With a TV licence at stake, you can't get too Canadian by Pierre Berton

Journalist and author Pierre Berton, who died last week, wrote 1,000 columns for the Toronto Star from 1958-62.

Although its significance went largely unreported, it seems to me that the chief diversion offered the general public during the hearings in Toronto by the Board of Broadcast Governors was the conversion of Mr. Jack Kent Cooke, the well-known philanthropist, to the new religion of Canadian Culture.

I attended some of the sessions in the Oak Room of Union Station, and though Mr. Cooke did not win a private TV licence, he certainly held the limelight - and held it in the face of some pretty tough competition. There was Mr. Mavor Moore, giving one of the finest dramatic readings of his career, Mr. Johnny Wayne of the Ed Sullivan Show, the comedy team of Eugene Forsey and Emlyn Davies (who should be on the Ed Sullivan Show), Mr. Joel Aldred, the wealthy car salesman, Sir Ernest MacMillan, Foster Hewitt and a cast of hundreds.

I have never seen so many Distinguished Canadians gathered together under one roof. One noticed, in the box seats, such eminent figures as Sir Robert Watson-Watt, the inventor of radar, John Fisher, the inventor of maple syrup, Dr. Reva Gerstein, beautiful girl psychologist, and Larry Henderson, beautiful boy newscaster. All of them were involved in the applications.

In these hearings for a TV franchise, Virtue predominated, as Mr. Cooke was to illustrate. Words like "public service," "community interest," "cultural fabric" and "educational responsibility" were studded like sequins through the briefs and submissions. One heard practically nothing about Old Movies, TV Westerns, rock 'n' roll or Mighty Mouse. The accent was on Canadianism and the Arts. Buffalo was the wicked villain, and everybody, Mr. Cooke included, was trying to out-CBC the CBC.

Name-dropping was honed to a fine edge. Every applicant worth his salt managed to sprinkle the names of a score of leading Canadians through his opening remarks. One man got Cardinal McGuigan and Rabbi Feinberg into a single sentence. Another, who had a book publisher on his board, managed to toss off the name of our leading novelists.

By the time Mr. Cooke got up, there were no big names left. Who's Who had been exhausted. The Social Register had been squeezed dry. Undeterred, Mr. Cooke entered the witness box alone - a man who had received the Message and seen the Light. He was dressed in his best suit, a dark conservative number with matching vest and four-in-hand, as befits a Patron of the Arts and a Champion of Culture. There he stood - a so truly blue Canadian that he may easily replace the beaver, the maple leaf and the New York Rangers as a symbol of the nation.

Now you may remember, a while back, that there was some whimpering and hair-rending by the private interests over the BBG's insistence that all programming be 55 per cent Canadian in content. I'm happy to report that the carping has ended. Indeed, the applicants at the Oak Room were falling all over themselves to top this figure. It remained for Mr. Cooke to lead the field with 64.4 per cent "the instant the station opens."

If Mr. Cooke came to the hearing under certain disadvantages, he turned not a hair. He is the sole owner of CKEY, a radio station that has devoted 58 per cent of its time to popular records, more than 20 per cent to commercials and less than one-half of 1 per cent to public service, children's programs, drama, interviews and documentaries. Yet here was Mr. Cooke promising to deliver great gobs of these things on the screen. The only item missing was Great Hymns of All Time, but another applicant proudly unveiled that the following day. (P.S. He won the licence.)

Until his recent conversion, Mr. Cooke was a member of the You-Gotta-Give-the-Public-What-It-Wants School. The closest he got to culture was when he described the Fabulous Sixty tunes on his station as "the folk music of the American continent." He once ran afoul of the Fowler Commission for broadcasting too many commercials. But now here he was talking about a TV station as "the servant of the community" and referring, disarmingly, to one commercial announcement every 15 minutes.

I don't know if Mr. Cooke has undergone some kind of mystical experience or not, but surely this is the greatest about-face since the days of the Apostle Paul.

"For many years I have observed with deep sympathy the efforts of educational groups in the field of television," said Mr. Cooke earnestly. Well, he was prepared to devote two hours a day, six days a week, to pure education. "And I promise you, gentlemen, that is a minimum!"

With that Mr. Cooke began to reel off the names of organizations that would help him in his work: the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Art Gallery, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Opera Guild, the National Ballet, etc. A titter rippled across the audience; they had heard all those names in previous verbal briefs.

Later Mr. Cooke was asked if he had actually approached these various cultural groups. He said he hadn't; they were being bothered by all the other applicants. He planned to wait until they were a little less busy.

One got, next, a fascinating insight into Mr. Cooke's new concept of programming. I do not recall that he mentioned the Top Sixty Tunes, but we did hear about live music, concerts and live union actors (whom Mr. Cooke has never employed). There was talk of a weekly 90-minute drama "from the great classics of literature - English, French, Greek. ..." There was a mention of a panel discussion on democracy; there was a reference to a conversation program between a man-and-wife team, discussing such topics as how to fix a leaky drain, the problem of juvenile delinquency, their personal concept of Arnold Toynbee and so on.

Well, Mr. Cooke's performance only served to point up the overall air of unreality that hovered over the proceedings before the BBG. Everything seemed just a little too good to be true. Personally, I longed for some rascal to announce flatly that he planned to produce a blood-and-thunder drama of the Living West. Sandwiched in between the endless Chopin recitals, the wholesome children's programs, the religious choirs, the earnest panel discussions and the National Ballet, it would have come as a breath of fresh air.

This, however, no one could afford to do, the climate being what it was. Oddly, the one note of reality was introduced by Mr. Cooke himself when, in an unguarded moment, he described the private licence as a "rich plum."

And that really was what all the talk about culture and all the breast-beating about Canadianism and all the name-dropping in the Oak Room were actually about.

This article was originally published on March 28, 1960.

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