GREAT SCOTT! 40 Years Behind A Mike - By Richard (Dick Scott) Pratz
CHAPTER: Tonite Not Tonight
One of my busiest and stressful times in broadcasting came in 1973 and ‘74 when I had my own television variety/talk show. My radio gigs had been going so well at CKSO that the TV side of the operation decided why not put this guy on the tube to humiliate himself five nights a week? Again, there was no extra money involved ... but all the fame I could eat! The producer of my hour-long live show decided to capitalize on Johnny Carson’s “The Tonight Show” and changed the spelling slightly to call our local version “The Tonite Show”. Was his rationale that viewers might tune in our program by mistake thinking they were going to see Carson? Who knows? But if so, they were in for a rude awakening because there was, of course, no comparison. Still, for a local effort, it wasn’t all that bad. The debut of the show received a lot of publicity. One newspaper had a large picture of me on The Tonite Show set with a caption in huge bold black letters that read - - “AND NOW, HERE’S......DICKIE!” It was an obvious play on the introduction that Ed McMahon proclaimed weekly on The Tonight Show. The picture caption read - “Veteran newscaster of 15-years, Richard Scott is the host of the new Tonite show, produced by Channel 5. A good performance is in store for Sudbury audiences Monday to Friday nights as local guests are interviewed by Scott, seen wearing his CKSO jacket.” (That blue blazer with the Cambrian Broadcasting/CKSO logo sewn onto the breast pocket was the extent of my clothing allowance) To dress up the look of the program (yes it was sexist in the early 70s) were two captivating women. Tiiu Walner presented the weather and sat in on some of the interviews Monday, Wednesday and Friday while Susan Lee provided the same participation Tuesday and Thursday nights. Both women were with the program during its first few months but were later dropped when it was decided they didn’t add all that much to the format. Quoting again from another newspaper article - “The time is 10:58 or 22-hours and 58-minutes. A red light flashes in the TV studio, and announcer Larry Gavin comes on the air with, ‘This is Tonite!’ Tonite. That’s right, Tonite, not Tonight as in Johnny Carson’s show, but connected just the same. Program director John Campbell says, ‘This show is a combination of ideas. We talked about a show format similar to shows hosted by TV celebrities Dick Cavett, Mike Douglas, Merv Griffm, David Frost and Carson, and decided we wanted something extra’. That something extra turns out to be an hour-long show featuring guest interviews, local news, weather and sports, and worldwide news, weather and sports. In its second week of production, Tonite is still in its debugging stage as Campbell calls it. However, numerous callers have phoned in praise of the 60-minute colour program televised Monday to Friday over CKSO, Channel 5. Its first week of guests looked something like the Who’s Who of Yellow Journalism - a Playmate, a prostitute and a homosexual. ‘Maybe it was a little on the spectacular side, but we wanted something that would make a first-class entertainment show’, host Richard Scott replied when asked if he didn’t think the first week’s lineup of guests was not just a bit too risqué? Campbell added that a good prime time show was needed to attract the Northern Ontario audience away from the stalwart competition of the 21-year long CBC National News. If the number of calls and well-wishers are any indication, it seems the show’s combination is just what the Northern Ontario audience has been waiting for. The emphasis is on entertainment with the added interest of local people being interviewed. Tonite contains a bit of a W-5 along with the wit and witticism of a Scott radio show. An added attraction has been the hiring of two versatile women, blonde Tiiu Wallner, and brunette Susan Lee, both making their premier media appearance on Tonite. The set consists of blue carpet, a stereo unit and four plush, velvet-like red chairs with microphones placed neatly alongside. Two cameramen are on hand to televise the show, using various techniques of zooming in and out on guests, extending the area of the audiences’ living rooms. To date, the impact of this experimental program appears to be making its mark. The quips and jibes of Scott, who has 15 years in the news media - the talent and charm of the two women and the synchronization with the technical team blend well. A main factor in maintaining audience attraction however, will be not only a polishing of the show’s format but through further ideas relative to local interests. Another idea along these lines was mentioned - that of putting Tonite on before a live audience. This, however, is something off in the future at the moment. So for those of you out there in TV land who thought they were going to see the Johnny Carson Tonight Show, take heart in the fact that the Sudbury Tonite Show brings you, your own community, and people and events into focus.”
