Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - 12:36: Toronto Mike'd #695

Episode Date: July 28, 2020

Mike chats with Marc Weisblott of 12:36 about the current state of media in Canada and what you oughta know.

Welcome to episode 695 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times, and brewing amazing beer. Palma Pasta, enjoy the taste of fresh homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. Garbage Day. Weekly reminders for garbage, recycling, and yard waste pickup. Visit GarbageDay.com slash Toronto Mike to sign up now. StickerU.com. Create custom stickers, labels, tattoos, and decals for your home and your business.

The Keitner Group. They love helping buyers find their dream home. custom stickers, labels, tattoos, and decals for your home and your business. The Kytner Group, they love helping buyers find their dream home. Text TRONOMIKE to 59559. CDN Technologies, your outsourced IT department. And Pumpkins After Dark, save 10% with the promo code Toronto Mike. I'm Mike from TorontoMike.com. And joining me for his July 2020 recap is Mark Weisblot from 1236. Mike, I'm back in the backyard. And I even sped this episode up.

We could have done the July recap, well, into the early part of August, but after having my first Toronto Mic'd Backyard experience at the end of June, I thought, I can't wait for the next one, and here we are. Four weeks later, with another one of the monthly recaps, greatly inspired by the 1236 newsletter, which comes out every single weekday at 1236 p.m. Mike, you might have noticed these newsletters are now having a moment. I've been standing by for five years waiting for some sort of tipping point to arrive where this whole idea of email being the main way that people received innovative online content,

People received innovative online content that the newsletter would become the primary method of distribution. And here, in the summer of 2020, it's starting to happen. I don't know if you've picked up on any of this. Just the other day, Jen Gerson, a friend of 1236, journalist from Calgary, she's worked for all the a level of liberal thinking that is increasingly prohibited in the mainstream mass media. And the only way to preserve it is to have more people starting their own stuff. Right now, she isn't the only one seeing it this way. It was Andrew Sullivan, who a few weeks earlier mentioned he was leaving New York Magazine, that he was butting heads with the management there with his political perspective, that they no longer had room for what he was doing.

There were too many complaints that he was provoking people in the wrong way, making the workplace unsafe. We've seen a number of these staff revolts happening out there in America, and these people have turned to this newsletter platform, same one I use for 1236, called Substack. Now, their models are based on the idea that they can get people to pay to subscribe. And I was right there in the front lines

of paying Jen Gerson to show my support for her project called The Line. So this is a different method of operation. The way where she's coming from is more political current events commentary. Here I'm trying to do this kinetic daily newsletter was originally conceived on bringing it to as many people as possible, but I don't know what's going to happen. And as we've seen with blogs and podcasting, eventually something reaches a tipping point where bigger corporations, even advertising, picks up on the phenomenon. And I'm happy to come here and report this month that we're finally seeing it with the newsletter. Now we've just got to put the pieces together and see where they fit

for what might be a year of woodshedding ahead, where 2020 into 2021 is not going to involve a lot of people getting together in the same place at the same time, maybe not allowing for that same degree of innovation. But I'm hopeful about what can happen, not only with St. Joseph Communications, which I've been working for all this time, but another media startup that I'm involved in developing. I got to keep that one still a little bit quiet, but it's coming soon. Can you give us a clue?

Well, it replaces something that disappeared in the early days of COVID-19. Shalom, shalom. And can that be the foundation for what's to come? Well, what about TMDS, Toronto Mike Digital Services, which has weathered the storm of the pandemic. And you don't have to disclose how things have gone in terms of your business expectations. But all I can say is the spirit

and the energy of TMDS has sprung to life. And it all comes down to the fact that you're doing it here in the backyard. I actually looked it up. So I did a Zoom episode with 5440. Who's the lead singer for 5440?

Neil Osborne. This is what happens when you record every day. You forget things you just should know. Okay, of course, Neil Osborne. That's what happens when you do a Zoom episode. You forget who the hell you're talking to, even though you've known that guy for 40 years. Okay, so Neil Osborne from 5440 was via Zoom. And since then, this is

the 10th episode in a row recorded in person, I would say in my backyard. But that would be a bit of a lie because I went to Diane Sachs's backyard to record with Dr. Diane Sachs. But this is my 10th episode in a row that was in person. and that includes a couple of Pandemic Friday episodes. All right, so we're bouncing back, and we've got this monthly 1236 ritual, and I think we're in it for the long haul, right? The fact that we've come this far, that you had me stuck at home doing it all,

yeah, that we've built something up here. This is kind of like part of the monthly 1236 thing, right? I can't leave here without throwing in these discreet pleas to whoever's listening that we would like to do more of this in the future. I mean, both of us are deeply invested in it at this point in time. And I want to see what lies ahead. Dealing with the reality, like I said with newsletters, that maybe the next few months are going to be a little rough. And we're going to have to ride it out. We're going to

have to find something. We're going to have to find the inner strength to keep this story going to get to the other side. And that's how everybody feels about everything right now. You know, I'm running on pure instinct. So it's good to hear that you think the energy continues to survive through this.

Well, Pandemic Friday, the fact that you've got Cam Gordon and Stu Stone now joining you, what, a couple of times in the backyard, including one night there was almost a rain out. The very first Pandemic Friday episode in the backyard, it was absolutely pouring rain for, yes. And as a result, I think they had to work extra hard to make that one memorable. That was one of the greatest episodes ever of Toronto Mike and probably chief in the history of Pandemic Friday. But I'm starting to get a little bit jealous. I thought that might happen. Because they've got four times the podcast time

of what you give to me. Yes, okay, but they're different, you know, very different things. Like, the Pandemic Friday, it's about, it's sort of a frenetic pop culture nostalgia trip. And you, to me, this is very current. Like, we're literally going to

focus on July 2020. Like, to to me they're different animals and nothing no one no one actually i don't know of a human on this planet who can do what you do so don't be threatened by the pandemic we've got here a monthly show like no other i think the acknowledgement of that has uh come up over and over again and we gotta make it great and it doesn't matter what's on the table for talking about here in the monthly 12 36 recap uh we've got to make it great. And it doesn't matter what's on the table for talking about here in the monthly 1236 recap. We've got to cover all the media stuff leading up to our recap of memorable people who died in the past month. But, yeah, we've got to start with Marcella.

By the way, what Great Lakes beer did you crack open? Vienna Lager. Is this a new one? New logo? Pop art? V for Vendetta? All this is fresh. Vienna?

V for Vendetta. I picked it up last week, so it's all fresh. And there were a couple of lagers I picked up. And one was, yeah, the Vienna Lager. And there's a different lager there that's got the retro Great Lakes logo. Pretty cool. And I put an octopus wants to fight that's got the retro Great Lakes logo. Pretty cool. And I put an octopus wants to fight on your table. I have to describe everything because we're not on Periscope.

I, myself, just before we get into this Marcella update, I'm going to need this. I'm going to crack open a Canuck Pale Ale. Is this the last time I'm going to play Beach Boys Marcella? I don't know. Every single month, ever since we first learned about the young woman who tossed a chair off the 45th balcony of a condo in Toronto above the Gardner Expressway,

I don't think we missed a month without playing the Beach Boys song, Marcella. Was that every episode? Yeah. Because it's like in your hard drive, you've got a certain number of plays. I've racked up my own listens on YouTube, on Spotify, and we've made this song. We brought it back from Beach Boys obscurity to be something that every Toronto-mic'd listener should know. Oh yeah, the Spotify checks to the Beach Boys have never been higher. Marcella Zoya, better known as Chair Girl,

I don't know if we knew that this was coming, that they were actually going to be handing down her sentence on July 21st. This got delayed a number of times, partly due to the pandemic, but with some help from virtual technology, all the reporters got in line to cover the sentencing date for Marcella. She was fined $2,000. She was given 150 hours of community service and two years probation, a sentence that was followed by Mayor John Tory

lamenting the fact that she wasn't thrown in jail. They asked the mayor what he thought about this. And he thought that the justice system had failed people for not making enough of an example of Marcella. Earlier in the month on Instagram, at one point she was in Vancouver. Where the pandemic lockdown laws had gotten looser and she had a lot more freedom to party than she did before. But when they gave chair girl her freedom, she felt free to post on Instagram the fact that she was going to party like never before. And that's when we saw a different side of chair girl. And that was the point where she was, I guess,

finding it okay to flaunt the fact that she wouldn't be doing any jail time and that she was going to show off just how appreciative she was. And, as we've complimented enough here of her social media savvy, she knew that if she posted a video on Instagram, it would be on CP24 like 10 seconds later. They would pick it right up. So there you had the video of her in the Instagram stories, and then you had the video of the video of Chairgirl's

Instagram video showing up on TV. Okay, but on behalf of most Torontonians, can we, maybe the 50 minutes is up now? Like, the sentencing is done, this is done, and, you know, jail isn't what it used to be, and what I mean by that is with COVID-19 out there, it is a

harsher sentence than it used to be. Like, maybe Chairgirl doesn't need to go to jail. I don't know. I think it was incredibly irresponsible. I'm glad she has to do a whack of charity work, but, but, but it opens up a whole new world.

And this is where the chair girl updates might not be done because suddenly we get a greater perspective here on who chair girls hang out with. And it's like one of those old, um, is it you? No, it's, it's like one of those, um, uh you? No, it's like one of those Russ Meyer movies, like Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill, or Beyond the Valley of the Ultra Vixens,

that she's kind of found this cast of characters that she surrounds herself with. One of them is a rapper. I don't even think I have that song here. The rapper's name is Cromaz. Okay. Cromaz has a song called Quarantina, which escaped my radar at the time. But in the process of catching up on Toronto's first lady,

I've learned a little bit about Cromaz and that she's, in fact, a friend of Chair Girl that she was hanging out with. F-O-C-G. Riding with the top down and promoting her music in the process. So this is an FOCG. This is a friend of Chair Girl. Is that right? Cromas? All I'm saying is I'm open to the world that Chair Girl is going to live in,

I think, for a long time to come, especially now that she's free to do what she wants any old time. Now, I got to ask you straight up because the FOTMs out there need to know, like, Mark, straight up, if Chair Girl were, what is it, Sally Plain and Tall or, you know, would you be still interested in the saga? You know, I learned in the process that Chair Girl's lawyer lawyer greg leslie um he and chair girl are around the same height uh which is interesting maybe that's why they bonded she made sure to express her appreciation about what he did for her which required going to court time after time after time

right um keeping the ball in the air and that's why it took something like 17 months for us to find out what Chairgirl would be sentenced for, there was some outrage around the fact that she wasn't banned or blocked from social media in any way. And yet in the process, when she was showing these Instagram videos from her victory bash, it turned out that this club on King Street West in Toronto, a place called Arcane, ended up getting in trouble because the video of the chair girl victory party showed people partying down

and not a whole lot of social distancing. Right, indoors, indoors, right? And I guess it was Lauren O'Neill of BlogTO that was on the case. And this bar, Arcane, had to put out a statement. And they said, you know, our patio is following the rules. And we've got it at half capacity in the time of COVID-19. And we won't let more than six people sit at a table.

And ShareGarlander friends, they booked a a bunch of tables and they pushed all the tables together, which was against the rules. And the bar had to clarify in its social media statement that they were asked to go back to their assigned tables. And any behavior that you saw in this video was not condoned by the establishment. But of course, we're at a point now in the pandemic where the action moved away from policing people in the parks to wondering if everyone's following the rules on the patio. Now, at least one listener thought we should put the chair girl saga story into the Ridley Funeral Home Memorial section because they deem this story is now dead.

