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 Media Column:
Radio. I still today find it an amazing medium. It’s nowhere what is was when I grew up and as much as I would like it to be, I have long ago accepted the fact that this once upon a time, vibrant media, has changed but occasionally there are shades of ‘what it was like’.
I feel bad for those younger people (10-35) who listen to radio these days because they simply cannot comprehend what radio was like 20-30-40 years ago. I think I feel worse for those who have entered the radio industry over the last 20 years as they have been fed a lot of pablum and have watched this medium go from foreground to background. Yes, believe or not folks, but years ago, a radio station was the ‘pulse of a community’ and that was in all types of markets, large or small. Live, local and immediate were the buzz words of the industry. Now most of the day the programming is not live but on computer, the ‘bits’ are about Hollywood and little local comments are done and for most of the day ‘immediate’ does not apply.
If a plane landed on the 102 highway at 7pm you would have to wait until 7am to hear about it on the radio. In fact most radio newsrooms would die today, especially the morning anchor, if they didn’t get their news from the daily papers.
When was the last time you heard a breaking story or an exclusive on a local radio station? 10-15 years? Maybe more? But it’s hard to break news when there aren’t the bodies to get those stories.
When Doug Reynolds, now at News 95-7, was at CJCH once in a while he would have a ‘live’ guest, usually a police officer or HRM’s John O’Brien, on his morning newscast. Who else has done it? They would be few if any?
As for announcers there are some very good ones but most of them are on the morning shows from Q, to Kool and others. Most are pleasant voices who read liner cards and follow a strict format. As for good old radio competition that seems to have gone the way of the dollar bill. B.J. Wilson of Q-104 did one of the best jokes ever some (ten?) years ago when he got a girl to go in and sing a telegram to them (C-100) on air, apparently praising them (C-100) up but finishing with the punch line of “Q-104” is still, to this day, one of the best tricks I have heard in radio, bar none. Those kind of ‘competitive’ games were the norm in the 60’s and 70’s.
One of these days I will do a column on some of the stunts especially in this city pulled on and by radio stations CJCH and CHNS in the sheer name of competition.
I grew up with four or five radios in the house and of course the music was the key reason I tuned in and I did that in my home town of Quebec City. So as a kid I tuned in the likes of the big American stations such as WNBC, they had Wolfman Jack, WABC had Cousin Brucie. Both of these stations came from New York City and could be heard at night all over eastern Canada. They still can but most cities and towns have their own radio station and it plays a variety of music. In the 50’s and 60 and even early 70’s this was not the case.
In most small markets across this country a radio station had to play 30-35 hours of that dreaded CBC programming. Believe me no teenager would listen to ‘radio drama or opera’ and so we headed to the radio dial for a dose of Beach Boys, Stones, Beatles, Elvis and that is where the American radio giants came in.
But from my bedroom as a teenager I listened to the NYC stations along with WBZ, (1030 Boston) and a legendary all night guy called Dick Summer, and of course WKBW, Buffalo (Joey Reynolds) and WPTR, Albany, NY, (a million different jingles).
As a kid I had two passions, radio (rock and roll music) and sports. When I wasn’t tuning in radio stations for music I was listening to them for games, baseball games, hockey games, basketball games, games, games and more games and I kept hearing one voice, seemingly on all of these games and that was either Mel Allen (Yankees) and Marv Albert (everything else). Now, Marv wasn’t on every station he just seemed to be everywhere when in fact he was the voice of the Rangers, the Knicks and some baseball team, the Mets.
I also learned the ‘other kind of radio’ and that was the easy listening brand and a few stations played ‘that kind of music’ (Como, Sinatra, Les and Larry Elgart, Count Basie, Ella, Doris Day, Johnny Mathis, and many other soft and sentimental favourites).
A few stations along the dial featured that kind of music but none more than 1130. Not 11:30 like the time, but (11-3-0) ‘eleven, three, O, W-N-E-W, New York and the show I caught was the ‘Milkman’s Matinee’ which came in as clear as a bell from midnight to 6am.
