A Little Good News Xmas 1996
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00:00And now, from the MTV Archives, you are viewing MTV.ca.
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01:00Well, we hope this holiday season finds you well, Cut, without my glasses.
01:05There you are. I knew that.
01:07Between Christmas and New Year's is where we find ourselves,
01:12and I thought that this would be a good opportunity to have a look at some material we did about three or four years ago.
01:18Gee, was it longer than that? Maybe it was five years ago.
01:22Did a little thing where we had a look at that period in time where television came of age
01:30and talked a little bit about where television had come from and where it was going.
01:37And I enjoyed doing it.
01:39Now, the only drawback is that central to the whole thing is the Spring Hill mining disaster,
01:46and we talked about that just a couple of weeks ago.
01:48Now, all of that notwithstanding, we're going to ignore that because I do want to share this with you.
01:55There is so much film to see and so much to do that we may not be talking much this show.
02:00Thanks be to God, say a large segment of the audience.
02:04But I do want to thank you for spending some of your Christmas with us and for taking time out.
02:10You'll be rewarded. I said that last week, and you were when we had some Christmas material.
02:14This is great as a look at the development of television in Newfoundland.
02:20I shall stop, and we shall begin.
02:23It was all so new in 1955, and we, as a station, still didn't know quite what we were in terms of news.
02:32You only have to look at reel one, tape one of the CJON archives to see what we considered to be news at the time.
02:43It was an endless parade, and I'm reading now from some notes of Newfoundland curling,
02:49Christmas toys from the scouts, memorials, a wreath-laying ceremony at the war memorial,
02:56the Christmas seal opening at Hotel Newfoundland, the cadet parade, and the CJON Christmas party.
03:05What you're looking at now is one of those sports banquets.
03:09Any place where we could take our camera, have lots of notice, set it up, and take some pictures, we saw it as news.
03:18It would be seen now, I guess, I suppose, a photo op, or photo opportunity, and usually something to be avoided.
03:26But we saw, or the whole theory behind it was to present as many people as possible on television.
03:35Let them see themselves, and they'll watch your station, because people are the news.
03:43And that's not a bad theory, people are the news, except that there is much more to it than that,
03:50and we know that now, like these four pretty ladies, circa 1955.
03:59Well, that went on for a very measurable period.
04:04You just look at the tapes, I've looked at them many, many times, through 1955 and up through 1956, at least most of 1956,
04:15and then something happened that was like a bolt of lightning, I suggest to you, in the newsroom here in Newfoundland.
04:23Something happened, and we changed our whole approach, and if you look through the written and photographic record as I have,
04:31you can see how dramatic that change was, and we'll talk about that in just a second.
04:36Canadian Legion, peewee hockey, and more faces, all from the theory that people are the news.
04:44The photo opportunity of all photo opportunities, a stadium full of people, and young faces.
04:52Okay, what happened in 1956?
04:56You're going to be asking yourselves that changed news as we know it.
05:01This was news, just parenthetically here.
05:04This is the holding seats lineup at the stadium in St. John's.
05:11It's hard to fathom that today, in 1991, almost within a couple of days of 1992, that this would be a news event, and this amount of film given to it.
05:28Because when the St. John's Maple Leafs came to town, they only got a minute and a half on the evening newscast,
05:37but nearly four minutes of film on the selling of holding seats when the stadium opened.
05:44We went down to Pepperell Air Force Base, which is what this is.
05:48You've heard me speak many times of the land of plenty, but this is the Garden Party and Armed Forces Day at Pepperell Air Force Base.
06:00But all this presented a skewed and slanted vision of the world in terms of news.
06:08You watch these films, and you would think that all is right with the world,
06:13that the world was an endless series of hockey games, skating parties, picnics at Fort Pepperell,
06:20Board of Trade meetings, religious services, Christmas toys, and scouts.
06:28And it wasn't.
06:30And we learned that in terms of television, as a matter of fact, the country, I suppose.
06:34Because if you look at other stations, it's not just Newfoundland that was at fault.
06:40This was the stock and trade of almost all stations up until 1956, and a particular month in 1956, November.
06:52Now, what happened in November of 1956 that changed the business of television?
06:58Well, in Nova Scotia, of all places, in the mining community of Spring Hill,
07:05there was what is known in the business as a bump, which essentially is an underground earthquake.
