Village Squire, 1976-03, Page 11The staff, Mr. Langridge recalls, stood
around hopelessly watching firemen battle
the flames for a while, then began to gather in
various homes to discuss the problem and
what to do. The fire was still at its height
when a convoy of trucks, cars and station
wagons arrived from CFPL in London with all
the spare equipment that could be rounded
up by that station. It was just the beginning of
the tremendous co-operation that other
people in the industry were about to show.
The record collection of the station was
destroyed so records came from other stations
and record suppliers Suppliers came through
with emergency equipment. National adver-
tising agencies came through with duplicates
of commercial materials lost in the fire. By
nightfall with all this help, CKNX television
was back on the air, telecast from the new
high school building across the way. The
newscast included film of the fire which had
been shot and processed through the co- -
operation of CFPL.
A Toronto newspaper headlined its story on
the tragedy "Death knell for a station" but
Doc Cruickshank was on the air telling his
listeners that the people at CKNX would
rebuild "bigger and better than ever." As
Dick Lewis in a recent article in That's Show
Business pointed out:•"Everthing went up in
smoke. Everything, that is except the
indominable spirit of Doc Cruickshank and his
staff, who, as soon as the frenzy was over,
started methodically and with determination -
along with their friends in the industry and
the area - to rebuild CKNX_."
Within 18 months after the fire, the two
stations were located in a new building on the
site of the old. Those intervening months
were rough as the stations made do in
temporary makeshift quarters but it proved
again the staying power, the sheer
determination of this little broadcasting
business in this little town.
But there were some battles which were
much harder to win. The old game of
economics was hard on a small rural -based
television station. National advertisers, on
whom television stations in particular depend
for the bulk of revenue, like to see big
audience figures. They are used to big city
population's and so the relatively small
numbers who watch a station in a rural area
don't interest them. Cable television began to
seep into the area, fragmenting the small
population base even further. CKCO
television had applied for a repeater station at
Wiarton to improve coverage in the Georgian
Bay area. The television station, at best a
touch-and-go situation financially, began to
lose money. Even the profit from the radio
operation couldn't match the loses. Rumours
were rampant over the future of the station.
John Langridge recalls that rumours on main
street had nearly everyone involved in
broadcasting buying the station at one time or
another, including John Bassett, the
multi -millionaire Toronto broadcaster and
former newspaper publisher.
But then in December 1970 Doc
Cruickshank and Walter J . Blackburn
chairman of the board of CFPL Broadcasting
Limited and main owner of the London Free
Press announced the sale of the business to
Mr. Blackburn's group. The sale was subject
to Canadian Radio -Television Commission
approval which came in March 1971, after the
A studio in 1951 when live entertainment was a big part of radio.
THE
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VILLAGE SQUIRE/MARCH 19-b, V