The Canadian equivalent was CFRB (1010 on your dial) in Toronto. But those guys at WNEW were so smooth that I wondered how they did it. They had one guy, who did the drive show, Ted Brown, who may be the greatest DJ that I ever heard and he must have read 20-30 ‘live reads’ every single day. I once read that he was making over $150,000 and that was in 1967!
That’s a lot of coin.
So while the music lured me, especially the rock and roll music the announcers were a big part of the picture and since there were so many American stations one could tune into for that rock and roll music, the dee jay’s were often the difference.
From Quebec City not only could I pick up just about all the stations from NYC, Boston (WMEX, (Arnie, WooWoo Ginsburg) and WHDH), Washington (WTOP) but I heard the classic battles of two Chicago stations, WLS and WCFL.
The most unique dee jay I’ve ever heard came over my small radio one night in 1961 and he was Dick Biondi. You’d have to hear him to understand. He was so popular from his perch at WLS in Chicago that he would do ‘high school appearances in Canada!’ Apparently he did one in Belleville, Ontario. How far is that from Chicago?
It was a different era. It was an era where one singular, big radio station dee jay could create a record star.
Biondi one night went to a record hop in the Chicago era and brought back a tape from a local high school band that he liked and he played it on his station that must have covered over half the nation at night. That song, within days, gave this group a record. It made it into the top 5, and I think it hit as high as #2 or #3. The group was called the Rivieras and the song, California Sun. The song was also in the movie ‘Good Morning Vietnam’. It’s a one hit wonder, but what a hit. While most of you would not recognize this group I’d bet a few coffees that if you heard it, the song would jog your memory.
Another dee jay in New York City (Dan Ingram) played a hit from a 16-year old girl from New Jersey and ‘It’s My Party’ started a career for Leslie Gore.
These days it is the MTV and Much Music that break and make hits not radio.
Biondi, Reynolds, Wolfman, The Cousin and others were pure radio entertainers and I’m not even sure if today’s good radio talent understands what they did.
They were showmen, performers, artists and production wizards all at the same time. I mean these guys were doing shifts of five to six hours a night! How in the world do you keep up the energy for that long, night after night?
Not only did I get plenty of my kind of music I got a lot of news in those days. WLS had a guy called Mort Crim on ‘The Big 89’ and he was the voice of doom. Fred W. Barton was the key newsperson on WCFL and when I tuned in John Zack was “Pulse Beat news, on KB Radio, Buffalo”. And these guys were on once if not twice an hour at night. Is there even one local cast in this city, on radio, after 6pm?
These guys also brought the news to life.
One of the early places of my radio days was at the Big Ox, well it wasn’t that big, and simply a 1000 watt AM (1340), radio station in Woodstock, Ontario called CKOX.
But by working there I was able to listen to the two radio giants in the late 60’s and early 70’s. Heading east from Woodstock, which is located between Kitchener Waterloo and London, Ontario, was 1050CHUM Toronto Canada’s top music station with a few great news guys called Dick Smyth and Clifford Fletcher, who may have the greatest radio delivery I have ever heard. Fletcher (no relation to the hockey guy) was so good that a New York City radio station (WABC) flew him down from Montreal or Toronto for a few weekends to do news.
Heading west and on my radio dial at 800AM was CKLW Windsor/Detroit. The station was located in Windsor, Ontario but the station was beamed to Detroit, Cleveland, Akron, Toledo etc. And it the early 70’s it was the top station in all of those markets. CKLW was called the “Big 8” and was it ever.
Radio as a kid gave me or make that gave us just about everything. TV news, especially local was nearly non existent. There was no such thing as cable, CBC had Larry Henderson and Earl Cameron in black and white and it was only 15 minutes, if that, so radio news fulfilled that area.
My dad liked the news, I liked the music and sports, my mom liked the ‘buy and sell’ programs etc, my sister like the ‘ski reports’. One by one, these elements have left radio and today as far as I am concerned, other than a few morning shows, we have glorified juke boxes.
If I want regurgitated music, day and day out I will play my own and I do. I have over 10 thousand albums and tons of 45’s so if I want music my selection beats some ‘400 playlist’ that is heard over and over again.