Let me defend myself here by saying I had absolutely no say in choosing that controversial lineup of guests for the first week of the show. The producer thought the controversial guests would draw an audience, and he was right. Publicity stated that the show’s program director and executive producer would attempt to line up guests a week to one month in advance. But that went by the boards within a few weeks and the chore was dumped into my lap. I needed at least two guests per show five nights a week, and in a town the size of Sudbury it was darn hard to find ten different guests every week! I eventually had to resort to the yellow pages. I would actually sit down in the newsroom, open the yellow pages and begin making calls. Guests often found themselves being called 24-hours or less before the show on which they appeared. It’s surprising how well-oiled the program came to be, considering the small staff that put it together. Television talk shows of today and even those in the 70s had large research staffs that lined up guests and briefed the host on what was needed. The Tonite Show had no such luxuries. Other than the technical requirements of the program, it was me alone who was responsible for its content as well as how it was handled live on the air. The executive producer may have stopped by the newsroom to discuss guests I was considering or had already lined up, but my judgement was only vetoed a few times. More often the producer would ask incredulously, “What in the heck are you going to do for a 15-minute segment with a circus sword swallower?” Then I’d try to ‘sell’ him on the idea which wasn’t too hard. “Are you kidding? He says he’ll bring along all sizes and shapes of swords he uses in his act. We’ll talk about life on the road with a circus. He has lots of strange stories to relate. He’ll tell us the secret to sword swallowing. He’ll try to get me to do it and we can have fun with that, etc. etc.” The producer would say “sounds great” and I’d enter his name on the large blackboard I kept that showed a week’s worth of programs. More often than not I tried to find what I called “show and tell” guests; people who had something to show or something physically interesting to do before the cameras. Guests like these included an acupuncturist who stuck all manner of needles in me, a farmer who brought in a goat for me to milk on camera (promoting an upcoming agriculture event)....in short, guests who brought with them something I could hold up to the camera or something that enabled me to participate. These always made the best programs. One time an RCMP officer brought in a breathalyzer machine to show the effects of alcohol on the bloodstream. It was part of a “No Drinking & Driving” campaign. We taped the segments in advance (showing elapsed time on a clock) along with me and two others who actually consumed bourbon highballs and blew into the machine. I was “looped” by the time we finished the demonstration and some comments we made in our drunken condition were, in retrospect, not in the best of taste but it was a fun (plus educational) thing to run on the show that night. I did all manner of things that I normally wouldn’t do in my private life to achieve high ratings on the show. Once, we took the entire program to the Timmins Winter Carnival in Timmins, Ontario for a Polar Bear Dip in the Mattagami River. The City of Timmins had a population of 41,000 back then and was billed as one of the North’s largest regional centres. Timmins was in our broadcast area so the visit there was part of a plan to add out-of-town viewers to our ratings. Hometown girl Shania Twain was just 8-years old then and I sometimes wonder if she was part of the crowd that gathered on that ice-covered river to watch our show. Hundreds of people did. It was minus 21-degrees Fahrenheit that day (this was before Celsius in Canada) as workers chopped a big hole in the river, surrounded it with snow-fencing above and below the ice (so the current wouldn’t carry us downstream) and laid down a carpet so our feet wouldn’t stick to the ice when we came out of the water. Attired in a bathing suit with the camera’s rolling, I jumped into the icy river and exited as soon as I surfaced! My hair froze immediately as someone handed me a microphone and I strolled over to the assembled crowd and began interviewing as many onlookers as I could before I turned to stone. Then I’d break for a commercial and run inside a portable sauna they had brought onto the ice. As the commercials ran, I’d warm myself up inside the sauna in more ways than one. Inside was some homemade “screech” (an alcoholic beverage popular in Newfoundland) that at first tasted a lot like kerosene to me. Oddly enough, after downing a few it tasted better! After a few gulps of screech, the floor director (or in this case the ice director) counted down the seconds and I’d emerge from the sauna to the cheers of the crowd and jump into the river again. I repeated this procedure for four different segments of the program. Everyone had fun and the show turned out to be a tremendous success even though by the time it was over I was pretty much seeing double! I also caught pneumonia and was off work for the next ten days during which time The Tonite Show aired reruns.
