Читать книгу That Wasn’t the Plan - Reg Sherren - Страница 11

Four years flew by as I honed my craft, even eventually making a little more money, and I landed my first byline—my name on a network radio report on forest fires in Northwestern Ontario, pounding out on teletypes across the system.

The business was changing. In private broadcasting, someone was always looking for another way to make money. The sales department came to me one day with an idea: they wanted to sell a news break that would be paid for by a large beer company. Now, you would think a beer company—let’s call this one SUDS—would want to attach itself to its traditional sportscast sponsorship. But some clever fellow thought that if SUDS could get their brand attached to a newscast, some of the news’s credibility just might rub off on them.

The plan was to air a one-minute commercial spot and call it the SUDS News Break. I was still new to the game, but I did have strong opinions about “selling” the news. Without independence and objectivity, credibility was non-existent. You didn’t have to look far to see that. Just across the border in Duluth, Minnesota, a local TV news operation that was sponsored by the Piggly Wiggly supermarket chain changed its name to the Piggly Wiggly Newshour. It even had the Piggly Wiggly Pig’s image on the front of the anchor desk. It was like a skit from the Second City comedy troupe—you couldn’t take anything that came out of their mouths seriously.

So I asked our salespeople, “What if SUDS has a problem with its product—say, twenty thousand cases of bad beer were accidentally released into the Thunder Bay market? Would that get reported on the news carrying the SUDS News Break?” Silence. “I will not do it,” I stated emphatically. “I’ll quit first.” And I meant it. As I said, I did not know much, but I knew enough to know that without credibility in this business, you have nothing. They decided to change it to the SUDS Sports Break instead.

Those airwaves were not always smooth sailing. It was in Thunder Bay that I learned the real horror of not being able to control laughter. It’s hard to explain unless you have experienced it. It’s something about knowing you are broadcasting live, and this little image in your head grows into a hysterical monster that unleashes itself and leaves you more or less helpless—in my case, on live TV.

It couldn’t have happened at a more unfortunate time. We had a story about three young men who had lost their lives at a local shipyard some months before. We were covering the inquiry into the cause of their deaths, and I was reading the scripted introduction to the taped report. A floor director in the studio was responsible for moving the massive old Marconi studio cameras to different positions around the set. They were huge, each on a three-wheeled pedestal. The poor woman tried to duck under the long lens of one of these beasts, but she didn’t quite make it. Instead she clipped it with her forehead, and the whole camera shot shifted.

While she lay on the cement floor rubbing her head, out of the corner of my eye I could see the studio television monitor. It showed what was being broadcast over the air. Now, instead of a normal head-and-shoulders shot only my head was visible, with a lot of space above it. To the entire Thunder Bay audience, my body had disappeared. In her haste to rectify the situation, the person switching in the control room started pushing buttons and pulling levers. Now my face was gone and replaced with colour bars. Then a silhouette of black, then poof!—I was back on the screen.

I tried to continue, but the image of the technical carnage that had just unfolded was still dancing in my head. I started to snigger, fought to get control, then burst out with a big guffaw. Laughing out loud and horrified at the same time, there I was, the main television news anchor, live on the air, stumbling into a very serious story with uncontrollable hilarity.

When I got off the air, I was told there was a call waiting for me in master control. It was what I had dreaded most. An older gentleman, the father of one of the dead young men, was on the line. He said, “Son, I just wanted to let you know that I saw what happened to you tonight. It was obvious to me that much more than we could see was going on. Try not to be too hard on yourself.” I could have kissed him. That he would take time, in his grief, to try and make a young broadcaster feel a little bit better about a horrible situation—a screw-up, really—taught me to have faith in my audience. I should never underestimate their ability to figure out when something isn’t right—and their ability to forgive.

Some months later I had another phone call waiting in master control. A gentleman asked if I was related to Reverend John Sherren from Curling, Newfoundland. I was pleased to tell him I was his grandson. Grandfather Sherren had been a United Church minister. The gentleman on the phone said he was in the congregation the Sunday my grandfather collapsed in the pulpit. He died some months later of cancer. This had happened over twenty years before I was born, and I had rarely heard anyone outside the family refer to Grandfather. I was so stunned to hear this story that I didn’t have the presence of mind to ask the caller his name. It was a powerful lesson on just how far you can reach as a broadcaster.

Those small-to-medium markets were critical learning grounds for many people who went on to report nationally and even internationally. CKPR Television has managed to survive, but sadly, many others have not. As broadcasters continue to consolidate and ownership dwindles to barely a handful of big players, opportunities like I had to learn every aspect of the news system have all but disappeared. How can having fewer sources of independent news, fewer diverse voices, be a good thing? It just isn’t.

After four and a half years, I was feeling relatively steady on my news legs, and I was itchy to try bigger things. Farther west was calling me, but not entirely for career reasons.

In Thunder Bay I had met my beautiful future wife, Pamela Tennant; she was the weekend anchor at CKPR and a daily reporter. We had to keep it quiet because having a personal relationship in the newsroom was something management frowned on. Can you imagine them trying to do that today? But Pam was also pursuing a career path of her own.

She left before me, taking a reporting gig with CITV Edmonton. Not long afterward, I chased her west, landing a job at CBC Calgary.