In fact on one station, a few yeas ago, I heard the song Rescue Me, by Fontella Bass, more when it was an ‘oldie’ than when it was a hit. Now, you figure that. I’ve yet to hear on my oldies (CHNS) songs that were in the top 10. I can list 100-500 songs that ‘made it big’ but never made it on the Oldies station in this market. Why?
The closest radio that approaches the kind of radio I like, is a program, and from what I hear, many, many enjoy it and that is the Saturday and Sunday morning ‘Weekend Mornings’ on CBC.
For years I traveled just about every nook and cranny of Maritime Canada doing work for TSN and doing the “B” circuit (Bathurst, Big Cove, Bouctouche, NB., Bridgewater, Baie Vert, etc) and in most of the places that I would go for breakfast and coffee I would hear Stan (Carew), Deputy Doug (Barron), Duke (That Horse?), and back then there was Freda and the organ and maybe a few more.
I think it is the best and most unique program in this country and was teed off that Carew and company didn’t get another run this summer on national radio. Stan Carew would have done well on WNEW.
Which leads me to community radio and CFEP or better known as Seaside-FM.?
I am a great believer of community radio. I think it is real, down to earth, provides a service and will grow enormously in the next ten years. It is all about the immediate era that it serves.
It has, (drum roll please) in many cases ‘live announcers’ and that includes during evening times and on the weekend.
Have you ever tried to reach a station after 5pm? Don’t bother. Try to reach one on a weekend, or a newsperson, or a radio announcer, you are better off playing Super 7 or Lotto 649. Your odds of winning are better than having a person answer the phone.
But over the years I have witnessed an accident or wanted to convey a message, or may have had some information such as a major traffic jam and I called Seaside-FM and, lo and behold, an announcer, usually Paul Kennedy who is on, Saturday and Sunday afternoons, picked up the phone. A real, live, human being, imagine that!
Metro has a community station in 94.7 Seaside-Fm and I understand they have such a station in Parrsboro, one in Cape Breton and many more will hit our landscape in the years to come. Especially as the ‘main’ radio stations simply do not satisfy the need of their listeners and the bulk of their product is simply music.
I applied for a community station for Metro at the last CRTC hearings (March 2004) and was listed to appear but withdrew my application when I noticed that two of the many applicants (Global and Rogers) had the format I proposed which was a blend of easy listening and lots of news and information. As it turned out, both of these formats were granted. News 95.7 is on the air and Global has been licensed to give us ‘today’s easy listening’. Where they are no one seems to know, but they have been granted the license. Needless to say I would not have last long with my tiny 50-watt station as compared to the two major media networks who got the licenses after all my name is Walling not Irving.
Right now the only ‘Easy Listening’ choice is Seaside-FM the only reason Seaside FM is not that well known is very simple and that is they don’t have a strong signal. They are located at 94.7 on the FM dial and have recently had a tower change and their signal is much better than once it was. It can however be heard very well in cars around metro and at home in many locations. I would love for them to either boost their power or even, and it would give them the same effect, and that is to move their tower higher and closer to town.
We are talking about a 50-watt station not a 50,000 one and the closer the tower is to the main area (metro) the better it is for a very small wattage community station.
The guy who created this ‘Little station that could’ is Wayne Harrett who is another guy that really likes the radio business.
Harrett started this station as a ‘special events’ station which means he got a license for Xmas, a license for the Eastern Passage summer carnival and those licenses are good for 30 days at a time.
He took that and got a full time community station.
I find it hard to believe that it has been over three years since that 94.7 went on air but I am more and more impressed all the time. So impressed that I have, in a very slight way, decided to join the station.
Harrett called me this summer an asked if I could help out by doing a week of early morning news/sports. I took him up on it, sort of my miniscule contribution to a community cause, and enjoyed it.
I was approached again a few days ago and will for a few months anyway join a terrific list of local broadcasters on this station.
