GREAT SCOTT! 40 Years Behind A Mike - By Richard (Dick Scott) Pratz
CHAPTER: The Great White North (Continued)
Another of the hats I wore at CKSO was that of voicing “the book” every day for television. The book was a binder of scripts of voice-over announcements that would run on television throughout a given broadcast day. For this, I wasn’t paid any extra but was given the title of “Chief Announcer” I could now add to my resume. Wow! The announcements usually consisted of just commercial tag lines. I’d go into a booth in TV control and record such exciting things as “Available at Sears” - “Open until 10pm” - “Sale prices in effect until Saturday” - you get the idea. By the time I’d recorded many dozens of these, I had worked my way toward the back of the binder and scripts for the CKSO’s Late Late Show. The station ran movies after midnight at a time when I believed not many viewers would be watching. I pre-recorded promos and such for the next night’s late show. When the movie was finished, my voice would come on over a slide telling what motion picture would be seen in that time slot the next night. It took me about one hour to record an entire book each day and it got to the point where the scintillating tag lines and promos, one after another, became quite boring to read. So much so, I began making up names to amuse myself and the technical crew in the control room. I’d say things like - “Be sure and tune in tomorrow night for the exciting western ‘Riders of the Plains’ starring John Wayne and the late great Flemmin Stirr” or “Don’t miss tomorrow night’s presentation of the thriller ’The Stalker’ starring Boris Karloff and the ever-popular Leonard Ditwiller!” In addition to these senseless announcements the signoff line always read, “The staff and management of the Cambrian Broadcasting System wish you a pleasant good night and good morning” .... or words to that effect. I often changed it to, “The staff and ENTIRE management......”, emphasizing the word “entire” as though management consisted of 80 people and the staff only ten. Sometimes it actually seemed that way to me, but I was easily amused! One day in the Sudbury Star newspaper, a small item appeared that read- “The Cambrian Broadcasting System has always made it a practice to announce what is on the next night’s late show after that evening’s late movie is over. They usually give the title and who’s in the cast. But for some strange reason recently, they give the main actor and the name of somebody you never heard of before! Leonard Ditwiller has shown up more than once! Who is he? Who knows?”
My boss didn’t know either and my secret was out of the bag! I guess there were more people watching late night TV than I thought. My friends and I all laughed to think these insignificant announcements had actually been noticed. Management, however, didn’t share our sense of humour and I soon returned to recording the boring book! Once in awhile I was given two or three 12-inch reels of film to be featured on The Late Late Show and it was my job to thread the film through a hand-cranked sound/viewer and select 50-seconds of the movie for a promo that would ‘grab’ viewers. More often than not, I went directly to the final reel, figuring it would contain a scene I could extract that would be exciting. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. It wasn’t often, however, I would have to crank my way through an entire motion picture just to find 50-seconds of something useable. That would have been much too time consuming. When I’d see the promos aired with the scenes I selected, I’d often find them laughable thinking maybe I should have selected something more indicative of the movie. But oh well, that’s how it went.
Just around the corner, my very own television talk show!
