Random Musings from the early 80s

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I don’t know what brought this on exactly, but somehow I got thinking about PayTV and how modern stuff that would have been hip and trendy back then seems trite and contrived now that what was once a novel concept is so commonplace as to be boring. This got me thinking about those early PayTV channels in Canada and what I remembered about them, which in turn got me thinking about TV in general in those days.

The winter that saw the birth of First Choice and Superchannel, the first two Canadian PayTV movie channels, as well as C channel with its funky Escher-esque “C widget” logo. The latter lasted only 5 months before entering receivership, though I didn’t know this at the time. This led to the later accidental discovery that both of these movie networks unscrambled their broadcast at 15 minutes to every hour, and would keep them unscrambled for at least 15 minutes – sometimes more, if the guy at the helm forgot to turn the scrambler back on. I used to watch these little snatches of PayTV, feeling like I was getting illicit tastes of something I didn’t have. Once they forgot to turn it off for a couple of hours, and I ended up getting to watch Diva almost in its entirety. I still don’t remember what it was about and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a movie I’d have watched by choice except it was an odd kind of illicit thrill to be watching it and feeling like I was getting something of vague worth for nothing.

I remember quite a bit of television from those days.

Hammy Hamster (Tales from the Riverbank). I used to be late for school almost every day because it aired at 8:30am and I just had to watch it.

The Great Space Coaster, which aired just before Hammy. They once featured Marvin Hamlisch as a special guest, you know.

Saturday morning cartoons. “Commander” Tom Jolls. Marlin Perkins’ Wild Kingdom (brought to you by Mutual of Omaha). Hal “Barney Miller” Linden’s Animals, Animals, Animals.

When we first got cable it was a real treat. We had a wired box with one row of about 15 buttons and a lever on the left to change channel banks. It was made by Jerrold. I’d occasionally watch one channel, which was nothing more than a computerized news ticker when it wasn’t broadcasting political stuff, just because I could, and because they were cool. I had no interest in news, frankly – I wasn’t even in my teens, yet – I just thought it was neat watching a channel that was entirely computerized when it wasn’t broadcasting parliamentary debates. Those I wouldn’t watch; I was easily amused, not desperate. One such channel would, while off the air, also have the coolest electronic spacey music playing in the background while it displayed program information. I still remember the melody.

I was a tinkerer even back then. I liked making things do stuff they weren’t strictly designed for. I’d take the converter box and press two buttons at once – like chords on a piano – just to see what would happen. It would display the channel that was in between the two buttons. And if you pressed one button just enough to pop the other one up but not enough to hold the one you’re pressing down, the channel wouldn’t change, but would eventually lose signal until it faded into snow.

I used to like watching video shows, too. I was particularly fond of Toronto Rocks! hosted by John Majhor. I couldn’t help but think that “studio” he broadcast from was a dolled up broom closet because he looked like he was almost encased in the VJ equipment – he couldnt’ have had more than a couple feet of clearance in any direction. I tried calling into their show when they held a contest for tickets to see A-Ha in concert. You had to spell Magne Furuholmen’s last name. I actually knew how, but I couldn’t get through. I was so frustrated I broke the phone’s outer shell when I smashed it on the end table. Repeatedly. (I had my problems) I recall when they first aired Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video in its entirety. It was almost an event unto itself.

Enough waxing nostalgic. I need to get to bed before I bore anyone else to tears.

2

Hey, I hear ya! I remember all of that stuff. We must come from the same area. Let’s wax nostalgic some more about '80s TV and stuff around Toronto. Remember Chuck The Security Dog, on channel 47? That was the only other place you could see music videos. I still have dubs of some of them on videotape. Chuck showed an animated video for Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn” that I have never seen before or since, and some other very rare video material, from when groups made “promotional films.”

We had the same kind of Jerrold wired cable remote box. When cable TV first came to Hamilton, their home channel (14?) had a camera trained on a box that was motorized from underneath. It would physically turn 90 degrees at a time. One side had an analog sweep clock on it One side had a thermometer on it, and the other two had those black velvet boards on which you stick white, plastic letters in grooved rows, to make words. These had local events and other things misspelled on them.