Where do I start? Seaside-FM seems to be the perfect refuge for those who were once in the business on a full time basis and still ‘want to keep their hands in it’ to those who ‘want to try radio’ and others somewhere in between.
I guess if you total the year’s experience of those who are ‘part of the team’ then you may have to get another calculator. No other station and that includes the CBC, who have a few golden oldies such as Carew and Connolly, come close.
Frank Cameron who’s pushing 90 (just kidding Frank,) just joined and he is on Saturday afternoons between noon and 3. Frank has his own fan club that has followed him since his bandstand days. They also are pushing 90 and keep calling him from the various ‘seniors’ homes in our area.
I’m not that old (I simply have a great memory) but I remember Cameron from those Bandstand days in good old black and white. A question for you, who were the other guys across Canada, and there were two others, who had shows similar to Frank Cameron? The answer at the end of this column.
Another landmark is Wayne Adams. Does the name sound familiar? Wayne and I go back, way back to the mid 70’s when he had a Sunday night program on CHNS at 10 pm called Black Journal. I followed him with a Sunday night open line show (10:30 till midnight or longer) called Sportsline.
Wayne went from broadcasting to politics where he was the first elected black member of the Nova Scotia legislature and rose to the position of cabinet minister. Wayne’s voice is on the news promo at Seaside-FM and he does a Sunday morning Christian music show.
Gail Rice has been around the business since the early 70’s first as a sports reporter where she sounded so formal and I remember asking her to ‘liven up her reports’ because they sounded as if they came from some ladies tea-social. So she did. The next week she did her American Hockey League report from a payphone and the ambient nose certainly sounded better than the previous ones.
She went from CHNS to CFDR where she got involved in the programming of the station and is heard for two shifts, eight-hours a week on the coffee club. She may be the stations biggest volunteer giving of her time freely. And it’s more than eight hours as she does other things including sales for the station.
Just the fact that Gail, and the station (94.7) has a ‘coffee club’ is a flashback. Many stations used to have clubs, with coffee cards etc. I still think it is a great way to get listeners, especially women involved.
Paul Meagher started off in the radio business as a teenager and has worked for CHNS, CFDR and is the mellow ‘Seaside Café’ voice of the station. There are days I can’t get rid of this guy. I hear him on Seaside and then he shows up when I’m at grocery store (Atlantic Superstore) and again at Zellers. Paul does a lot of voice over work and has been doing it for years.
Paul Kennedy. Does anybody in metro know more about country music than this man? Does anybody in Atlantic Canada know more about country music than Kennedy? I doubt it. He was recently (September of this year) inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and that is a prestigious honor.
The list goes on, Ian Macphee was on CJCH in the mid 70’s and returned to metro as the morning man for ‘SUN-FM’ when it went on air in 1990 as their morning man. That was when SUN-FM was an easy listening station.
MacPhee does some programming for Seaside-fm.
Bob Cooke has been around radio for decades and he shows up on the station. As I said, Seaside-FM has turned into a ‘Who’s Who’ of metro broadcasting.
Those are just some of the ‘better known’ names. What impresses me more are the ‘others’ and non broadcasters who have given of their time to the station to play the easy listening music.
Some of these guys are very good and more ‘show prep’ goes into some of these shows then most other radio programs.
This is not a knock against what I call current radio but the fact is, other than the morning shows, and a few ‘drive home shows (Tom B and Bobby Mac) personality is not available.
Most announcers these days are so heavily formatted and simply read the ‘liner cards’ and play the music that show prep involving more than 10 seconds of talk is out of the question.
Gord Heffler likes radio. He can handle the engineering side of things but keeps his hands in it by doing a show on Seaside called ‘Memories’ where he takes a year, let’s say 1962 as he did this week and plays the music, the news, and even tells you how much milk and bread cost back in those days.
If you enjoy that kind of programming it is on Seaside.
I’ve been very, very fortunate in life and that is I have been able to be employed, either by media firms, or self employed in doing the things I like and they usually involve, sports and music and news.
I’ve liked sports and music since I was ten years old and news is an offset of that. I am a self confessed information gather (information junkie) as stipulated in a past column and when offered an opportunity to join Seaside as a volunteer this summer and on a very small part time role for one week I tried it out and was even more impressed with what is going on than what I hear over the radio station.