So I guess time will tell. Tune in for the August 2020 update and find out if we play the Beach Boys, Marcella. Now, I don't even know if I want to talk about this woman, but if you can do it in 90 seconds, because I don't have a lot of appetite for this, but Letitia Montana in the mask rebellion. Oh, well, if we're not going to have Marcella Zoya to kick around anymore.

What with this woman? There was a video that went viral like all around the world. I heard Kara Swisher talking about her, the tech journalist. And that's when I knew there was some validation. This was another one of those Toronto characters who went globally viral. She was at the hospital. It was what? St. Joe's.

It was St. Joe's. Yeah, not far from here. And she was kicking up a fuss over the fact that they were ordering her to wear a mask in the hospital, right? Standard operating procedure. I went to the same hospital many times during the pandemic. And this was well before you had to wear a mask in the mall or the subway. I had to wear a mask.

It was ordered in the hospital. In late March. Every precaution taken. I had to wear a mask when I went to St. Joe's with a broken wrist. And she put a video on Twitter making a spectacle of herself rallying against the mask. Well, as the TTC rule went into effect on july 2nd i was reminded that because there were posters in the subway about that real smooth subway ride here by the way i mean it's as as good as any limo ride uh when it comes to the convenience are you alone

in the car well pretty much a lot of the nuisances associated with coming down this far. At this point, who needs an Uber when you've got the TTC if you have to go down this distance? I mean, that's one plus of doing these podcasts in the pandemic era because my journey here on the TTC was always a subject of such drama. I would come here with the subway broken down or you had to wait for a bus in the snow on the street yeah that sucks that part and getting here is working better than ever anyway uh what

what were you gonna say i was just gonna take a moment to like take a deep breath take a sip of the canuck pale ale and just say that you know it's it's a beautiful day like we got a beautiful blue skies ahead above and uh i there's no better place to be right now than right here. Us two in the same place, having a great conversation, drinking delicious craft beer. And I just want to say I'm glad you're here, buddy. Glad you're here. Thanks, Mike.

And I would take it on the basis of your diversion there. I guess you don't want to talk about Letitia Montana and her organizations. Mothers Against Distance? Which is offensive on so many levels. You've got to be a dad. I mean, you have to be responsible. I don't have this level of role modeling

that I have to make. Even for you, that is grossly disrespectful to an organization like Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Okay, well, the alternative group, the one that hands out these cards telling people I'm exempt from wearing a mask, it's called Hugs Over Masks. I don't know who these people are. I don't even like giving them any press.

They all gathered together and went in the subway without masks. That was their form of protest, right? With Letitia, their new spokeslady at the forefront of it all. These people were fine! Like, they weren't wearing masks at a time of unprecedented protest where people are covering their faces. These

ones were willing to be exposed and have any potential employer recognize them over the fact they weren't into wearing masks. They're just shit disturbers? What is the impetus here? I don't know.

Do they work in a world where no one really cares about this stuff? Do they go to McDonald's without a shirt on? Is this no shoes? If you run a business and you believe that COVID-19 is some kind of conspiracy, if you're lax about the mask, if you don't really care if anybody's wearing them or not, is that you're right? I mean, these are the disputes that people are having out there. If you have a house party, like in Brampton, Ontario,

and you invite around 200 people and you give them valet parking. And it turns out that the cops end up busting you because a neighbor sees something going on in the streets. And then Patrick Brown, the mayor, announces that you might be fined $100,000. And then it's Doug Ford saying it's like a bunch of cheese that fell off the cracker. And that maybe they should be, each party goer should be given a ticket of $880 each. This is the state that we're in. And it goes to show you, I guess, that it doesn't matter how much messaging there is in the media about wearing masks and having to live up to this new emergency law of social distancing, there are going to be people who break it.

I couldn't help but notice a mask beside you because I'm going to assume you wore that on the TTC today. Yeah, of course. So you're not in any of these groups. No, don't associate me with any of them. I'm just saying that it's part of the culture of the podcast that I come on here and I praise civil disobedience, right? Because what else is there to talk about

if there aren't people making news this way? There would be no Marcella. I'm only human And you look at me like you never knew that You cut me deep and left me wounded But I want you still It's not on you, oh no, no This love is ruthless This is Langston Francis.

This might be the last time that you ever hear Langston Francis, given what happened to him. But this song, what was it called? Fall from Grace. Fall from Grace. There you go. Perfect, right? Because in the month of July 2020, a fall from grace.

One like I don't think we've ever seen before in the history of Canadian music. And that was a would-be teenage heartthrob who was being groomed by Sony Music Canada as the next big thing, losing his record deal and all the opportunities that he was building up that were afforded to him. This single and I think a couple others that got at least some some CanCon airplay. But you won't be hearing from him again. And this was a 19 year old.

The next Justin Bieber or Shawn Mendes, right, who grew up in Kensington Market and was busking in the streets in Toronto was a young teenager. was busking in the streets in Toronto as a young teenager. He went to the Rosedale Heights School of the Arts and found himself mentioned in some posts on social media about incidents of sexual assault that went back to when he was in grade 9 and grade 10. And that as these stories came out, as someone started a petition calling for Sony to sever ties with him,

the record company abided and that was the end. Goodbye to Langston Francis. By the way... Do we have to remember his name? Because we won't be hearing it any time in the near future. There's a great pitcher, Mark Langston. That's the Langston I remember.

Seattle Mariners, et cetera. Okay. Did you tip your hat to the Rogue byway when you walked by? Oh, well, I can't resist checking out, making sure if it's still there. It's being a blog TO. They had a post. It was right before the lockdown in early, mid-March, saying the Rogue Byway was closing down.

That was cause for alarm. The Rogue Byway is like a central fixture of every visit to Toronto, Mike. The neighborhood that you're in right now is abuzz with the news. In fact, it was on the agenda at City Council today. I wonder if it's come up yet. They're still working hard there at City Hall.

But that Rogue Byway, the building the Rogue Byway is in, was sold to the city. So there's plans, at least there's plans in place for a 100-bed homeless shelter. I think the two buildings side by side, the Rogue Byway and the building beside it, were purchased by the city. So there are plans for a homeless shelter of some nature

with 100 beds going in there. So stay tuned. I'm getting updates on the reg. Some neighbors are quite concerned. You got into that with Larry Fedora, right? Yeah, just a little bit. Because now, it's funny, it took this for me to see clusters of neighbors I've never seen together kind of meeting safely on the sidewalks to discuss and to understand what's happening and what they can do, etc.

But yeah, it has spawned some really like high level questions like what do what what should this city be doing with our homeless issue uh like like if if not there where should such a shelter go and like you know and everybody's fearful of like some uh of course studies that show that that if when near homeless shelters, it could be an increase in like some small, some theft and some violence and all these different things people are suddenly chatting about. And it's kind of been interesting to listen to everything. And a lot of people are sort of very nimby.

There's a lot of... You're meeting all the neighborhood nimbies. There's a lot of nimbies and a lot of it is actually rather disheartening. There's a lot of classes in that place, and me, I'm here, you know, fighting probably the lone wolf, fighting the good fight. Right, not too long ago,

this was a rougher neighborhood than it turned out to be here in New Toronto. Well, Lakeshore is still kind of sketchy. Yeah, you still don't have a Starbucks around there. No, you've got to go to, like, Evans and Raleigh kind of sketchy. Yeah, you still don't have a Starbucks around there. No, you gotta go to Evans and really... Maybe you never will. I noticed on the way down here, further north up Islington, the Cineplex Movie Theater on the

Queensway, I was there on opening night. And that was right after 9-11. And I remember I think at the time she was a member of Parliament, Jean Augustine. Oh yeah, long time. She made a speech, she welcomed people there. I was there, I guess. She's a parliament, Jean Augustine. Oh, yeah, a long time. She welcomed people there. I was there, I guess. She's a big deal in this thing.

Some journalistic reasons to see what it was all about and to take in a free movie. Sure. Free popcorn. We can't go wrong with free popcorn. Who would have imagined 19 years later, I mean, thereafter 9-11, right? Things were a little shaky. Right. 19 years later, I mean, they're after 9-11, right?

Things were a little shaky. Right. I guess they made a speech like, now more than ever in these times, we need the cinema to give us a place to go and make us feel a sense of community. And now we're four and a half months without Cineplex doing any business and we don't even know if they're going to return.

And that Queensway Cinema you're referring to, that opened up and they closed the Sherway Cinemas because they used to have it across from Sherway Gardens. And I guess that got closed and then they opened this big complex at Islington and Queensway. So now that the Rogue

Byway has been sold, that's probably for the best, because I think it sounds like Byway is coming back to life. And if Byway existed, they might not like a Rogue Byway existing in Toronto. Oh, we've got this Byway $10 store, and they're now into their second location of promising the return of the byway brand uh in this case it's uh

at least the place where the signs can be found don't want to put too much stock in any of this because uh previously uh bathurst uh bathurst between fineele's. They had a whole coming soon, somewhere in a strip mall. We're now into our second hypothetical location for the Byway $10 store. And we'll see if it materializes sometime in the fall. They promise as much on the website. I think it's,waystore.com. And the co-founder of Byway, a guy named Mal Coven, his brother-in-law who co-founded Byway actually died earlier this year. Maybe he's more determined than ever for sentimental reasons.

Well, that's the only reason to open a Byway. Byway at 91 going on 92, and they're promising it on Orifice Road. Okay. And the real Byway logo will rise again. At least it's there in the form of a couple of professional signs directing people to Bywaystore.com. Stay tuned to Toronto Mic'd.

If it's not me, Cam Gordon. Cam Gordon, who once gifted you a Byway bag, which ended up being used in a few different news articles about Byway. Maybe the most famous Byway bag ever. When you looked up on Google Image Search for a picture of Byway, there was a bag that Cam had handed to you on one of his visits. Right. And we'll see if the bag will rise again, if we can do a TMDS field trip to the new Byway.

We have to. We can bring the old bag, you know, show that we're being green environmentally friendly recycling we'll do a remote piece of history from byway oh no for sure we have to do a live remote from the new byway it's funny you mentioned sentimental reasons why would you open up byway again and i'm thinking it's either that or like really i feel like the bag that went sort of locally viral that Cam Gordon gifted me,

that sort of fulfills the, scratches the nostalgic itch. Like we don't actually, nobody actually needs or wants an actual byway. Am I right? Like is there any, no one's out there saying, I wish we had a byway.

Well, Orifice Road, the street near Yorktown, I don't know if they've ever been there. They have like a wholesale maybe? Like know if they've ever been there. They have like wholesale maybe? What do they have going on there? Like eclectic, eccentric factory outlet kind of stores. I feel like you go there to get like an oriental rug or something. At one point there was a store called Target Apparel. So it wasn't Target, the department store from Minneapolis.

It expanded to Canada. But it was like a trademark troll that opened a Target for Canada, right? Like registered it with the Canadian government simply so that they could be paid to go away. If you wanted to know where the Canadian version of Target that was deliberately opened up so that they could extort money from the Target Corporation.

Whatever amount of money this company gained, they opened up on Orpheus Road. And at one point there, I don't know if it's even still around, there was a store where you could buy clear-out items that they weren't able to sell on the shopping channel. As seen on TV? that they weren't able to sell on the shopping channel? As seen on TV? No, it would be just like the leftover stock of cubic zirconia jewelry that they couldn't get rid of on TV

that you could drive into this place on this side street somewhere up there on Dufferin. Right. And you could browse around and find all the things that they were trying to get rid of that they couldn't sell on television. Okay, I want to get to the, I really think,

because I owe an FOTM, let me speak English, I owe an FOTM an apology, and I really need to get to the chorus layoffs, global layoffs, and other layoffs, and other things happening. But first, here, let's talk about a couple of people who passed away, and let's talk about them now as opposed to holding on to these for the Ridley Funeral Home Memorial section, which is coming up soon.