07:14And a number of men were trapped underground for many, many days.
07:21Now, television was able to bring that to the people of the country.
07:28And almost immediately, television news went from what you're seeing right now to this.
07:36The ambulance and what is known in the business, and still is, as spot news.
07:44Apart from taking you to photo opportunities and programmed events,
07:49television discovered that it could put you on the spot when an event was happening.
07:56And that was a miracle. That was a revolution in broadcasting.
08:02The whole nation watched over the days as the search for these men went on,
08:07watched and listened.
08:09The career of J. Frank Willis with the CBC was made standing by at the pit.
08:19He was on the air for something like four straight days,
08:23keeping the nation informed about what was going on there.
08:28And he was there as survivors, miraculously.
08:32Survivors were brought to the surface and then ultimately there for the recovery of the bodies.
08:41And television was there.
08:43What a graphic image that is.
08:46Well, how graphic?
08:48One of the earliest news events I remember, still in my mind,
08:52I was only eight years old at the time, was the Spring Hill mining disaster.
08:59There are these things that we remember, signposts along the road of life, if you will,
09:06like the Kennedy assassination, for instance.
09:10Well, for me it was the Spring Hill mining disaster at eight years old.
09:18Television learned some very valuable lessons here about its power and what it could do,
09:26what a useful tool used to its fullest it could be.
09:30Now television can take you not to Spring Hill, Nova Scotia, but to anywhere in the world,
09:36or for that matter, out of the world.
09:39We've all seen the television signals to and from space.
09:46Well, it was a lesson learned well by people who run television newsrooms right across the country.
09:54And almost to the month we changed here at CJON,
10:00because you look into late November 1956 and up through December and January,
10:08and you see November as a watershed.
10:12And so our television cameras started to go places other than the curling club for news.
10:20When a truck went off a bridge, as in that case, in this case,
10:24when a train went off the tracks, when there was a fire, when there was an accident,
10:29then our cameras went there and we presented that spot news to the people of Newfoundland.
10:36And the weekend review was no longer what went on at the Rotary Club and what went on at Army Cadets.
10:45It was no longer a view of a world in which all was right.
10:51It was, I suggest to you, a more correct view of a world where things very frequently went wrong.
11:01This is a car accident, by the way, down on Brasel Square here in St. John's.
11:07We went to the car accidents and to the fires and presented a different vision of the world altogether.
11:13Now, I know there are people sitting there today that will say the television news strayed too far in the other direction
11:23and ultimately wound up presenting only the bad in the world.
11:29Now, I know the argument and the theory. I personally do not subscribe to that.
11:36However, that is another story for another time, for the next few moments.
11:40For those of you who watch the program A Little Good News, you will never have seen some of this film
11:46because this is film that I religiously avoided putting in because of the nature of A Little Good News.
11:53This was all bad news.
11:56You see that picture there of an empty shoe and a truck in a pond.
12:02Again, that's the power of television because those two pictures tell the whole story.
12:08That's it right there. That's what television can do.
12:13That is a tremendous power and one, and at one at the same time, it is a tremendous responsibility
12:21but weighs very heavily on people who are in television and who are serious about it.
12:28And, of course, it raises again, I use the word parenthetically, the age-old question in television news
12:35and editing what to show and what not to show.
12:40Through 56 and 57, endless series of accidents and things gone wrong in our society
12:50mixed in with the archbishop's address and with the athlete of the year and the CJON draw for $5,000
13:02and the ladies' dinner, the International Order of the Daughters of the Empire,
13:07which had been almost exclusively the road we walked down in 1955.
13:13Well, by the end of 1957, had been pushed into a very secondary position.
13:24Now, I'd like to report to you that all the film or film transferred to tape that you're looking at now
13:30are stories that ultimately had happy endings, that there were no personal injuries and no loss of life,
13:35but I can't do that. In fact, the opposite is the case. Most of these stories ended in tragedy.
13:43This is tape that we haven't shown you before, but it has a place at least in this particular show
13:49because we are looking at weeks in review over 40 years.
13:56It was Hemingway, I believe, who said that all stories end in death
14:02and he is no good storyteller who would keep that from you.
14:08That's the dragging of the harbor in St. John's or the recovery of a motor vehicle from the harbor in St. John's.
