It turns out that Mike Duffy apparently got his CTV start over beers in a backyard. That’s how this story goes anyway. And here it is verbatim:
How Max Keeping and the W.K. snagged Duffy
The Ottawa Citizen
Sun Oct 2 1988
Page: C6
Section: Sunday Show; (Arts/Entertainment)
Byline: Tony Atherton
Source: CITIZEN
Max Keeping and the W.K. dreamed the whole thing up four years ago over a couple of beers in a backyard in Arnprior.
Wouldn’t it be nice, they mused, if they didn’t have to get their Sunday morning news hits from U.S. television _ CBS’s Sunday Morning and ABC’s This Week With David Brinkley? Wouldn’t it be nice if there was Canadian show with a national and international outlook to repatriate a time slot from Jimmy Swaggart?
It would have to be slick but thorough, and have pots of money for satellite link-ups around the world. It would also have to have one helluva host _ David Brinkley and Charles Kuralt combined.
Keeping, news director at CJOH, had a guy in mind. More than 20 years before, when he was still a reporter at a Halifax radio station, Keeping had played nursemaid to a 16-year-old stringer from Charlottetown. Now that they were both in Ottawa, they still chummed around.
Mike Duffy, Keeping thought, would be perfect.
The W.K. agreed. The W.K. (a Duffyism _ for Whiz Kid) is John Beattie, son of singer Mac Beattie, the ”king of the oldtimers,” a genuine Valley folk hero. These days, the W.K. is building his own legend.
At 15, Beattie used to chase fires with a home-video camera and sell the tape to local stations. Since landing a videotape editor’s job with CJOH straight out of high school in 1976, Beattie has fairly flown through the hoops of TV production, including stints with CBC’s Midday, The Journal and NBC.
He’s now back in Ottawa as executive news producer with CJOH, but he was working at CBC Ottawa that lazy summer Sunday in Arnprior.
At the time CJOH was in foment. The station had just been purchased by Standard Broadcasting of Toronto, and it seemed that all sorts of things were possible. Maybe, Keeping thought, he could sell the idea to his new boss, Allan Slaight.
Slaight didn’t bite, but Keeping didn’t give up the dream. He and Beattie kept refining it over the years. They advised Duffy _ the most popular newsman on Canadian TV _ they had designs on him.
”I said, ‘Sure, guys, sounds like a great idea. Keep me posted’,” Duffy recalls. He had a lot of respect for the pair, but felt they’d spent a little too long under hot studio lights. There was no way a private TV station from a secondary market was ever going to be able to pull off such a show.
Of course, that was before CJOH was engulfed by a gale-force wind named Doug Bassett, president of Baton Broadcasting. Bassett’s bluster bowled over the CRTC at a hearing on the sale of CJOH last winter and swept Duffy off his cosy perch at CBC just a few months later.
Bassett warmed to the idea of the Sunday morning show as soon as Keeping and Beattie pitched it. And once enthused, Doug Bassett is a hard man to deny. Sunday Edition was born.
The show needed money, Bassett was told. You got it, he said.
”I’ve never been told what the budget is,” says Beattie. ”They’re saying spend what it takes. You can never say you’ve got carte blanche, but we’re pretty close to it.”
The show needed Mike Duffy, Bassett was told. Go get him, he replied.
But Duffy wasn’t satisfied with just a fat increase in his own pay. ”I wanted money for satellites, not salaries,” he says.
He wanted to know whether Sunday Edition could work. He hired buddy Peter Mansbridge’s accountant to make sure all the bolts had nuts. He quizzed a former CRTC commissioner about Bassett’s performance in the past. And then he jumped.
”I had two day of euphoria (after the decision), and then on the third day I was physically ill,” he says.
Duffy has since mastered his panic, but some of his friends at CBC still aren’t sure he made the right choice.
Despite the good graces of Bassett, the show’s fabric is extremely thin by network standards. Four producers and Duffy are the only permanent staff. It relies heavily on CTV affiliates carrying the show to help flesh it out. And Beattie is pulling every gonzo trick he knows to wangle the cheapest satellite transmission costs.
There’s a persistent feeling at CBC that Duffy’s dabbling in private TV is a mid-life flight of fancy. Most expect him to return to the embrace of the Mother Corp.
Even Mansbridge, supportive throughout Duffy’s career crisis (as Duffy was through his last fall), notes that Sunday morning’s a tough time for a news program.
But for Duffy and his producers, there is no such thing as too much news. Beattie has visions of Monday Edition, Tuesday Edition, Wednesday Edition… Sunday morning is the ideal launching pad.
”There’s a gulf in Sunday morning. CBC radio has great programming, but on TV if you want good information, you have to watch the Americans.”
But no more, promises Beattie.
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gdimmock@ottawacitizen.com
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