Not as much radio news lately, although is there a little bit? How is that syndicated US show doing on flow? The Breakfast Club. Well, it seemed like we mentioned here, I think they started, Is there a little bit? How is that syndicated US show doing on flow? Like, how's that going? The Breakfast Club. Well, it seemed like, we mentioned here, I think they started at the right time as far as race relations in the United States becoming a big story. Right. And that was when they had as a guest, talking with Charlemagne,

Rush Limbaugh one morning on the show. And that was after Joe Biden was on there, an infamous appearance. It seems whenever politicians go on there and they try to speak the hippity hop, it always ends in some kind of disaster. Joe Biden was no exception. He said, if you vote for Donald Trump, you ain't black. Right.

And as far as putting Flo 93.5 back in the game, one of the other tweaks they made is they made a playlist that was more mainstream. In fact, the station was more repetitive than before. And so any argument they had that, okay, they would put on this U.S. syndicated talk show and they would get a different kind of listener and it would bring more exposure to Canadian musicians, well, it turns out they're playing more Drake than ever. And any argument that, okay, you know, the musicians stand to benefit

because at least they'll get more airplay on a radio station that more people are listening to. But just like anything in 2020, as far as a strategic decision, I think you have to grade it on a curve. You can't really say, okay, putting this thing on the air here is going to make much of a difference. One of the sidebars, politically speaking, is, as far as I know, did we ever ascertain that the hosts of the Flo morning show that they displaced are not black?

The ones that were moved to Afternoon Drive, right? You've had her, Blake Carter. Blake Carter I've met, and you're right. not black the ones that were moved to afternoon drive okay so i don't actually know blake carter blake carter i've met and you're right she does not she's not identifying as a black woman and peter cash now why does it come because a lot of people are agitating about the lack of diversity in the mass media do you have to turn to the united states of a black uh morning radio show on commercial radio in toronto i guess at that point you had to if you wanted a quick fix. I mean, there are other examples out there,

but this was a show that had the momentum, that had the audience, had the potential crossover to people that weren't going to listen to a hip-hop music radio station any other way. And I think it's a waiting game here, like everything in the media in 2020, to see how this one turns out.

And if they stick around with doing the flow format on 93.5 at the same time, G98.7, which was the black-owned radio station in Toronto, started by a guy named Fitzroy Gordon, who was a media pioneer. He used to be Dr. Love on the multicultural chin radio.

Well, it turned out he got sick and died at a point that was precarious for the sake of the radio station because it turned out that they owed a lot of money. And now this station, G98.7, is up for sale

waiting to be saved by somebody out there who wants to take on this license, like98.7, is up for sale, waiting to be saved by somebody out there who wants to take on this license, like a specialty license, where they have to play a certain amount of reggae music, like they can't just go down the commercial hip-hop road. Yeah, you have to, if you take on this license, you have to retain the integrity of what it was licensed for. Right. And at a time when, again, people are wondering, where's that voice out there?

Well, the station is there. It's happening. The politics of the station were a lot more conservative than maybe people perceive a black radio station would be. But it does have a bit of an audience, and that's right now in play. What's going to happen to this frequency, this specialty license. It has an audience. There are people out there. And, of course, this is just another story on top of all the ones

wondering about the state of representation in the mass media. But it also means being aware and supporting the things that were already out there. And you can't argue, okay, something didn't exist if it actually did, if it just so happened that you weren't paying attention to it in the first place. And my role, I guess, is to keep up on everything that's happening in media, which makes me perfectly qualified to shoot anybody down. I do that here in every episode. Who claims that something doesn't exist when it really does.

Usually the only time they're claiming that it doesn't exist is because they want to further their own career, which is fine. You take what you can get. I mean, we talked about here when we talked about revolts going on in the media workplaces. Well, there is a lot of backbiting. It's a very competitive industry.

And I applaud anyone who can find an angle, an argument for reasons that what they have to offer is worth more than somebody else. Where it gets a lot more mean spirit is when you start advocating that people should be forcibly removed from their jobs just because they happen to be old and in the way. And anyone who's listened to Toronto might. Like hundreds of episodes here where you've talked to people, including Larry Fedorik on the episode before this one. Yesterday.

Who were tapped on the shoulder and just told by a major corporation, in his case, Bell Media, that your time is up. And I don't know that anyone was really going to argue, okay, you know, you should keep people around until the day that they want to retire. Right. But you've done all of these deep dives with people who are caught by surprise. Would you say, for the most part, very few of them were ready to be told that they couldn't have this kind of career anymore. And here they tend to be out there trying to reinvent

themselves. Sometimes they come to Toronto Mike looking for podcast services that will somehow get them back on the map. And that's where this reset is interesting for what different forms of independent media can be. At the same time, I'm not sure what lies ahead for these big corporations that are being held to account. But at the same time, as we discussed here before, if you're going to work for one of these media giants that you don't think is doing a good job,

you then will have to be willing to come into work for years to come to make sure that can happen. And if you're snarky about those prospects and the proposition, well, then it's not going to work. And unless you're in it for some sort of masochistic reason, where you want to keep a job in the media just for something to complain about, then it might be better if you get out of the way. Okay, I'm gonna call an audible on the line of scrimmage here and we're gonna talk about the global layoffs right now so firstly uh on my blog which is experiencing safety certificate issues right now great shame to me uh we it i i probably said i know i suggested initially that amongst

those who were let go by chorus in that wave, that Robbie Jay had lost his job. And it turns out Robbie Jay had a complete, it was like Three's Company, where you're talking about something else, but you think you're talking about... Who is Robbie Jay? Rob Johnston. Because I know, but a lot of people don't realize who he is.

Okay, so Robbie Jay, anybody but the listeners know Robbie Jay. You probably heard his name. Alan Cross might say his name every episode of... Technical production by Rob Johnston. Anyway, Robbie J didn't lose his job. The podcast, well, do you know the name of the podcast that was canceled? The podcast was called Wait, There's

More. And this was global as the last entrant into a little field. We had Rogers as well as a CBC doing their own version of the New York Times podcast, The Daily, which became a little phenomenon, enough of one to the point where it had a number of copycats out there, including in Canada, which was using a podcast about 20 minutes in length designed to be listened to during a commute where you could investigate a story that was going on in the news, doing it through audio,

usually the form of having some kind of journalist or expert observer doing a slightly longer form interview than you'd have space for on AM talk radio, where they could reflect on something that was going on in the culture related to current events. And the show Wait, There's More ended up being hosted and produced by two women who before that worked for Vice News Canada at a point in the history of Vice where they thought they should have a separate news division, at least in this country, with a little more gravitas.

And it was unusual for somebody who had experience with Vice to end up working for global TV, but no one would say this was a bad move. You want to do something innovative? You want to do something different? You go to those people who were doing it from more of an outsider angle. But this was still Chorus Entertainment and the global Television Network,

a company that has suffered quite a bit with the shifting sands of modern media. The premise that it was founded on, which was now over 20 years ago, was a lot different than it used to be. This whole idea of global television, which they ended up taking on from Shaw, owned by pretty much the same family, that it was licensed to print money by stripping Canadian commercials into American shows. stripping Canadian commercials into American shows. This was the empire that Izzy Asper built by curing favor with the CRTC.

Well, they had different ideas about how they could expand what they were going to do under chorus. And this partly came out of the fact that Global TV, under the Aspers, Canwest Global, that sounds familiar, right? Of course. In the 2000s, they bought a bunch of newspapers from Conrad Black, including the National Post. They had the Canada.com website as their portal that they would have stuff from the newspaper. This was going to be like Canada's answer to AOL Time Warner, that they were going to match broadcasting content with stuff online. Well, by the time we got to 2008-2009 recession, the empire started crumbling fast. It was partly because Izzy Asper had died,

and it was left to his sons to run it, and they were up against a situation where I don't think they could win. The newspapers ended up being handed off to this company, backed by American hedge funds, the company known as Post Media, which has now existed for 10 years since it was created, and global television was on its own. What they did was they created a website.

And the idea was that they could build up a following for doing articles posted online to take the place of the ones that they were getting from Canwest, from the National Post, from what became the Post Media Chain. And at one point, they aggressively built this thing up to try and be a little more innovative than the typical TV news website. I don't know how often you landed on articles that were posted at globalnews, globaltv.com. But they posted a lot of them over the years.

Maybe you were driven to them through some clickbait link somewhere out there. Every once in a while I think I'd read lately, I don't know when, but lately I might read an Alan Cross thing about five albums that you should listen to or some nonsense like that. Maybe, possibly.

As the premise and the principle would go, they had this share of the TV audience. You know that, okay, people were still watching global TV. I don't know about now, but the audiences were more robust going back 10 years. Yes. If we take a certain amount of the television audience and we can get them addicted to our website, right?

If we can find, I don't know, 100, 200, 300,000 global television news viewers, and we can hook them into what we're doing on the internet, well, it's magic. We can make as much money online as we can from television. This is what everybody was trying to figure out for all these years. Like, how do you take that market share, and if people are going to visit your website, how can you make them as loyal to your brand as anybody else? Well, we know with social media, it didn't quite turn out that way. But

global TV, global news, I mean, they kept on trying to the point where in early 2018, looking back at a story, they laid off, got rid of, prematurely retired a whole bunch of people who were working in television news. The technicians behind the scenes. And also the local anchors. They started doing more newscasts out of Toronto that were based out of here, but going to the local global markets. You can imagine they got a little bit of blowback from that. Imagine you're in Lethbridge, Alberta, which is one of those global TV markets. in Lethbridge, Alberta,

which is one of those global TV markets, and somebody's reading your late-night TV news from inside a green screen cubicle in Toronto, pretending that you're there being your local newsreader. That was part of their strategy. But then they also got rid, technically speaking, I mean, you could do more things in an automated way. You didn't need all those people pressing buttons on TV. Guess what?

There was no blowback on Twitter. There were no tears for these people because these people are not the ones who are on social media. They were maybe of an older generation. They weren't going to kick up the fuss, even though what was done to them was as unjust as anybody who's told that there's no room for them anymore in a media job, right? But we didn't hear from those people at the time. And there was Global getting rid of dozens of people associated with television news to double down on the internet and build up its staff for the website. And that included turning globalnews.com into a place where you could get entertainment and lifestyle news.

Let's make globalnews.com as close as we can get to like an all-encompassing newspaper. And maybe after all these years, we can fulfill the ambition to get people hooked on our website. You follow me here, right? Like they're imagining that everybody that likes watching global news on TV will become a fan of global news on the internet. You'd go to their website. They'd have one of those popover things like, you know, get desktop alerts. Do those ever work?

Do people ever use these things? Like, make this your homepage. Right. Make global news your destination. My mom's clicked a few notification things. Where you can read about it. Look, I mean, you've got Yahoo and HuffPost, MSN. They found that, like, middle of the road on the internet.

These are not people that are looking at Reddit and Twitter and TikTok. There's an older generation out there. That's a viable market that they wanted to reach. They hired all of these young journalists, at least enough of them that it turned out when they got laid off that they were able to make enough noise on Twitter that it became like a rallying cry for at least a couple of days that global TV had done them wrong. Are you talking about? I'm saying no tears for the TV technicians that lost their job so these younger people could come in, right? Like, this generation thought, okay, we are the future. Who cares about, we're not, we're never going to get laid off.