14:18That was part of our business as well because that's the way the world is.
14:23Trains go off tracks sometimes, as in this case, an accident that happened very near to St. John's
14:32in which there was no loss of life. This, of course, the days when we had our railway,
14:38but again, that's another story for another time.
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15:03I'm Paul Snow, President and CEO of the Health Care Foundation.
15:07On behalf of our Board of Directors and staff, I'd like to thank all of our donors,
15:12and wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a healthy New Year.
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15:54It ain't my love, if you were mine.
15:58Would you feast on me, or would the sun shine?
16:03I watch you each evening on my TV.
16:08And wonder what the forecast holds for me.
16:12I found my brother there, he's just right for me.
16:16I ain't too any sheer on MTV.
16:25Welcome back to A Little Good News.
16:27And during this holiday season, or this break between Christmas and New Year's,
16:31we have been talking about the development of television news and its role in the community.
16:38Now, by way of introduction to this next piece, television.
16:42You remember the presidential, American presidential race of 1960.
16:47That was decided by television in many ways.
16:51Well, not by in many ways.
16:53The key element in John Kennedy's win over Richard Nixon was the televised debate.
17:01Television, very early in the game,
17:04became a great vehicle for the sensible expression of opposing views on any particular issue.
17:13And in television news, even to this day, essentially that's what we do,
17:17apart from fires and chasing ambulances around and disasters,
17:22and things in society that have gone wrong,
17:25we, television, provides a vehicle for expression.
17:30The conservatives and the liberals, or the socialists, and it goes on and on.
17:35Now, let us take you back to the first issue in Newfoundland that became a television issue.
17:45The confederation, the great confederation battle, the battle for confederation or against it,
17:50depending on which side of the fence you were on,
17:52was a radio and a newspaper issue, particularly radio.
17:56Joe Smallwood used radio to its full extent.
18:01It has been argued he never really understood television.
18:05Although during the IWA dispute, he took to the earwaves
18:09to state the province's position with regard to the gangster union, as he referred to it.
18:17Well, to the television studios of C.J. Owen came H. Langdon Ladd from the IWA
18:24and sat in with Don Jameson on cavalcade to talk about the issue in this dispute, or the issues.
18:32And what a great use of television that was.
18:34Okay, have a look.
18:36By all means, I don't want to monopolize this thing at all.
18:38I believe Jack had a question in that regard.
18:40I was going to bring that up, Don, that you were mentioning earlier about the legislation on a national issue.
18:44What is the feeling of both you gentlemen on the legislation passed by Premier Smallwood and his government?
18:50Well, I would like to say this, that the legislation which decertified the IWA,
18:57which was a completely legal organization that had won its certification in every way by legal means,
19:03was a block upon the history of not only of Newfoundland, but of this country.
19:08That when you have a government that can say the loggers do not have the right to choose the union they want,
19:15when they are robbed of this opportunity of belonging to the union of their choice,
19:19I say the basic freedoms of our people have been given a terrific blow.
19:25My comment is simply this, that while unions, labor people unquestionably have every right,
19:31I personally would defend it to the nth degree.
19:34I feel that the primary responsibility of a government is to the overall population and to the economy.
19:40I personally feel very strongly about the fact that the economy of Newfoundland was seriously threatened by this strike,
19:46and I feel in all conscience that the government of Newfoundland had no alternative but to do what it did.
19:51Well, gentlemen, unions certainly aren't new to Newfoundland.
19:54Why should there be such objection to the IWA, Don?
20:00Well, that question is a little bit flat, and it needs qualification, why there should be objection to the IWA.
20:07I think you have to start back at the beginning of the overall problems that have been created over the past four or five weeks,
20:15and, in fact, I suppose back to the beginning.
20:17I'd like to ask Mr. Ladd, first of all, why he thinks there ought not to be objections to the IWA.
20:23In other words, what is the position now? How do you feel about it, Harvey?
20:27After all of this has gone by, do you feel still that we're completely unjustified in the attacks that we're supposed to be making on your organization?
20:34Well, that was a nice flip, Don.
20:37I would say that the reason why the government of Newfoundland and others have posed the international woodworkers there
20:45is basically because we were a strong, well-run, efficient organization that was, for the first time,
20:52able to do a job for the people who work in the woods of Newfoundland.
