calls. By the fifth week, we had so many people trying to call that telephone exchanges started crashing all over the city. We received a visit a few days later from Bell telephone officials who told us that people as far away as Kitchener, Peterborough and St. Catharines would get a busy signal by the time they dialled the third digit to make a local call, and that the phone system got backed up all the way to New York City.
Apparently, not since the assassination of John F. Kennedy had the North American telephone system been so overloaded. Bell told us that until they could install a new, high-capacity exchange, we would have to clear all contests with them or they would discontinue our telephone service. Needless to say, we obliged.
One promotion that surprised us in terms of the appeal it generated was “Canadian Graffiti” – a Sunday night oldies show that was spawned by the movie, American Graffiti.
Under Scott Carpenter – and later Wolfman Jack – the show became a huge favourite in Toronto. Each year, in an effort to promote the show, we organized the “CHUM Annual Graffiti Parade and Greaser’s Ball”. We invited listeners to bring their 50s and 60s custom antique cars to the parking lot at Yorkdale Mall in the north end of the city and departed from there along Yonge Street to Nathan Phillips Square, where we held a free concert featuring Freddie Cannon and other acts from that period.
The Yorkdale parking lot was filled to overflowing (at least 5,000 cars were counted, and hundreds more were trying to get into the lot). The parade itself was at least five miles long, with people lined up two and three deep in many places along the route. At Nathan Phillips Square, over 50,000 people were present for the concert.
One of our most enduring promotions was the Christmas Wish. In 1968, a number of American stations were running a Christmas Wish promotion in which they were granting listeners their “Christmas Wish”. We turned the idea around and asked listeners to bring toys, food or articles of clothing to CHUM to help make Christmas Wishes come true for needy families.
The response was overwhelming and the promotion – now in its 39th year – is still going strong.
Rock Documentaries
CHUM was also renowned for its rock documentaries.
CHUM produced the 28-hour History of Rock, a 64-hour Evolution of Rock, a 10-hour Story of Elvis, a 12-hour Story of the Beatles, and the year-end top 100 featuring interviews with the artists and newsmakers of the year. These programs played all over Canada, the United States and around the world. The Evolution of Rock was featured on a major station in virtually all of the top 100 markets in the U.S., and in major markets in New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and England.
We also produced a 35-minute CHUM History of Rock video that we rolled out to every high school in Toronto. Because of its educational nature, we were allowed to present the show during school hours in the school auditorium.
The show started slowly with an examination of rock in its early years. But as the show went on, the music became hotter and more current, eventually culminating in a playback of some of the biggest hits of the day. As the music reached a fever pitch in darkened auditoriums, the kids were on their chairs roaring as each new artist exploded onto the screen.
In those days, we used to say that the future of CHUM depended upon people who have yet to graduate. CHUM pursued that philosophy for many years, super serving the youth of Toronto at a time when youth were the largest and most sought-after demographic. This philosophy served us well. CHUM was the centre of the universe for a whole generation of kids for many years.
What made CHUM so special? Well, clearly, the planets had to be in perfect alignment to make possible circumstances that gave rise to CHUM – including the birth of the Top 40 format, the tidal wave of baby boomers that were just entering their teen years, and the flowering of rock ‘n’ roll led by Elvis.
But CHUM’s success was also due to the talented men and women who worked there. On the air and behind the scenes, CHUM was blessed with an exceptional group of people who contributed to its success through their talent, their passion and their commitment to excellence. They were the heart and soul of CHUM.
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of CHUM’s launch as a top 40 station, the staff gathered to mark the occasion. I salute them all. They – and their husbands and wives who supported them – were what made CHUM great.
J. Robert Wood provides management consulting services to radio broadcasters across Canada. He may be contacted by e-mail at jrwood@rogers.com.