This could never happen to us here, working in this publicly traded company. We're invincible. And their bosses must have told them that. Okay, but Mark, so to be specific, you're now referring to layoffs that happened in July 2020. Yeah, July 2020, they had a bunch of younger writers, younger journalists who were obviously told that they were the future of the company. When you break hearts that are still young,

you're never going to hear the end of it. If you hired you and me to do this stuff, I think we could roll with the idea that times are always changing and you're not going to be around forever anymore. When you're 23, four, five years old and you're told that here's your opportunity in the corporate media, this is what you went to journalism school for, this is the last person that you're going to get rid of without them lashing back at you online. And that's exactly what happened here. So in addition to those young people you're referring to, some salty vets like Jennifer Valentine.

I guess they had to balance it out and make an example of some other people that they weren't specifically targeting those online writers. But that's the name, just to speak to the audience. That's the name, I think. Oh, you mean after hundreds of people commented on torontomic.com, they were never watching Breakfast Television ever again. Oh, well, that's coming up, yeah. Because they got rid of Jennifer Valentine. Oh, okay, okay. Now they're saying they're never going to watch a Global Morning show ever again because they got rid of the host that they got from Breakfast Television

who had replaced another host from Breakfast Television. Right. Liza Fromer. No, you're saying people are glad to get rid of Jennifer Valentine. Is that where you're going here? No, I'm going nowhere except to say that— Well, you might want her to come on as a guest. Jennifer Valentine did get it in the last couple of weeks.

I think it was the last week, I think, that was part of these global layoffs. Others from that show—I never saw that show, but the Global Morning Show, I'm sure other people, in addition to Jennifer Valentine, got the... Well, originally it was hosted, what, that guy that your mom was supposed to go on a date with? Yeah, Dave Gary, who I don't think was ever available, but I think he's out in Vancouver now. Yeah, my mom had a big crush on Dave Gary, that is true.

And Liza Fromer, who's an FOTM. The story about Jen Valentine was uh I reached out for her to come on Toronto Mic'd you know uh I don't know when shortly after she was let go by uh Rogers at Breakfast Television and she kicked it she was doing some work for like the Bachelor After Show some Bachelor After Show which Chorus was making so she kicked it to Chorus PR who notified me I was not permitted to speak to Jennifer Valentine. So I never asked again.

And then she went to Q107, and then she went to view of John Derringer, and then she ended up on this morning show, and now she's unrestricted free agent. And that was like four years altogether. Right, right. That she worked for Chorus, and they didn't want her anymore

as a co-host of their morning show. Right. And so best of luck to her with whatever the future brings. I mean, no one wants, look, it doesn't matter how old you are, 25, 53, 67. Keep going, keep going. It hurts to be told that you're redundant and you represent something that we don't want around here anymore.

And in her case, I guess, it was whatever she brought to morning television. It was like this lifestyle attitude. And here they are. I don't know if it extends to that morning show on TV, shifting back to more hard news. Or at least less entertainment stuff. Fact-based journalism. No, they're still,

this is the thing. They are still doing entertainment. Oh, this is like when the press release about Jennifer Valentine getting the axe from breakfast television said they were eliminating

the live eye, but I kept seeing live eyes on breakfast television. Okay, but global TV is getting raked over the coals for getting rid of like one component, something that they were doing, that they were trying to do to build up this globalnews.com website.

And they reassigned people to different roles within the company, the ones that didn't get laid off, reflecting the fact that they're still trying to build this business. And what is the business here they have broadcast tv licenses provided to them by the crtc they earn the licenses they have requirements to do a certain amount of local programming whatever that entails uh but at the same time they've got a role in the free market and it's a publicly traded company and the stock isn't doing well, so they're also susceptible to that. There's not any kind of protection there. Global chorus or television business, they've still got HGTV,

Slice, the Slice channel. They've got W, the Women's Television Network, which was originally licensed to be this kind of feminist broadcaster in Canada. Now, it might actually be the opposite of that. It's where you can watch all your Hallmark Christmas movies. Did I mention the Food Network is part of their portfolio as well? They are not giving up on lifestyle journalism at all. Like, they're completely invested in it. What they got rid of was the idea that they would run this thing

that was like a website replacement for a newspaper run by Global News, and they would get these young writers to churn out the stories on there, including another division, another number of writers writing entertainment stories. And one of them that came up took a Q&A with Paul McCartney that was supplied by the record company

to promote the re-release of the album Flaming Pie. You had this thing ready because it was something that came up on Twitter. Paul McCartney reissues all of his albums, and here this global entertainment reporter repurposed a Q&A, and he presented it like it was his own work, that he himself got Paul McCartney on the phone to recite a few anecdotes. It was not implausible that he actually spoke to Paul McCartney because even Paul McCartney does a lot of these very rehearsed kind of interviews.

You could imagine somebody getting Paul McCartney on the phone for four or five minutes and answering a bunch of questions that were provided to you in advance. I'm not saying that's the height of rock journalism integrity. I'm saying it's something that you could accept was done. But no, it turned out that this guy from Global TV actually took this record company-supplied interview and presented it as his own work. That's some lazy journalism right there.

Is it lazy or is it the fact they had these young people in there and they were just given instruction? Get us some clicks. Let's both. Do whatever it takes. I mean, they weren't saying he, they didn't state on the website that they had spoken to him. It was kind of like, here was an interview with Paul McCartney.

It was only implied that perhaps he'd talked to him on the phone for a few minutes and he recited all these anecdotes about, I don't know, reuniting with Ringo for this reissued album that nobody remembers. I'd rather have Chuck D on Toronto Mike than Paul McCartney. That's my hot take. Okay, but that's where you're at. But this is also why it was a dead-end street, I think, for when it came to this perspective on clickbait.

And when you're given instructions like, okay, you're upset that global news has taken your job away from you. That they don't see any worth anymore. And people, you know, they work it from this angle. Okay, you know, this is where we find out stuff that's relevant to the younger generation. That here's where we can read

stories of people that don't have a lot of power, right? People of color, stories about different sexual orientations, the immigrant experience in Canada that's in this lifestyle section that people would get those stories. They would get those, like, good news affirmations and global news. You know, here there was some mean white man that was figuring out anything

that they could do to shed some blood and get rid of it. Nowhere in there do people afford for the idea that it wasn't such a great idea in the first place. It has a lot to do with the people that you hire. It has a lot to do with the workplace culture that you create. What, dozens and dozens of people working on feeding a website? that you create what dozens and dozens of people working on feeding a website. Didn't we measure the last time I was here that like your backyard with everyone keeping six feet apart is pretty much as big as any media organization should be. I think we're going to find more of that in the future.

And I get it. I mean, people lost their job and they were led, they were told along the way, you know, what you're doing, what you're doing is meaningful. And I get it. I mean, people lost their job and they were led, they were told along the way, you know, what you're doing is meaningful. And, you know, when those emotions are raw, they're not affording. Why should they? Like, I've stopped doing this on Twitter, telling people, you know, what it's really like, because it's not worth it in the end. Plus, I can come on here and we can, like, safely ensconce it one hour into a two-and-a-half-hour podcast.

If anyone wants to get this far. To see who's paying attention. See who's paying attention, but also pay attention to the fact that no one knew what they were doing to begin with. Appreciate the fact

that you got to ride along on this iteration and that there wasn't really, I mean, if anything was stacked up against you, it was baked in there from the beginning. And it's too bad that Chorus Entertainment or Global was having all this blowback, all these people dissatisfied with the workplace. You know, what would be spinned as like a racial discrimination issue. If you scratch the surface and you dig a little deeper in general,

it would just like be a case of people not treating each other very kindly. And that tends to happen in big media organizations where things are not as successful as they thought they would be. And that's when the knives come out and people start backstabbing one another. Back around to Wait, There's More, a really good daily podcast. I didn't listen to it every day, but I heard enough of it. And that was Tamara Kandaker, who had worked for Vice. And she was working there with Rachel Brown.

Those were the two women with experience at Vice. I'm not sure what they were doing at Global News in the first place. I guess they were guinea pigs that were testing out to see if you promoted a daily news podcast TV, global news radio viewers to download a new news podcast, they hear a different perspective on things. Could you get the critical mass of listeners to make the endeavor worth it? Mike, you're in the podcasting business. Do you think maybe we have to try it? Like if you've got a deal with hebsey on sports where uh let's say

it's hypothetical because we know it's never going to happen that tsn or sportsnet struck some kind of deal that they said okay we'll relentlessly plug the hebsey podcast you know every hour every day online television and radio and uh I don't know, Mike Wilner will mention it in between pitches during the Blue Jays game. Do you or don't you think that that would have some effect on the podcast listenership? Or like, what would it take for that level of promotion to affect the number of people then who would get into podcasting, by the way, who never listened to a podcast to begin with, who would start exploring podcasts

because they heard it plugged that way. That kind of an awareness campaign would most definitely increase the number of people giving it a go, you know what I mean, giving that one episode a go. At that point, depending on the quality of the episode,

they will either subscribe or they'll move on to something else. Like, I think that's a huge awareness is everything. There's a million podcasts out there. Okay, well, back to then our case in point. Okay, you've got five minutes. Which should be in the memorial section. Ridley Funeral Home Memorial note that that particular,

what do you call it, project from Bob McCowan is over. It is dead. It's dead, Jim. One of the best, was it on Twitter from an FOTM, might have been one of your followers, who said, okay, you've got five minutes.

It looked like something that Bob was taping on his way back to dinner from going to the bathroom. That was how much commitment it looked like he was giving to this YouTube series as, okay, you've got five minutes, dwindled down to, okay, you've Got 500 viewers. Didn't hang around long enough to get to five. Right. And the promotions for the Tragically Hip Wine.

Now we're moving into Glass Tiger. Alan Frew is doing his own line of wine for Bob McCowan. What's his vineyard? What's it called? It's the Mike Weir one, right? I don't know. I couldn't tell you, but this is, I don't know. All I know about this all is that there's some lawsuit that involves Mike Weir

and Bob McCowan and some payments owed. I don't know anything about this wine stuff. I'm a Great Lakes drinker. I've got my Canuck Pale Ale right here. All right, well, soon enough, you know what? It is Stony Ridge. That's it. It shows you how ineffective the commercials have been.

Stony Ridge Estate Winery, where we had Tragically Hip Wine. And next up, then, you can taste the grapes of Glass Tiger as he was filming a spot. He put it on Twitter with Alan Drew. Well, they should get the grapes of wrath involved. I feel like that's a natural there. Okay, Bob McCowan finishing up then. What happened?

Okay, you've got five minutes. He was down to like 500 views. It wasn't working out. The whole idea of having a Bob McCowan fan asking him a question over Zoom and him answering on his way back to dinner from the bathroom. Great line. Well, we called it from the get-go that this is not what the Bob McCowan fans are hungry for. So now we're into a more conventional podcast.

He did not take the advice on Twitter over and over again. It was a great, great, great bit that was going on where people would interject on Twitter telling Bob, call Toronto Mike. He will explain how this is supposed to work for you. I've never heard from

Bob McCowan. And I thought it was a golden age for the Bob McCowan podcast because the whole Bobcat shtick, the fact that here he was, a sports talk radio guy who had no interest in sitting down and watching a game. There's been no better time for the business of sports, even in the 1236 newsletter, covering more sports than ever. Right. Because it's more fascinating to me to look at what's going on behind the scenes

they try to figure out these bubbles uh for the nhl and the nba and what's going to go on with major league baseball and the miami marlins and stand by for hebsey on sports hebsey is is anti baseball at this point is that where you're at you're in agreement with him that they should just shut down the baseball season is that where i think i think we both Is that where you're at? You're in agreement with him that they should just shut down the baseball season? Is that where we're at? I think we both agree that at this time, not doing the bubble thing sounds really stupid and dangerous.