Believe me when I say that station runs on the backs and strengths of volunteers who either do it for the love of the business or for little if any remuneration at all.
I’ve only had one complaint about this station and that is I wish it had a stronger signal and maybe in the future it will. Who knows maybe I can direct and advertising dollar or two because the music and format will sell itself.
I will never forget Merv Russell’s comment to me following the first ratings book when SUN-FM came out in August 1990. Russell, who may be the most experienced radio person in the province, was the VP of CHNS at the time and said he was shocked that SUN-FM had a ‘million hours tuned’. That is a lot of listening and back then put them in the range of Q-104 and C-100. Those listeners are still out there.
The big difference was, and one that I am not still convinced is management told me ‘they couldn’t sell the easy listening format at SUN-FM’. But they were a new radio station, a new staff and I’m not sure they did that format justice. Seniors radio as it is called is appealing to the fast growing segment of the population. In a few years there will be more pharmacies then day cares as those baby bombers turn 60. Heck the birth rate is so low that our Premier John Hamm wants to pay us to have more kids!
As for me, and I am in my 50’s (closer to 60 than to 50) the music on Seaside-FM represents the most fascinating time in rock and roll.
I started following this kind of music when I was 9 or 10 in 1956-57 or just at the birth of rock and roll.
It was an interesting time where the ‘Hit Parade’ of the day had hits from the likes of the Perry Como (Catch a Falling Star), to Sinatra (My Way) to Pat Boone (Love Letters in the Sand) to Gogi Grant (Wayward Wind) but we also had the rockers who were starting to make a name led by Elvis with a ton of hits, to Carl Perkins (Blue Suede Shoes) and Little Richard (Long Tall Sally).
That fusion of old and new lasted from 1955 (Bill Hailey, Rock around the Clock) until the British and Beatle invasion. Once the mop-tops came in the old boys and girls (Doris Day, Patty Page, Como, Mitch Miller, the Bobby’s (Darin, Vee, Rydell and more) fade from the charts.
The first ‘really big’ as Ed Sullivan would say, group of the rock era was the Platters who had hit, after hit, after hit from Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, to the Great Pretender and so many more.
Most of those hits, never heard in Metro, on any oldies stations are on Seaside FM. They were the #1 hits of days gone by.
Don’t be surprised if I show up with a ‘Memories’ show of my own. But for a few months it’s news, sports, weather, perhaps a newsmaker of the day interview, a new feature at 7:45 called ‘The High School Moment of the day’ as there is so much news in the high schools from great causes that these kids do to the sports teams which give schools a lot of spirit and more.
I will be the other part of the morning team with another broadcast legend in these parts and that is Johnny Gold. The somewhat scary part of this is I did work with Johnny Gold many years ago (early 70’s) when he was the morning man on Country 101 and I did sports with him around 8:10.
I would do sports on the AM station (CHNS) for most of the morning and then at 8:10 would go to ‘the FM side’ and chat with John. I am somewhat in shock that is was that long ago.
I keep telling people that I am not that old, simply that I got started in this media business when I was young. And that I did as I got my first radio paycheck at 17.
So since I believe in the way radio was ‘back then’ I decided to join the only station in town that seems to believe in these ‘old fashion radio values’.
If you get a chance tune us in for a dose of news, sports, and hopefully some interesting, down to earth conversation on 94.7, the areas “Easy listening station’. Where else are you going to hear Roger Whittaker, Theresa Brewer, Pat Boone, the Four Preps, Nat King Cole, Ricky (not Rick) Nelson, Brenda and Connie, the early queens of rock and roll, Frankie Avalon, the Playmates and so many more?
I think I’ll head out to my album collection and have a few ready just in case someone doesn’t show up. It’s been a long time since “Wild child Walling was a dee jay’.
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The answer to the Bandstand Question: Red Robinson had a show from Vancouver, and Dave Mickey had one from Toronto. Alex J.Walling can be reached at:
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