20:56Previous to that time, they had company-type unions there that were ineffective and did nothing for the logger.
21:03The logger is the forgotten man in Newfoundland.
21:06And the reason why these groups have opposed us is because we were able to do a sound trade union job
21:13that was never done before in their basic industry.
21:27During this special time of year, IBEW Local 2330,
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22:55Welcome back to a holiday edition or special edition of A Little Good News.
23:00We have been discussing the role of television rather than look at me and hear my thoughts.
23:07Watch the film and we'll talk some more.
23:10Well, I don't think you're going to recognize where this is from just that particular shot.
23:15I remember the summer that all the bars in the city seemed to be burning down.
23:21There were five or six of them all within a period of four or five months.
23:26This particular one is out in Churchill Square, Churchill Park.
23:30And it was Milt's Bar.
23:34But news by this time now had divided into various categories and had become quite sophisticated.
23:42This was still part of our stocking trade.
23:46Spot news, fires and accidents, disasters of various kinds.
23:53And that's a small D, disaster.
23:56There were no personal injuries, by the way, just for those of you not old enough to remember in the Milt's Bar fire.
24:03We were getting into other things as well.
24:06We'd moved light years away from parades as news events and relied heavily on spot news.
24:14Even we're doing some consumer items as well, prices and things like that.
24:20This was the height of the Cold War.
24:23The world had learned to count backwards from ten.
24:28There was very genuine concern about the possibility of nuclear war in the 60s.
24:37We remember the Cuban Missile Crisis very fresh in our minds and the confrontation between Khrushchev and Kennedy.
24:46And we as a group were aware that the world was perhaps not the most pleasant place we had thought it was.
24:56In the years following the Second World War, we're going to listen now to a couple of people.
25:03And it's hard to believe your ears now in 1991 that they're talking about fallout shelters, the concern about nuclear war.
25:13The possibility was that real that it warranted a news piece.
25:19The world had changed dramatically.
25:22This is Jack Hollis.
25:25I would imagine you could liken it to a life jacket.
25:29If you were on a ship and you were in trouble and you had a life jacket, you'd have a better chance than a man without one.
25:33Have you ever given any thought to fallout shelters?
25:36Well, yes, I've given it some thought.
25:39And the problem that comes to me is what would happen if I was at work and I did have a fallout shelter at home?
25:45How would I get from work to my house in time?
25:48Do you feel if you had a shelter at home when you were home, it would be useful?
25:52Yes, I think it would be useful for fallout, but that is about all.
25:56I think it's a good idea, fallout shelters.
26:00Have you ever thought of building one yourself?
26:03Personally, I've thought about it, but I don't have enough money for it, though.
26:08Do you think the cost of building one might deter you from having a shelter in your house?
26:13I think it would.
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26:23NTV Newsday, coming up next on Canada's Superstation, NTV.
26:29Simplify holiday shopping with the Governor.
26:32Shop and stay the night with a hot breakfast for two.
26:35Our gift to you is on now at the Governor.
26:39You play that no matter where I am.
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26:53Catch the snowman.
26:55♪♪
26:59Get him!
27:01What's going on?
27:03Nothing.
27:04The NTV Holiday Movie, Jack Frost, Monday at 8.30 on NTV.
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27:12All right, you chipmunks, ready to sing the new version of your song?
27:16You know we are. Yeah, let's sing it now.
27:19All right, Simon.
27:20All right.
27:21All right, Theodore.
27:23All right.
27:24All right, Alvin.
27:25Alvin.
27:26Alvin!
27:28Oh, yeah!
27:29♪♪
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28:10Welcome back to A Little Good News.
28:13The clock on the wall tells me a couple of things.
28:15It tells me that the half hour is all but gone.
28:18And it also tells me that the year is gone.
28:21This is the last time that we shall be together in this year of 1996.
28:26And, in fact, when we meet again this year, we'll be no more.
28:31There are lessons in that, but darn if I know what they are.
28:34We have been talking today about the magic of television and its role in our society.
28:40On behalf of everybody here, not only at A Little Good News, but at the NTV News and the NTV News team,
28:47I want to take this opportunity to thank you very much for all your kindness during the past year
28:52and to invite you to join us again next year.
28:56Have a happy new year, everybody.
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