And it looks like we're starting to see, very early in this season, we're starting to see why. I mean, the Miami Marlins, I guess they're going to skip some games while they figure out what's going on. But anyways, they didn't take the bubble approach like the other leagues, and they might end up paying for it.

Well, tune in to Hebsey on Sports to find out where things are at. Okay, but Mark. Bob McCowan is up against Hebsey. He's trying to do the old primetime sports in the form of a podcast, right, where he has these roundtable discussions. Well, he's got John Shannon as his wingman. He's got pundits on call. And best of luck to Bob McCowan.

If we're not waiting for him to drop by the backyard here sometime this summer. I haven't heard from Bob. Of course he'd be invited. You wanted him on what? Episode 500? Episode 600? Here we are, fast approaching number 700. Maybe I should tweet at him again that he could be my guest for 700.

You can get a big round number. I mean, you're moving fast here. Episode 500. Seems like just a few hours ago. Well, this episode might be several hours if we don't move on to the memorial section, but because we talked about all those

global layoffs, but we didn't segue over, so here. Follow me here uh jennifer valentine was uh you know let go on on april fool's day she was let go from her role at the breakfast television which i wrote about and then had you know hundreds and hundreds of commenters very upset she uh then shortly not no shortly thereafter then uh kevin frankish came on toronto mic'd and talked about jenn talked about Jennifer Valentine and how upset he was. He opened up about that.

Not too long after that, Kevin Frankish himself was let go at Breakfast Television and replaced by Roger Peterson. This is the era I never saw anything of because my wife had no mat leaves anymore. I didn't see a minute of Breakfast Television in the Roger Peterson era. He seems like a nice gentleman, and he was let go in July 2020. Roger Peterson got it.

A Toronto Mike exclusive, by the way. What say you, Mark Weisblatt, about, is it just cost-cutting? Is that what this is? Well, Roger Peterson had been around for a while, right? With City News. He was one of the last of the old anchorman in the tradition of Gordon Martineau and the late Mark Daly. Right.

And there was Roger Peterson as the last middle-aged, graying, white male anchor standing there on City TV. When they got rid of him, right, they said they were taking on a more innovative approach. Are we going to do news without an anchor? And you know that they were thinking, how much money can we save here? But at the same time, let's take Roger Peterson, put him on in the morning. Like as sort of a Kevin Frankish replacement.

Well, Kevin Frankish, they announced. As you said, they always make an announcement about like something else is going to be doing and it doesn't end up materializing. And when, when he was, he was fired from breakfast television. We came back here.

Oh, when he came back the second time, he came clean about the fact that he was basically working on these in-depth documentary projects. I don't know why they bothered to soften the blow for the loyalists. It would have been on some kind of severance. They would have been paying him at the same time, I guess. You know, they originally maybe struck a deal where it's like,

okay, we're paying you anyway, you can come in. And then what's he going to complain about the fact that they were paying him and he didn't have to do any work at all? Okay, but Roger Peterson, who, again, as far as I know, this is one of your typical, almost like what Larry Fedorek told me yesterday with the formula, like been here this long,

making this much over this age, target on the back. People take, to this day, these shows like Breakfast Television very seriously, right? You have one of those torontomike.com blog posts when someone like Roger Peterson loses his job.

And I also saw a higher number of clicks in the 1236 newsletter. If you're on TV every day, people get to know who you are. They're intrigued if you're not around anymore, even if they haven't seen you on the air for years. Right. I mean, you said you weren't watching, but you knew who Roger Peterson was. Oh, sure, like I knew him. He's one of those voices of reason, the old-fashioned, you know, Kent Brockman kind of Toronto anchorman, and I think he was, you know, self-aware of that cliche

that he was representing there. I don't know, they didn't want him anymore. Even for the format, the genre, the younger image, the look that they were going for, but then, Rogers, I don't know what their commitment is to City TV. Like, they picked it up from C for, but then Rogers, I don't know what their commitment is to City TV. They picked it up from CTV, from Bell Media, when they were forced to get rid of it

in that original deal that they struck to take over television. And Ted Rogers stepped in, and just like Izzy Asper, Ted, who might have been the visionary here, might have been his idea that he didn't live long enough to execute anything that he might have been able to do going against what the shareholders wanted.

And I don't know, just like global TV, I don't know what the future holds for Citi. I don't know if running the Canadian simulcast of The Simpsons nowadays, they picked that up from Global, right? It's now City TV that runs those Fox cartoons. Otherwise, as far as primetime programming, it's slim enough pickings to begin with in the American fall schedule. The model is broken. And in the process, the jobs aren't going to be there

like they were before. And a Roger Peterson was around long enough that you got to figure if you ever get him back here. Wait, I've never had him in the first place. I meant in the backyard. Oh, I thought you meant returning. Okay, yes. You'll get the real talk and the honesty

about what it was like to work for City TV, you know, during the years when it wasn't a corporate priority anymore. You know, they were, well, they were trying to make Viceland, Vice TV, their next big thing. That didn't work out. They've got this, what, a $5.2 billion hockey contract, which is coming up to about halfway through. Oh, Leafs play tonight, have you heard?

They've got some games to air this season, what's left of the playoffs. Which is all of it, plus more. What does the future hold for City TV? And how smart are you if you're invested in the future of working at someplace like that? Or is it better for a guy like Roger Peterson, who's still got, I don't know, at least a decade of productivity ahead of him? He's going to have to find another medium. And it might not be television, it might not be media, it might not be journalism at all, or there might be somewhere that a person like him could go after he scaled the

heights of this style of local television. But there are still these local television markets out there. As long as Rogers holds its license for City TV, they have to produce some form of local programming. We're going to see if they ride it out or maybe somebody will come along, something, some consortium, some owners.

I don't know. The guys who just bought tour star will, we'll take it off their hands. Uh, any, anything is possible, especially right now, post COVID. And I think we're going into the 2020s,

a media scene when it comes to mass media. If your dream is to be employed by one of these companies, I think we're going to see things change at least as much as they have before. Every month here, we're talking about things that developed in the media that were unthinkable a few years ago. Why is that going to stop?

Why is that going to continue? Who said there's a status quo and the smartest people are able to find a way out of it and others unfortunately will just be kind of embittered about the fact that they had this dream in the school and it didn't work out. Based on Roger Peterson's goodbye video,

he got some sort of severance and he was happy just to spend this summer hanging out being, uh, being a dad. And so, uh, sounds like,

uh, the Ben Rayner formula for happiness. He's coming back here too, right? And you're going to have the first, actually he's back here Thursday night. And what the first Toronto Mike, the guest who is going to consume cannabis,

not just a GLB, right? Live on Periscope. Over the course of being interviewed. This would be more exciting about, you know, two, maybe five years ago. All this began, though. We got in the media segment here because I want to talk about at least two people who died specifically in radio here in July 2020. Before we get to the rest of the audience.

Did you want me to play an old, uh, clip from CHFI? Yeah, I think, uh, let's, uh,

do a little tribute here to lovers and other strangers. Bruce Fisher goes on to say, but then here is another concept to help you understand what went wrong with your relationship. Many people ask, why did so-and-so get a divorce? Sometimes a more relevant question is, why did that couple marry? Many people marry for the wrong reasons, such as to overcome loneliness, to escape an unhappy parental home, because everybody's expected

to marry, because they think that only losers who can't find someone to marry stay single, out of a need to parent another or be parented by another. And the old standby, because we fell in love. Lovers and other strangers. Here's Amy Holland with Michael McDonald. From CHFI FM 98. Sounds like a

jam for Stu Stone coming up here. Dawn Jackson died in July 2020 at age 66. And for about 20 years, you could hear him every evening on CHFI FM 98. on CHFI FM 98. He came to Toronto as the evening DJ on that candlelight and wine radio station, developing this Lovers and Other Strangers show in Montreal to give it a little more of an upgrade, a reboot, getting ready for the 1990s,

this yuppified form of soft rock radio, as you heard there. Don Jackson had a certain sound, a timbre there, that was a little more youthful than the Carl Bannis show that had been on CKFM, and then Easy Rock, Easy 97.3. Fred Napoli was another name who we've paid tribute here, who did this style of radio. He would read his own short stories and play his own songs that he recorded. Fred passed away not too long ago.

recorded, Fred passed away not too long ago. And now Don Jackson was who we lost, and it was Aaron Davis who was around, CHFI, overlapping with that time, with that era, with that period, of about 20 years that he did Lovers and Other Strangers in the evening. And I don't think you had to tune into CHFI yourself to be familiar with the dulcet tones of Don Jackson. It was just something that was in the air everywhere, right? As you, I don't know, went for a late night grocery run to the kitchen table store. They would be playing CHFI, and there would be Don Jackson speaking about the experiences

of lovers and other strangers. Now, he wasn't the only one doing this genre of radio. To this day on CHFI, we've got John Tesh, formerly of Entertainment Tonight, doing his Intelligence for Your Life radio. Of course, that's an American syndicated thing. Another woman was Delilah, and she ran for a period of time on Easy Rock. That was more, I would say, of a MAGA style of soft rock radio program.

It fit, I think, more with the mega church culture of the southern USA. That was Delilah. But Dawn Jackson was her very own bard of the evening airwaves who would talk about these experiences and share this philosophy in between the soft rock sounds on a show that I would suspect made a lot of money for CHFI Radio in Toronto, because it ended up being nationally syndicated. And I think you knew, speaking of people that are put out to pasture at a certain point in time, that they at least valued what Don Jackson did.

Because after they took him off the FM airwaves in 2009, there's some evidence from 2010 that they gave him his own podcast. And maybe like 10 years ahead of his time, but you could also tell this was kind of a thing, okay, let's see if this guy can work online. Let's see if we can get a following. I don't think it worked. I don't think it went anywhere. And part of it is that you see they produced a few

episodes and maybe they just gave up and they thought, okay, that's it. Enjoy whatever the future holds. But again, a number one radio station in Toronto, CHFI. And I would think that when it came to the process of selling sponsors and commercials, that Lovers and Other Strangers was way up there as a popular radio show in Canada.

And I think part of that legacy of soft rock adult contemporary radio, it's funny how FOTM Maureen Holloway is still working at CHFI now on the morning show because she was there with CKFM going back 30, 35 years when it was still that like rat pack style of Toronto radio. CKFM, the sound of our Toronto. radio, CKFM, the sound of our Toronto. I mean, it was like taken very seriously what was going out over the airwaves, but I think as well in its day, like a very lucrative form of broadcasting, at least before people got distracted all over the place.

The whole idea was that you would have like a bottle of rosé, a box of bonbons, and you would lean back in your Toronto harborfront apartment, and you would savor everything that the yuppie life had to offer. Wow.

And your soundtrack would be lovers and other strangers with Don Jackson. And outside of CHFI, I don't think he got any kind of obituary. We're back to this rant where you would think the Toronto Star would have like thousands of readers who would have been familiar with this guy and his legacy and his love for us. Do it here on a 1236 episode of Toronto Mic'd.

and his legacy and his love for us do it here on a 1236 episode of Toronto Mic'd. Even more reason that we continue to do this because the Don Jacksons deserve to be remembered and recognized. Well, as I say every single time, as long as it's not you and me who die, then we can go on with this till the end of time. But somebody else who passed away in the month, I thought was also worth mentioning uh because um he was never on toronto miked um but he was like part

of the extended fotm universe which is to say you have you've had guests and listeners who would have known who this guy was and worked with him throughout the years and maybe not a stretch to say that he would have listened to an episode or two or 10 or 100 along the way and uh not not a not a household name, even though he was on the air a little bit on CFRB on News Talk 1010. Brett Dakin. And he died suddenly, we found out, in July. Just a few weeks earlier, he'd actually been on 1010 doing a bit with John Moore. He was complaining about this bike share that they opened outside his condo near Liberty Village. You know, that they were right outside his door distracting his dog. It was a fact.