Remember all the hoopla about AM radio going stereo? I’ve still never seen an AM stereo tuner, but all the stations spent big bucks converting all their music sources, production and broadcasting equipment over to stereo from mono…and you couldn’t receive it anywhere. Well, except on an unused cable channel in Toronto. One of them rebroadcast the sound of 1050 CHUM in stereo. It sounded awful! Full stereo separation, marred by atmospheric and electrical interference. Other stations long gone: CKEY. CFTR. The station at 640 has been many things, including The Hog - “get that hog off my radio!”; Q107 when they gave a rundown on drugs on the street. Can you imagine? “Highwitness News.” Those were different times, man. Of course, Q107 is still there, but it’s not the same company or people. The CBC flagship station at 740. They broadcast from the old facility that was a converted girls’ school on Jarvis Street, which also housed their TV empire. I hear it’s become an FM station called Radio One.

Speaking of CHUM, do you remember when they ceased to be a Top-40 station and went with the All Oldies format? How about Jungle Jay Nelson? Terry Steele? Pete and Geets? David Marsden? Were you there when CFNY came about? It used to be CHIC-FM, the world’s first station staffed entirely by women. I kid you not about the call letters. CFNY was probably the last truly revolutionary radio station. They made artists’ careers happen, when they couldn’t get airplay anywhere else. It has long since become another corporate, cookie-cutter outfit not unlike all the others.

I watched Commander Tom, too. And also Channel 7’s morning show, “Rocketship 7” with Dave Thomas and Promo the Robot. They had a puppet, too, but I can’t remember its name for the life of me. OK, here’s a Blast From The Past - Nolan Johannes on “Dialing For Dollars.” I used to listen to Larry King when he only had a radio show, on WBEN 930 Buffalo. I picked up on him so eary in his career, he didn’t have any phone calls. He would fill the unused time telling personal anecdotes about when he sold encyclopedias or vacuums, and the early days of his DJ career. I talked to both Little Richard and Pete Best on his program. More Buffalo trivia - do you remember when Channel 4 was WBEN, then changed to WIVB? And Channel 2 was WGR, then changed to WGRZ. OK, I’m done with trivia. That was fun!

3

Wait, I have to correct myself; I got two memories mixed up. The guy on Channel 47 who played videos was Chuck the Security Guard. I seem to remember him having a talking dog puppet, and the two merged while I was typing.

4

[robotic vocoder jingle] CFNY [/rvj] - The Spirit of Radio. This was the station that made me like radio. They were absolutely different than anything else that was on the air at the time. I used to listen to The Scott Show whenever humanly possible. They would play stuff from some pretty obscure bands, and would often play the 12" versions of those songs. I became exposed to dozens of bands I would have otherwise never heard of because they weren’t mainstream enough for the other stations to pick up. Their loss, frankly. I was disgusted when they eventually became 102.1 “The Edge” with their prepackaged New Rock format. All of the life went out of the station at that point, and I mostly stopped listening to the radio – except 680 CFTR (when it was still a music station and before “The Hog”), and even then mostly to listen to Humble & Fred. I never listened to 1050 CHUM all that much, but I do clearly recall when they were an ordinary pop/rock station. In fact it was pretty much the AM version of its sister CHUM-FM.

Wasn’t it Q107 that used to air late-night standup comedy segments once upon a time? And which station carried Dr. Demento in the early 80s?

And speaking of Dementites and obscure bands, the aforementioned Toronto Rocks! would sometimes play some big-time obscura – usually of the whimsical one-hit-wonder variety. Captain Sensible’s Happy Talk? Check. Eva Everything’s Pills are Painless? Check. Will Powers’ Adventures in Success? Joe Dolce’s Shaddap-a You Face? Check and check. (Will Powers is a girl, by the way, I was suprised to note, and she really is a motivational speaker!)

I think I missed the whole cable radio deal the first time around. We’d just gotten cable television and frankly I was entirely too fascinated with that (and not interested enough in radio) to bother. I was on Rogers Cable (y’know, before they were a monopoly) and their community channel (10) once again had some computerized teletype display when there were no actual shows to be broadcast.

Rockeship 7 I remember, though not as well as Commander Tom. Dialing for Dollars is something I dimly recall from the days when I’d play hooky from school and watch daytime TV – game shows, mostly; Card Sharks, Definition, Press Your Luck, The Price is Right, Bumper Stumpers, and that show that I can’t remember the name of where players answered questions to uncover squares that would ultimately reveal a rhebus puzzle they would have to solve to win the round, I used to love that show and even made my own homebrew rhebus books based on the show. I was such a geek! I’m still such a geek!

