I like how entangled they are with the local celebrities.
So this dude is our most famous contemporary actor, as no one knows who Gordon Pinsent is anymore:
And he's married to our main anchor on the CBC:
So, CBC is the Canadian national public broadcaster. That gives it a really interesting history in my city. When we joined Canada, they were afraid of St. John's (the only city, and capital, which voted overwhelmingly against joining Canada) so it took them until the 1960s to set up a station here, despite setting up ones in rural towns well before that. Their main competition was NBC (Newfoundland Broadcasting Corporation) and VOCM (Voice of the Common Man, talk radio). There were violent protests here at the idea of a state-sponsored station. Locals (because they didn't even want to join) were suspicious it was propaganda.
That eventually faded. CBC went on to have a sort of renaissance in St. John's. To this day, I guarantee you in every single CBC station across Canada there are people from my city working. We dominate the network behind the scenes (To give you an example of what that's like on the ground, I lived in Winnipeg for a few years - that's like moving to Dublin from Kazakhstan in terms of geographic distance, and to Bristol from Glasgow in cultural distance). Yet every day, on TV and radio, there were people from my city, interviewing arts and culture people from my city, reading stories about my city, etc. Local actor, that one I mentioned, Gordon Pinsent, even had a segment reading Newfoundland authors during my morning commute lol The Canadians don't seem to notice that's weird lol). Some of us are even front and centre on camera, like David Cochrane (one of the main political reporters). Anyhow, so many game shows, comedies, etc. CBC in St. John's started a lot of television trends that still exist today. For example, you can find alarmingly similar shows to Saturday Night Live and Daily Show on our CBC years, sometimes a decade, earlier.
And a lot of it was very risque for the time. SO many positive portrayals of homosexuality in the 70s, and drag queens in the 80s. They even tackled church abuse. The scandal here broke ages before the one in Boston, and led to an immediate collapse in the power and membership of the local churches. In the aftermath, we even quietly (and socially easily) did away with denominational education and merged our Catholic and Protestant school boards into a single secular one. One of my proudest moments. We're a small people, simple and modest history, but one of the things that makes me proud of us is how completely and quickly people turned against the church when it came clear they weren't having a positive impact locally. Every family has a few hardcore Catholics, the type who bless themselves every time they pass a cemetery, who left the church at the time and haven't been back. That's amazing. But anyhow, after the scandal broke, this is a sample of how the local CBC responded:
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And they even had clips that slammed the church while showing gay guys weren't necessarily the problem:
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While all that was going on, Newfoundland Television also existed. It was owned by a local eccentric, a legend in his time.
Quote:
Every Newfoundlander is familiar with the wonders of NTV Late Night but very few people have ever known what, exactly, is actually going on. I certainly didn't, until I spent three months trying to get inside Stirling's head.
I'm still not sure I get it, but it's been one hell of a trip.
Welcome to the mystical world of Captain Newfoundland.
...
Born on March 22, 1921, Stirling spent his life chasing new heights—literally as well as figuratively. He was an accomplished sprinter and high-jumper in the 1930s and 40s, attending Tampa University in Florida on an athletic scholarship for track and field. In 1946, while the moribund colony of Newfoundland was wrestling with whether it should join Canada or seek independence, Stirling founded a tabloid magazine (the Sunday Herald) that urged the island to link with the United States instead. Along with broadcaster Don Jamieson (who later sat in Pierre Trudeau's cabinet), Stirling founded CJON as a radio station in 1950 and expanded to television in 1955. This station—NTV, "Canada's Superstation"—eventually became the first colour station in the province, and in 1972 it pioneered 24-hour broadcasting.
...
"While every other station in the country would simply go off-air, NTV blazed all night, showing syndicated programming, movies, continuous live feed of a fish tank, Scenes of Newfoundland, and the Stirling tapes: hours-long interviews with Joey Smallwood; conversations with conspiracy theorist David Icke spliced with images of horrible grey aliens; the "Computer Animation Festival," featuring Atlantis characters and pulsating animation sequences from the Lawnmower Man; repeated showings of Pink Floyd's The Wall; images of crop circles, UFOs and the Egyptian Pyramids layered on top of one another and/or images of Barack Obama; and the laws of God—"The Law of Energy – All is Energy"—scrolling over random stills."
...
Stirling was deeply influenced by the psychedelic counterculture of the 1960s. When he bought CHOM-FM in Montreal—the first English FM station in Quebec—he used it to play multi-day Beatles marathons, live meditative chanting, and divination sessions with the I Ching. Famously, while vacationing in London in 1969, he befriended John Lennon and Yoko Ono when he sent Lennon a cryptic telex: "I've heard your Come Together. Here I am. Geoff Stirling." According to Stirling's son Scott, it was Geoff who invited John and Yoko to Montreal when they held their Bed In and recorded "Give Peace A Chance."
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https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/d...n-newfoundland
But NTV, being entirely local, hasn't changed its sets or staff since the 80s. So it's hilariously outdated to watch. Here's an interview about a local show about my family:
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Beyond all the oddities, what I like most about local news is how passionate people are about it. Every time the CBC tries to cut our local 1-hour-plus supper hour news down to 30 minutes local, and 30 minutes the national feed, they bleed so many viewers the decision is reversed. People here prefer to get their national/international news from the local anchors.
Also, on NTV, they read out a list of birthdays to anyone over 90, and anniversaries for any couple married longer than 50 years. It's hilariously bay/rural/hick/whatever you'd call it.
But, for how hilariously backwoods it is, NTV is deeply connected to the community and does have a great sense of humour. (For the Americans, the highest temp you see behind him at the beginning is 21C, or 70 in your degrees).
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And back to radio, for one second. Newfoundland is obscenely into talk radio. It accounts for like 30% of the market here, and like less than 5% in mainland Canada.
Here, talk radio is very left-wing. The main show is Open Line, wherever everyone can call in to talk about the news of the day. Politicians local and visiting (including Canada's Prime Minister, and visiting ambassadors, etc.) all call in every time they're in town or something relevant is happening here. It's a cute little oddity that I love.
But a lot of the calls are stupid. "Paddy, b'y, me wife is gone again. I'm calling in about Income Support. Why am I only getting $200 a week when the b'ys on EI is getting $600?"
One of my all-time favourites:
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