These people were coming and going on their bike shares. He ended up getting it moved. Sadly, that was the last time we saw him or that we have evidence of him being on the air. More recently, he was working for Indy 88.1 as their head of sales. And that followed a long career working with CFRB, with News Talk 1010. Originally, from what I could tell looking up on LinkedIn, he was originally a talk radio producer, working, I guess, with John Oakley or Ryan Doyle, Jim Richards, whoever was around on the air in that era, and then moved behind the

scenes to work in sales at the station, which I think made him extra qualified because there he had that experience working in the production of talk radio. He ended up having some airtime of his own on Sunday night, I guess a bit of an experimental time slot where he did a show maybe not that far from the spirit of Lovers and Other Strangers with Don Jackson. It was real life with Brett Dakin, and he was talking like self-help and well-being, different psychological topics that he was dealing with,

like a reassuring voice on the airwaves, trying to fill that role. Did it for a little while. As I said, ultimately he landed at Indy 88, another loss there related to that radio station after Dave Bookman died last year. And there we lost Brett Dakin. One more thing I learned about him, just looking at some comments after he died,

I think it was somewhere on Facebook, Jim Richards' page or something. They had a video of him on Electric Circus going back to 1991, and he was doing a freestyle rap that was on EC back in 1991. Those were, I guess, his teenage hobbies. They involved being this kind of rapper under the name Kid N-R-G.

And on this electric circus clip, Fresh Fest Freestyle, there he is with another FOTM, and that is Danny Yo. Wow. Who's also in this clip as a rapper, teenage rapper, just starting out almost, what, 29 years ago in Toronto, and that's how long Brett Dakin was around in the city. Right. Mentioned his experiences on the club scene and that leading to radio and broadcasting.

And so someone else to toast some GLB to his memory, Brett Dakin, dead at 46. An interesting, wow, that's my age. Wow. Interestingly enough, he was buried at, his funeral was at Ridley Funeral Home. Yeah, we don't want to have too much crossover between the sponsor of our gap sentence. I got friends at Indy.

In fact, I know a guy in sales at Indy. Shout out to Mimico Joe, who I am pretty tight with. And, yeah, I'm tipping my beer here to Brett Dakin. I think I would have dug this cat. So sorry that he's no longer with us. Hey, before we get to the official memorial section, I need to do like four quick hits here with regards to the FOTMs.

Really quick, because I just looked at the clock and it's scary. Mike Wise did his last newscast on the late CBC Toronto newscast, I think the 11 o'clock, and he did his last anchoring. He's left the CBC. He was there forever,

like literally since he was a teenager, I think, and he's gone off to do some teaching work and stuff. So I just want to give a shout out to Mike Wise, who said goodbye. Oh, and also on CBC in Toronto, a new Metro Morning host who was announced through this summer from Winnipeg. Do you remember his name?

Ismail? Ismailia? Ismailia. Come on. I can't remember the rest. Alpha? Yeah. Okay, not bad, right?

Hey, he's a Winnipeg guy. And, you know, he also had a career as a hip-hop artist before all of this wow and uh it was intriguing then i guess the process they went through no commercial radio station number one in the ratings would take almost an entire year to announce who was replacing an outgoing yeah this is a unique unique thing yes absolutely but cbcBC, you're going to CBC. You and I did speculate that they would just hand the mic to David Common. Like, we did have that conversation. Well, yeah, and in the process,

I guess it would go against their equity ambitions there by giving it to the white guy who filled in the peak of the coronavirus. Well, there's a valid point. There's a valid point. Now, okay, other quick, I said quick hits, so I'm going to do one more, that Paul Hendrick, who is an FOTM, was notified by his employer, MLSE,

that his services were sadly no longer required. I just want to say hi to Paul. Paul is a fantastic broadcaster, and anyone who's met Paul will tell you he's the nicest guy in the world. So let's hope Paul Hendrick lands on his feet and is doing all right. Also, FOTM, I think he still has this title. You can't take it away from him. Mike Stafford broke his neck. And I'm no doctor, but I don't think that's, that's not like when I broke my wrist. This is a very serious injury. He's resting in hospital post-surgery.

And I just want to give... I don't know if Stafford will listen to this episode of Toronto Mike, but he should. But, just want to say, Stafford, get well soon, buddy. Get well soon. And do I have any... Oh, here, FOTM Ralph Ben-Murray was

mentioned recently on Q. Now, who found this clip and brought it to the attention of Toronto Mice? Mark Weisblatt from 1236, the newsletter. You answered way before I could finish the question. What am I doing watching deep into interviews with Jim Carrey? What's my problem? You know what it is? I can't look away at the spectacle of Jim Carrey at this point in time.

I think it was Adam Carolla who observed when he was watching Jim in maybe an altered state of mind doing all these talk shows, is that when you see a guy and he's into his 50s and he's skinnier than he was in his 20s, that that might be a bit of a red flag that something is going on with him. Again, I'm paraphrasing Adam Carolla here, but I thought that was an astute enough observation.

He seems to have calmed down a bit. I mean, he's been through a lot. Don't forget he had a girlfriend who died. He was hit with a wrongful death lawsuit in regard to this. He's had an interesting life and an interesting and successful career. And, of course, he's a local guy. I talked to Larry Fedorek about him because they were on Yuck Yucks in the same era, along with a guy named Ralph Ben-Murgy.

And I'm going to play the clip now. But look, in the process, he wrote a book. It's called Memoirs and Misinformation. And he found this writer. He met him on Twitter, a guy named Dana Vachon, who was a New York blogger going way back, like a finance guy who wanted to be a novelist. I've heard of this guy who is Jim Carrey's co-writer. Jim Carrey put him on his payroll for eight years

to work together and come up with this idea of a book that Jim Carrey wanted to write. Could you imagine eight years of getting constant texts, emails, phone calls from Jim Carrey as he tries to piece this abstract idea of a book together. And the guy was paying for this, I'm sure. He could afford it, right? To just sort of have some guy hang around with him for all this time. the non-disclosure agreement to expire because i think this dana vashon is going to have an awesome book to write about what it was like to be on jim carrey's payroll for eight years subject to whatever he was going through all the narcissism that fed what he wanted to do with this book as jim carrey i I think like a lot of these celebrities

who didn't have a lot of formal education, reaches a certain point in their life, middle-aged, right, where they start to realize that they have to exude some greater level of intelligence, that they're harnessing a higher power that they couldn't find on their own, that they weren't schooled enough, they didn't do enough book learning, and that they now have access to some deeper philosophy.

And that is why I can never look away from a Jim Carrey interview, not because I think there's anything amusing about what he's got to say, but because you're watching the metamorphosis of what it's like to crave this level of fame, reach that pinnacle like he did, and then have to spend all these years coming down from that high and figuring out what he's going to do in the future when money is no object. What does Jim Carrey have to say? Well, let's listen to Jim Carrey chatting about a TMDS client

with Tom Power on cue. This is, yeah, I really enjoyed the book. He's up on Ben Mergey, man, seriously. I have never met Ralph Ben Mergey in my entire life. I have never met Ralph Ben Mergey. I just grew up with some insane characters at Yuck Yucks with Mark Breslin and Simon Rakoff, which is like not only a name, but it's a verb.

Lawrence Morgenstern and people, wonderful, wonderful comedians and characters like that. So I always remember it super fondly. Okay, Mark, what the heck? What was that whole I've never met Ralph Benmerge? Was that just Tom was nervous talking to Jim Carrey? I think that was like an outtake left on the YouTube video at the end of the radio interview. But you see, that's the Jim Carrey that I really want to hear. So just imagine he sat there with Tom Power.

He's got this Dana Vashon sitting next to him. I've gone through the motions, like half an hour of this philosophical gobbledygook. Nobody cares. It's completely unimportant. This is just some self-indulgence on the part of Jim Carrey that he can write this book, and he's making the rounds, he's pitching, he's talking about it.

I guess he wants the attention. He wants to be known as a smart guy. Here he is pushing 60, right? People say, Jim Carrey from Ace Ventura, a pet detective. He wants to leave a legacy behind of something a little more intellectual. And this is his idea, his way of doing it. When the fact is, what would your advice be to Jim Carrey? I mean, calm down. People would rather hear your memories of hanging out at Yuck Yucks. And in that little clip.

Well, we would, but we're Toronto guys. But it doesn't matter. No, because that's when you get the genuine guy coming to the surface. He should come on Toronto Mike. Well, I might have just jinxed it with the way I characterize him, but let's figure he's not going to listen to it. He should come on with Ralph Ben-Murgy. But even Ben-Murgy would indulge Jim Carrey

going down that spiritual road, right? Because that's why we like Ralph's not that kind of rabbi podcast. Okay, but I need to know, what I need to know, because Ralph and I have had private discussions about that clip I played, and Ralph needs to know your opinion as well here.

What the heck is, what are they saying there when he says lay off ben murray what's what's he talking about and when tom goes i've never met like as if he was i've never met the man i don't know i think it's you know what it's jim carrey blowing off steam because he just he just went through the motions of doing this performance to try and sell a book which nobody is going to buy and pretend that he that he represents some kind of higher power or deeper insight that he really doesn't have.

And they're like on the way out, just making some small talk. There you hear what Jim Carrey really wants to do. Right. He wants to come to a backyard. He wants to, you know, kick his shoes off and talk about his experiences working at Yuck Yucks 40 years ago. The people that he hung out with, the experiences that he had, you know, how he got from being this kid from Jackson's Point, Ontario, who was doing impressions of Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda and how he parlayed that into the Duck Factory, In Living Color, and all points beyond.

But again, because I was so fascinated with Jim Carrey, I listened to him with Howard Stern in what was, I don't know, a 90, 100 more minute interview. And that was a day that I came to the decision that the Toronto Miced podcast is now better than the howard stern show and it's because i'm i'm the one i mean i'm a lifelong stern listener even even before you could pick it up in toronto i did what i did before private person before private yeah and i i mean i i knew about him like I would read about Howard Stern in Billboard magazine or whatever, even before I heard him.

And when I finally did hear him, by the way, I mean, my mind was blown. Like I couldn't believe how loose this radio show was, how much of it was preplanned or scripted in advance. I don't think it mattered. I mean, in hindsight, you hindsight, there are at least two podcasts out there that nitpick about Howard Stern. People who, like us, grew up, were big fans. Right now they feel like they were hoodwinked

all along. That this show was, you would hear these fights on the air, that nothing was ever real, like here the real guy is coming out, just like Jim Carrey. We're seeing that Stern was like a fraud and a phony and he just wanted to be Hampton's Howie all along

hiding out in his basement with his wife Beth this Howard Stern that we idolized was as fake as any WWF wrestling was he's been exposed COVID-19 has exposed Howard Stern.

Well, he was exposed before that because his thing before, he was evolving, right? In his radio show, he was moving away from having the porn stars. The America's Got Talent Howard showed up. It was an evolution at that point in time. But now he's at a stage where,

and I think in the history of satellite radio, because Sirius XM, they were trying to consolidate with other companies. They bought Stitcher and Pandora, right? They're just sort of trying to own that whole audio thing. It's no longer tethered just to the satellite radio thing. And I think what we're hearing now with Howard Stern is like him auditioning to do a celebrity interview podcast-style show,

moving away from like that semi-unstructured freeform thing that we remember him for. This is what he's going to do here into his late 60s and beyond, that he can do this show. I'm listening to these interviews. One was with Colin Jost of Saturday Night Live. The other one with Jim Carrey in a week. I was able to get them free online.