I vaguely remember WGR and WBEN, but I recall WGRZ 2 and WIVB 4 Buffalo much more clearly. I also recall WUTV 29 before it was commonly referred to as “Fox.” Then there’s Canadian stations: CFTO 9 before it was CTV, CBLT and sister CBLFT (French) as parts of the CBC network, and CHCH 11 before they cut it in half. Global (6 & 22 over the air, 3 on cable) was always Global. CFMT (47 on air, 4 on cable) was CFMT for the longest time before they changed and split to become Omni 1 and 2. A Channel, formerly The New VR, was originally CKVR. CITY TV (Channel 57, cable 7) was always CITY TV since its inception in the early 70s. Their news broadcast’s theme song used to be Gonna Fly Now, the theme from Rocky.

5

Boy, I can’t talk about this stuff with too many people anymore! Thanks, it’s been a trip down Memory Lane.

I still have some records that only ever got played on CFNY, including their compilation, “Toronto Calling”, which had local bands who won a demo-sending-in contest. There is a website devoted to memories of CFNY that I read once.

I was disappointed on the day that I heard CFTR become “680 News”. It was a truly great music station. I still have some airchecks of Jim “Brady In The Morning” from January 1980. It includes a couple of ads, one for Subaru cars, which were new at the time. “Ooh, new Subaru…” Anyhow, there was another all-news station called CKO on 640. It didn’t last very long before it was bought out by another company and became something else - maybe The Hog.

Both Q107 and CHUM-FM had comedy programs, and the latter carried Dr. Demento. I heard Weird Al when he was just a guy sending in demo tapes. Wall Of Voodoo’s “Mexican Radio” got its first airplay on his program! It wasn’t even a novelty record, but it seemed to fit the format.

The game show whose name you couldn’t remember was “Concentration.” It was news to me about CKVR having become something as corporate-sounding as “A Channel.” I remember when they were just Channel 3, Barrie, a CBC affiliate. Everything about the presentation was amateur. The equipment was low-quality, the operators were worse, the visuals and graphics were laughably cheap. Then, at some point in the '80s they were acquired by the CHUM Group, which owns CITY-TV. I think that was when it became “The New VR.” Another station in the shoestring-budget category was CKCO in Kitchener, channel 13. Did you ever see Big Al at noon? He played cartoons and showed pictures of kids whose birthday it was, mispronouncing most of their names. Oh, do you remember when CITY started out as Channel 79? They showed soft porn films late at night, under the banner of “Baby Blue Movies.” I never saw any of them, though, I think by the time we got UHF capability, they’d moved out of that mode.

What’s the Toronto FM dial like nowadays? It used to be the educational stations down by 88, then various classical and elevator-music stations like CHFI (“Candlelight And Wine”) and CKFM, until you got to 102, and then all the rock you could get was between 102 and 108.

6

I don’t know about the dog puppet, but Chuck the Security Guard did host Channel 47’s “All Night Show.” I well remember staying up until the wee hours to watch his reruns of “Twilight Zone,” “The Prisoner,” and “Mr. Lucky.” His pal Rochester, whom you never saw, was the cameraman. Chuck’s show had a cult following in Toronto in those days, being the first station in the market (and possibly, anywhere in Canada) to broadcast 24 hours. Even Bruce Cockburn referred to it in his song “Coldest Night of the Year”: “I watched the all-night TV show in the all-night bar…”

And Q-107…I remember when they first went on the air, in about 1977 or '78. It was colloquially known as “Q-One-Oh-Zeppelin” because it played so much Led Zeppelin.

And what happened to AM1430 in the early 80s? It stopped being CKEY (home of the Leaf games) and went to some other format as a Metromedia station. It floundered along like that for a while, then tried something else. I stopped paying attention after a while; I suppose most Torontonians did too.

1050 CHUM. Gah, this was the station we all listened to at high school in the mid-70s. Scott Carpenter, the CHUM Chart, Jungle Jay, and the rest. Wolfman Jack hosting “Graffiti Night” on Sunday nights. Endless ads for pimple cream. One year, our high school raised the most money for United Way and we won CHUM’s prize of an April Wine concert. I remember it being hosted by Terry Steele–and our shock at finding out that Terry Steele was fat and middle-aged. Remember, he was just a voice on the radio to us kids; while I’m sure we all had our own ideas of what he looked like, we weren’t prepared for the reality. I remember CHUM’s oldies format in the 90s–kind of weird to hear the songs I remembered CHUM playing in the 70s all over again, but this time, referred to as “oldies.”

Rock 102 out of Buffalo was unusual in those days because it was hosted by…nobody. Just music, interspersed with ads. A friend of mine liked it for that very reason, but I do remember it overplaying “Muskrat Love.”