Didn't take a lot of effort. And yeah, there I was able to draw the conclusion that in fact, these Toronto-miked real talk sessions are something that Howard Stern can take a lesson from. Because everything sounded scripted. Everything was extremely safe. He wasn't asking any real questions, even though he put out that book last year. He's trying to position himself as like the greatest interviewer ever. And you actually learned nothing about the guests.

And if anything, he was framing something where they could just ramble on whatever tangent that they were safe with. You imagine this was pre-approved in advance what he was going to talk about, that he would get these answers. And even though the person rambling in response was saying nothing of consequence, Howard Stern was feigning that he was fascinated with everything that was coming out of their mouth. And you're doing this podcast where if something's not working out, you're able to turn the wheel and move on to another subject. And here, the veteran legendary broadcaster Howard Stern doesn't know how to do that anymore. Now, it might have something to do with the fact that he's doing all these interviews by Zoom

while he sits in his basement in his secret hideaway house, wherever he is. I mean, for a guy who's so big on honesty, you get no disclosure about what's actually going on here. And you've still got Robin Quivers, and there's a semblance of the old gang, and he'll have these whack packers come on, and the people on staff, you know, they'll do these bits with him where he berates them and going through the motions. And it's Howard Stern. Whatever he does next will be fascinating to lots of people, because even if they aren't active listeners, at one point they were tuned into what he's all about. What's ahead in the 2020s, the big pivot for Howard Stern is going to be something that is closer to a podcast

and up against this world where Joe Rogan signed a $100 million deal with Spotify to sit there and get high with his guests and figure out over the course of three hours, try and find the truth that's buried in any given topic that he's found. Millions of people who are drawn to this style of broadcasting, not even Howard Stern, is immune to the fact that this is where it's all headed. And also, the guy is 66 years old. He's not going to do that three-ring circus style of radio anymore,

especially when he doesn't want certain topics talked about on the air. And when all that potty talk that he was famous for is not what he's interested in doing anymore, who would have imagined that you, Toronto Mike, would be in the same field as Howard Stern, like the same genre of broadcasting? And I think that's where it's headed. I wouldn't count out the idea that maybe he can come up with something worth listening to as far as a celebrity podcast is concerned.

Maybe it's better than Marc Maron or Dax Shepard, who famously admits that he sends the episodes to the celebrity and the publicist and they're allowed to edit out anything they don't like. Wow. Like he gives them a final say. I will say this, and I'll thank you for those kind words comparing me to Howard Stern because our bank accounts are not comparable. But I, that is really awesome what you said about Toronto Mike. But I will say I would never do that, for example. I've never let a guest extract anything from the conversation. Like literally other than you, we live stream it so people watch it being recorded

and can compare that there's zero editing going on here. For what that's worth. You did edit Ed Keenan. Famously. In 700 episodes, but it wasn't because it was, the only reason I edited that out is because he, there was a, before the courts, they had a non, a publication ban on something he said.

So I did take that out. But any decent human would do that. That's different. And because you won't edit me, I keep coming back each and every month because I'm never quite satisfied with how things came off. And so we're just going to keep recording the same deal over and over again until we get it right. Mark, honestly, let me thank some partners here,

awesome partners of Toronto Mike that helped fuel the real talk. And then we need to have a little chat about something I've been thinking about and I'm looking now and I'm wondering if it's not a bad idea, but hold on, hold tight. Enjoy your Great Lakes beer. Thank you, Great Lakes.

Thank you very much for sending over the beer from Mark Weisblatt. He cracked open the, that logo's the retro logo there, I think on the, if you look at the other side, well, your hand's blocking it, but the retro logo of that, that, if you look at the other side. Well, your hand's blocking it, but the retro logo of that logger there.

So enjoy that. 1987 was when GLB came on the scene. Right. Before the craft breweries were popping up everywhere. So stickeru.com, thanks so much for your partnership. Everybody should go to stickeru.com. Somebody tweeted a picture at me yesterday that I think on the 410, they spotted the car in front of them. This is an FOTM was

driving on the 410 and the car in front of them had a Toronto Mike sticker from stickeru.com. And they just said, Hey, they're everywhere. And then somebody else chimed into their, their car with their sticker on their car to say that I think that sticker was two years old or something and was like new. So these are quality stickers you're getting from stickeru.com. Thanks so much. I want to encourage anyone out there who's looking to buy and or sell in the next six months.

You can't make a wiser decision than contacting Austin Keitner from the Keitner Group. Simply text Toronto Mike to 59559 to engage Austin. He's a sweetheart. If you want to go to Pumpkins After Dark this year, it's a drive-through event in Milton. Save Halloween for the family, for the kids. It's going to be great. I know Elvis is going to do it, but do it with the promo code Toronto Mike.

It saves you money and it lets pumpkins after dark know they should return again next year. So it's great to have them back this year. They were here last year. CDN Technologies. They're there for you if you should have any computer or network issues or questions. They're your outsourced IT department. So call Barb today at 905-542-9759 or go to

cdntechnologies.com. And of course, garbageday.com slash Toronto Mike. That's where you go to download the Garbage Day app for curbside collection notifications. It's free, it's fun, and it makes you a good FOTM. And Mark Weisblot from 1236. Before I speak about, you know, our very special sponsor today, Ridley Funeral Home. Do you think these should be two episodes? Because I'm looking at the clock. Here we are, ready to start the memorial section of your monthly appearance. We're an hour and 48 minutes deep into this episode.

Okay, I know you because I've been doing this forever. You need 90 minutes for the memorial section. Like, that puts us way north of three hours. Like, should this be two episodes? You can always speed it up, Mike, by not preceding it with a staff meeting about what we're going to do going forward. We tear down the walls here.

You know who acclaimed the Ridley Funeral Home Memorial section? Neil Morrison, the former brother Bill of CFNY. He said it is his favorite part of every single episode. I'm not trying to get rid of it. Except he listens to everything we talk about on the way there. He does not fast forward to get to the memorial section. Look, whose word are you going to take on this? Me or Brother Bill?

Then let's get to this. A guy who knows his stuff approves of the way we do things here. Can you do the memorial? Is it even possible to do this in 60 minutes? Just say we do things here. Can you do the memorial? Is it even possible to do this in 60 minutes? Just say yes or no here. Can we do this in 60 minutes? Do you want to try? Well, anyone who's heard you lay down the gauntlet there

can now look at their podcast app or whoever they're hearing the show. See how many minutes happen from right now until the end of the episode and see if we made it to the 60-minute mark. Ridley Funeral Home is at 3080, that's 3080 Lakeshore, that's at 14th Street.

And Brad Jones has been a tremendous FOTM. Pay tribute without paying a fortune. Learn more at ridleyfuneralhome.com. piano plays This world's gone crazy, I might have too, it's changing So why do I keep starting over, if I live my truth I'm living just for you, breathless, I'm racing for the finish line I've been running high, I've been running low, I've been running I've been running high, I've been running low, I've been running

Running from Oh, I don't know. Turn on the news and cry. We're going to open up a very sad one here. Well, they're all a little sad, actually, but this one particularly. Nick Cordero passed away. You know, we had that run of episodes where we're going over all the people who died due to COVID-19. And at one point, we had a whole string of them going on.

And, you know, that was really depths of despair when it came to this coronavirus. Right here, we were thinking there would be so many deaths that it would end up touching people that were notable enough for us to have something to say about due to some level of celebrity they attained, including a bunch of people in the music industry. But I think this story might have touched the most people of all because an actor originally from Hamilton, Ontario, Nick Cordero, Nick Cordero. There he was in March when he was first in the hospital diagnosed with COVID-19 on a ventilator. That there he was fighting for his life. That his one of his legs, right leg was was amputated and he was he was in and out of consciousness. And there he was in the hospital for 95 days.

And on July 5th, we lost Nick Cordero at the age of 41. This song here I had on repeat. It was from the musical theater version of Mary and Max, the musical theater version of Mary and Max, a claymation movie that had Philip Seymour Hoffman in this movie about pen pal of a young girl from Australia, older guy struggling in New York. Here was a stage musical, Mary and Max, and Nick Cordero had this role here with this song called

Running. And it resonated even more, I think, because when you learned about this guy who was from Hamilton, that originally he had moved to New York to try and be a rock star. That it was there that he moved with his band. And it was a matter of time before he found out that, in fact, where he was meant to be was on Broadway. That he had what it took to be a star in musical theater. He had those swarthy looks. I guess he could be mistaken for playing those Italian parts, even though he was South American. His parents are from Costa Rica, but he was in Bullets Over Broadway and Waitress and A Bronx Tale. At the same time, he was pursuing music of his own,

and I listened to some of that stuff. It was okay. But this guy, without even knowing it, who moved again from Hamilton, Ontario to New York City, he was meant to be on Broadway. And that's how I think after he died, he ended up on the cover of People magazine. A lot of people touched by the fact

that this guy's life was cut short with so many ambitions. And, you know, there he was singing that running song, a video from just about a year ago, July 2019, not knowing that a year later he would lose his life. A lot of people touched by the life and death of Nick Cordero. I'm looking forward to this because I understand you have a personal story about Eddie the the entertainer, Shaq. You know, Mike, I don't plan it this way, but once a month, give or take, we manage to have an obituary here of somebody who could say played a role in my own life.

an obituary here of somebody who could say played a role in my own life and i try and uh hope for the most unexpected ones last month we talked about how yolanda ballard was a regular at starbucks uh starbucks on spadina road that i frequented. That she was, shall we say, a vocal personality as people scrambled for tables inside that cafe. That's where I got to know Yolanda as she staked out her place. Didn't want anybody in her way. Eddie Shaq is somebody who I met as a much younger boy because Eddie Shaq was my neighbor. Wow. Wow. Like immediate neighbor or just in the neighborhood?

He was, let's say, a three minute walk away. All right. And here's the thing. My dad would have been a massive Leaf fan, that he would have been right in there through the 1960s. Wow. Would have been the loudest guy sitting in the grays at as many games as he could get to. It would not have surprised me if my father went to some lengths to coincidentally run into Eddie Shack at every available opportunity. Like, let's take a walk down this side street. Gotcha. And maybe Eddie Shack will pop out from behind the doors of his house. In my memory bank, when I was around the age of your kids here, Mike, just like they might remember being in the backyard here when we were hanging out.

Or walking by Michelle Butterly's house. That's always a possibility if, in fact fact you're also here playing that game what scoping out potential future guests on the podcast that's happening and guess who else that means uh carl hansky from uh 680 news uh and uh before we we pay tribute to don jackson of chfi and you'll you'll have to uh you'll have to talk about the history of Don Jackson when you have Michelle Butterly here who's been on that station all this time.

Back to Eddie Shaq. Yes. We're getting into like a pandemic Friday level of digression here already. I blame the kids. So just for those who wonder. I don't know if we're going to get this done in 60 minutes now, Mike. I don't think we're going to get this done in 60 minutes now, Mike.

I don't think we're going to get Eddie Shaq done in 60 minutes here. You please finish the Eddie Shaq story. Great to see Morgan and Jarvis, special co-hosts here on the show. And they should sit out here all that they'd like. You know me well enough, right? I'm not the kind of guy that gets agitated when the kids are in the way. Good, because I can't get rid of them. They are nowhere to go.