We didn’t have cable; instead, we had the antenna rotor on the roof. This was so my Dad could pull in Argo games from Peterborough that were blacked out in Toronto. So sometimes things were a little snowy. Still, we managed to get the Buffalo stations without Canadian commercials covering up the American ones. In addition to Commander Tom, Irv Weinstein (“Topping tonight’s Eyewitness News–Fire in North Tonawanda!”), and the rest; we also got Dan Creed for Dan Creed’s Chev-Olds, Joey for Super-Duper (“Not 69 cents, not 59 cents, but only 49 cents…”) and the other local western New York pitchfolk on their homemade ads.

Okay, enough for now. Nice little trip down Memory Lane.

7

How could I forget CHUM-FM in the early 80s? Album-oriented rock, Supersessions, Roger Ashby. And Ingrid Schumacher, whose gorgeous voice I found perfectly matched her looks when I met her once or twice. Ahh, memories!

8

Hang on. CFTO channel 9 was always in the CTV network, if I recall correctly. It was and still is (as far as I can tell) the flagship station of the CTV network, which may explain why it had the production facilities to host such long-ago network shows as the Miss Canada pageant, various fundraising telethons, “Stars on Ice,” and many, many tapings of “Definition.” (Which my ex and I appeared on, back in the 80s. We didn’t win, but our “lovely parting gifts” were two very nice and very expensive matching His-and-Hers watches. Much nicer than winning $30 in the bonus round.)

9

You guys are sure stirring up my memory. I grew up in Southern Ontario. CFNY was the radio station that got me into music in the first place around '86 I even remember that my first foray into the web was a complaint about the changing format. In fact here’s that original thread from '93 CFNY

10

It was still part of the CTV network but it was never identified solely as "CTV.’ It was always referred to as “CFTO TV, Channel 9 in Toronto, cable 8.” Nowadays it’s only known as CTV, period.

fishbycicle - The radio hasn’t changed much. The pre-102 stations are of various specialty formats from classical to jazz and and the like. Then there’s 102.1 as we’ve been discussing, HOT 102.5 out of (I think) Buffalo which is a dance/R&B format station, 103.5, another dance music station, 104.5 CHUM FM, some other station just above that, then Q107 as always and (if it’s still operating) 107.9/108.0, which did some dance but mostly R&B and rap, and I think they had a split format during the week, but I didn’t listen enough to find out. They have (or had) a companion club in Etobicoke, Club 107/108 (it was 107 on weekdays, 108 on weekends, and each reflected the different format). I went there a couple of times in the mid-90s when they broadcast live from the club. It was fairly average in retrospect, but being off my face on cheap shooters gave me rosier memories than it rightly deserved.

The New VR/A Channel conversion just happened over this past summer. A Channel started out on the east coast and has since taken over The New VR (which was a stupid name anyway). Also, A Channel is based out of Vaughan instead of Barrie, where CKVR/The New VR were situated.

CITY tried briefly to bring back The Baby Blue Movie back in the early-mid 90s. I think they only aired on Friday for a period of two or three weeks, which is probably just as well. I watched a bit of one of them, and man, were they messed up. Aside from the very 70s haircuts and clothing styles, the “plots” (insofar as porn of any stripe spends any time at all on such devices) were just weird. One had this mustachioed fellow who suddenly found himself trapped in a television set with all of his clothes on and at only about half his normal size. Somehow, this woman, who is not inside the TV, ends up straddling the television set, fully clothed, while the little dude inside the TV was reaching up between her legs and, from what I could tell, making motions that gave one the impression that he was making hand paintings on her labia, while she made some minor noises and writhed a little bit. Occasionally, he’d bring one hand back down and lick it. I don’t even think weapons-grade pharmaceuticals could have made anyone take this stuff seriously. Maybe it only made sense in the early 70s.

I also remember when they were channel 79 – I think they became 57 shortly after they got themselves on the cable network.

11

In 1981, I was in high school in Richmond Hill. At lunch time, they used to rotate between Q107, CHUM-FM, CHUM-AM and CFTR, much to the consternation of my best friend, who was a huge CFNY fan. Unfortunately, our school was 70% Italian, 20% Indian and perhaps 1% New Wave fans. :slight_smile: He didn’t get his way.

Do you remember J.D. Roberts? The long haired VJ who’s now a gray-haired reporter on CNN (but goes by John Roberts). How about “The New Music” for which he was a host in 1979 and 1980? The original Toronto video show, before MuchMusic (and even before MTV).

12

That website I mentioned about CFNY is here. You can read all about the station and hear literally thousands of mp3s of airchecks.

I was all excited to tell you about reelradio.com, which is a repository of radio airchecks from all over, from decades ago, but now it costs money to hear them. If anyone is interested enough to pay $12 for a year’s access, you can listen to recordings of CHUM, CFTR, CKEY and all the other Toronto stations, and WBEN-FM, WYSL-FM and WGR-AM Buffalo, as well as hundreds of others. I spent hours there when it was free. Oh well. Here is a working site that is another huge repository of airchecks. It’s working for me now, but when I first clicked on the link, the connection was refused. Maybe it’s busy.

I sure do remember J.D. Roberts when he thought he was hip. He was also a DJ on CHUM.

Does any of you remember 1280 CHAM, Hamilton? It was an elevator-music station until about 1970 or so, when it was bought by (Ted) Rogers and turned into a Top 40 station. It grew to be one of the best AM stations on the dial. They broadcast out of studios enclosed in glass in a mall called Terminal Towers. Even with the curtains pulled, you could stand outside the control room and watch the DJ operate his show. I was a fixture there after 1971. Eventually, I made friends with these guys, and they’d let me in.

Some names from CHAM were Paul Godfrey, Doc Holliday, Ravin’ Dave Mitchell, Rockin’ Ron Baptist, Don Collins, Gil Harris, Dick Joseph, Mark Lee, Paul Allen, Ike Isaac, Ken Packham, Ted Michaels. Glen Darling did news. That’s about all I can come up with at the moment. One day, when I was 14, Glen Darling took me into the news booth, sat me down beside him, said, “Don’t breathe.” And he turned on the mic and read the news. I was hooked. CHAM played a lot of records that the other stations didn’t. There are still some of them that I can’t find, and I’ve been tracking them down since 1971 or so.

In 1976, CHAM’s call letters changed to CJJD. They started to fall in the ratings, and a few years later, they changed format to country, and reverted to their old call letters, but changing frequencies. 820 CHAM is now a Canadian country radio institution.

Anybody listen to CKOC or CHML? CFRB?

13

Slight nitpick: It’s known as CTV Toronto:

This of course is to differentiate it from CTV Calgary, CTV Montreal, and other stations that use their host city’s name in the CTV network.

Gosh darn Torontonians, thinking they’re the centre of the universe. Well hell, I used to be a Torontonian too. :wink:

Channel 79 was a hoot! I remember the Baby Blue Movies on Friday nights. And I always said that to get the full flavour of SCTV, you had to be familiar with CITY’s programming. It was all there: Martin Short doing Brock Linehan (Brian Linehan), Andrea Martin hosting You’re Beautiful, and so on.

On preview…

Fisbicycle, yes I well recall CFRB. :rolleyes: My parents’ favourite radio station, and the one that was playing every morning in our kitchen. Wally Crouter hosting, Bill Stevenson with news, and every now and then, “Jocko Thomas of the Toronto Star reporting for CFRB from Police Headquarrrrrrters.” Not forgetting “Calling All Britons” with Ray Sonin, and “Men of Brass” on Sunday evenings with–argh, I forget his name, but he did traffic. CFRB was not to my taste; it was for the old folks. At least we kids said so at the time.

14

CFRB ran a regular jazz show in the evenings for years, and have since adopted that as its entire format. They are now known as Jazz FM. They’re partially government funded, partially commercial, and partially public broadcast. They are allowed a handful of commercials every hour or so, and once or twice a year they hold pledge drives. They even broadcast over the internet at www.jazz.fm. (My dad’s a dedicated Jazz FM listener and donor, in case you were wondering)

SCTV was great at doing sendups of local programming. I loved Short’s Brian Linehan impression – picture perfect caricature, especially with the overt camera looks. I remember J.D. Roberts from his New Music days along with Jeanne Becker. (And later Laurie Brown, Daniel Richler and Denise Donlon. Laurie was hot.) That wasn’t so much a video show as it was more about the artists and their music in general. I never found out what their theme song was in the 80s – that funky bassline with the trumpets. I know it was a real song, I just never found out what or by whom.

I used to live in Concord and went to school at Thornhill Secondary in the mid-80s. It seems like that entire area north of Steeles between, say, Jane Yonge was predominantly Italian. You couldn’t throw a stone without hitting an IROC.

15

I think you’ve confused CFRB with another station, because they’re still doing news and talk at 1010, a commercial, for-profit business like always.

By the way, did you know that Ray Sonin was the first person to play a record by The Beatles in North America? In the early 1960s, he hosted a "new records from over ‘ome’ show on CFRB, and in early 1963, one of those records was “Love Me Do.”

16

Whoops! You’re right. It’s CJRT I was thinking of. CFRB is indeed still news talk radio. I used to listen to it daily at my last job. The personalities there are pretty good.