Do you think you've had guests in the past, let alone in the backyard, who are the type that, like, if the kids showed up, they'd get, like, really angry about it? I hope not. Like, they're interrupting their flow? Remember, pre-COVID, kids were never here, ever. It really is a COVID

phenomenon. And I think everybody tolerates it, knowing that we're all kind of doing what we can with the four-year-olds and the six-year-olds. So, yeah, don't let the kids distract you here. I was around four or five or six years old when I got to know my neighbor, Eddie Shaq.

And there he was. What a character, right? He had that big schnoz, the mustache. He was the entertainer. I mean, you know, Eddie Shaq wasn't going to run into a loud mouth like my dad without being on and without giving you the full Eddie Shaq experience. That was what he did, and he did it well. dad without being on and without giving you the full Eddie Shack experience. That was what he did, and he did it well. And that's why he was a master in this style of personal branding.

That's why there were Eddie Shack Christmas trees. That's why there was an Eddie Shack donuts. That's why there was Eddie Shack as a spokesman for the pop shop. He was in a commercial for Wendy's Hot Dogs, kind of like an all-star cast of whatever Canadian celebrities they could get. Carol Pope of Rough Trade was in there. Some guy dressed as John A. McDonald. You wouldn't have that in this day and age.

It would be too problematic. You want to tear down a John A. McDonald, you wouldn't have that in this day and age. It would be too problematic. You want to tear down a John A. McDonald statue, you're not going to have him advertising fast food hot dogs. And Eddie Shaq, with his mustache and then ripping it off, showing that, in fact, it was a fake mustache he was wearing in the commercial. That's how recognizable he was. And it had a lot to do with the fact, well, he was on four Stanley Cup winning teams

with the Toronto Maple Leafs in the 60s, and enough of a character to the point that he had a song of his own. To clear the track, here comes Shaq by Douglas Rankin with The Secrets, a song which famously in winter, spring, February, March 1966, was number one on the Chum Chart. So imagine all of the legendary music that was going on in the world that's still being played on all these radio stations everywhere from that time in history. And Eddie Shaq, a song that was the brainchild of Brian McFarlane,

who I'm supposed to have done an episode with, because there were plans pre-COVID for me to make a trip and speak with him. So when we talk about the music of 1966 and all the surrounding social change, the sound of that song isn't really in line with what people remember. But I guess that's the altered state of mind that people were in at the time that the Toronto Maple Leafs were winning the Stanley Cup. And we've left behind not only all these TV commercials, not only all these hockey games. Eddie Shaq, who lived in my neighborhood growing up, and thanks to John Gallagher,

we learned that Eddie Shaq lived in Lawrence Park for the better part of the last three decades because it was Spike who mentioned running into him after all these years. Eddie Shaq also had his own golf course. Right. Was it Humble and Fred that were speculating on how much cash he would have made for selling all that land to a subdivision that followed? Right.

And that, you know, here we've got Eddie Shack, really, I guess, a forerunner who figured out this idea. Hockey players, they didn't retire with a lot of money back then. That he figured out, he kept on generating the cash, that he always had another idea in his back pocket, and I think right up until he died at age 83 after, not a surprise, because it was known that he was at the end of a battle with cancer and that he ended up in palliative care, and that was in his hometown of Sudbury, right?

That's where he was originally from and where he had retired to. Eddie Shaq, who died on July 25th, 2020, at age 83. So farewell to my old friend, the schnoz. I found me a reason To check me tomorrow We'll see if I'm leaking Push and push and push till it hurts My devil's on roller skates

Down at the roller rink Picking up chicks for me One's that Push and push and push till it hurts Push and push till it hurts Deadly enough I got me a love And it's so bad, it's so bad Hello, Time Bomb. Now, Matt Good is still with us.

Yeah, but it was the bass player in the latter days of the Matthew Good Band, a bassist from Vancouver named Rich Prisk, nicknamed Rich Rock, nicknamed Rich Rock, who we lost at age 52 on July 11th. Matthew Goode, who kind of came out of nowhere and managed to join that Can Rock canon that you often talk about here on Toronto Mike. And he was at that 98 Pearl Jam show at Molson Park in Barrie that comes up all the time. Yeah, he was great.

I actually really liked a lot of Matthew Good band stuff. Automatic, all that stuff was good CanCon from the 90s. Loved it. And here was Matthew Good after he had some success in canada uh going for the gold in the usa with this tune hello time bomb it didn't quite work out one of those stories

talked about them here with uh with cam carpenter new fotm uh about these uh bands that got signed to Canadian record labels who ended up struggling more in the United States. And for Matthew Goode, he changed his mind about what he was going for here, that he saw the whole thing as kind of a fluke and that maybe there were better things that he wanted to do besides trying to be famous. But in the process, memorable songs from the Matthew Goode band. Rich Rock played with that band from 98 to 2002. Kept playing, though, with Matthew Goode as a solo act until 2005. Died of a heart attack on July 11, 2020. I was blind

Now I can see You made a believer Out of me I was blind Now I can see You made a believer Out of me I'm moving on up now

Getting out of the darkness My life shines on My life shines on My life shines on I was lost Oh, moving on up by Primal Scream. And you remember this song. This got enough radio airplay in Toronto on CFNY. It was kind of like right there on the cusp of grunge

in the Seattle scene, taking the place of Britpop. But not before Primal Scream, the Scottish band, put out their classic album Screamadelica. And this year, two people associated with that album have died. The first one was a DJ with a producer credit on that album, Andrew Weatherall. He died in February at age 56, and that was of a pulmonary embolism. And he was really a big cult figure in British music, which led to him collaborating there with Primal Scream.

And now we find out at the end of July that the singer on that song and other tunes on Screamadelica, also performing with Electronic with Johnny Marne, Bernard Sumner, and the Pet Shop Boys, and Michael Hutchence, and Bernard Butler of Suede, and Ian Brown of the Stone Roses. She was kind of like their backup singer, duet partner of choice, She was kind of like their backup singer, duet partner of choice that Denise Johnson, on the verge of releasing her debut solo album, died on July 27th at age 56. And there we have two deaths associated with this classic song from Primal Scream.

Change is the way you hear it, huh? Now that you know that two people that were involved in all the excitement around this song are no longer with us here. Short of 30 years later, moving on up by Primal Scream. Staring into a glowing red and blue Coming to an awning in December I look out my front window Realize that the walk needs shoveling Hey, Brother Bill. This one is for you because you know that Neil Morrison would have been the biggest advocate on Toronto commercial radio for the band Societies No Fucking Use and the initials SNFU.

The Globe and Mail, of all places, ran like a feature obituary. Here we're talking about these people that get overlooked by the big newspapers. But a guy best known as Mr. Chai Pig, real name Ken Chin, got this wonderfully written tribute in Canada's national newspaper. How did he get there? He was part of this dirtbag, hardcore punk band from Vancouver from the 1980s, originally started in Edmonton and moved to Vancouver. So if you were into punk rock bands that usually had initials as their names

standing for something or another. DOA from Vancouver would be one of the most famous examples of Canadian bands based on their initials. SNFU was, let's say, a bit more obtuse in terms of wondering what it stood for. let's say, a bit more obtuse in terms of wondering what it stood for. And after Chai Pig reconstituted the band in Vancouver, I think the most amazing thing happened. I mean, imagine if you spent those years,

whatever, you know, sleeping in vans, touring around the country, trying to make it as a punk rocker, that this music that you'd invested in suddenly became a way to become a millionaire. Like that it was possible at that point in time, thanks to the label Epitaph Records, that you could follow Bad Religion,

The Offspring, Rancid, a whole wave of bands. You remember this. Of course, yes. Green Day got popular, and they were like on the younger end, right? Oh, they were really young, yeah. They were the up-and-comers, but with them came this whole wave of these other acts. These guys by then, they were old men in their 30s, and here was their time.

They were able to cash in on this punk rock thing. And a few of them really succeeded as a result. Pennywise, that was another band from the era. I don't know. Epitaph Records gave a deal to Chai Pig and SNFU. And he got his shot at some level of celebrity. Now, I don't know if this music was maybe a little too strident to be a hit with the kids,

but it certainly permeated that Canadian history of punk, and it was able to revive their fortunes for a little bit, but this stuff only lasted so long. And into the 21st century, we end up with a sad story of addiction, mostly engaged with the streets in Vancouver. And it was, in fact, Beetroot magazine,

which wrote about meeting Chai Pig. And he wasn't very hopeful about the state of his health. And there we found out that we lost him. And the legend of SNFU ending with the death of Ken Chin, age 57, on July 16th. And can they see she's going down a third time? Oh, everybody tries. It's Dale Carnegie gone wild.

But Barbara Cotland's child. Now they'll go perfected, the motionless glide. And in the low voltage noise, Diamond seems so sure and so poised. She shimmers for the bright young boys, and says love is for others, for me it destroys. A Boomtown Rats, that is a song from them, Fine Art of Surfacing. The Boomtown Rats album that everybody knows for the song I Don't Like Mondays, but that's another single from that called Diamond Smiles.

And it was through the fine print in an obituary that I learned about a guy named Loren Miller. He was a painter from Toronto at his own art gallery in the 70s, way out in West Queen West. And Lauren Miller moved to Europe, ended up running into a guy named Bob Geldof, who had at one point been in Vancouver,

working as music editor for the Georgia Straight newspaper. He had a painting in there called The Fine Art of Surfacing, which Bob Geldof took a liking to, and not only did he use the painting as the cover of their big breakthrough album, he also used the name of the painting as its title. And so, Lorne Miller, the obituary talks about him entering into commercial real estate in Toronto for all the decades since, you know, moving away from his creative expectations, but he left that album cover behind. And a few people amazed, uh, that they never knew that the artist of that album cover was from Toronto.

Lauren Miller, uh, who we lost at age 73. Mirror in the sky, what is love? Can the child within my heart rise above? Can I sail through the changing ocean of tides? Can I handle the seasons of my life. Naya Rivera, an actress from the show Glee. Remember Glee? I do, indeed. Were your kids watching Glee? Because 10 years ago, that was a big deal, right? If you were like a tween TV

viewer, that Glee became appointment viewing every week with the whole family. We saw a lot of season one, and I don't believe I saw an episode beyond season one. I gave up after that point. The show Glee might be cursed. And this is partly

because of the death of one of the actors from the show, a Canadian, Cory Monteith, who he died in. Oh, that was back in 2013 that it was a drinking and heroin overdose in Vancouver at age 31. in Vancouver at age 31. Other infamy associated with the show and some of the stars, but leading up to the mysterious death, drowning death of Naya Rivera. And this is her voice on the Glee remake

of the cover version of the song as rendered by the act formerly known as the Dixie Chicks. Landslide, and of the hundreds of hits associated with the show Glee, this is a real pet peeve, right? Because at one point, like the Billboard Hot 100 around 2010 half the songs were from Glee and it's like this isn't how the game is played anymore what was your analogy about

the home run champions or something like how do you measure what it would be like to have a hit song on Billboard now right compared to the old days right yeah the game has changed the game has changed the math doesn't work anymore like it used to. But, hey, people knew her from this song, Landslide, one of two Fleetwood Mac-adjacent deaths this month.

And in the case of Naya Rivera, a story that captivated people because she was missing there out in California. And they found a loan on her rented boat. It was her four-year-old son. The son was safe, but a few days later they found credited as an accidental drowning at the age of

33 for Naya Rivera. you down. I make my living off the evening news Just give me something, something I can use People love it when they lose They love dirty laundry Just last week, my buddy Elvis was back here talking about saying goodbye to his father who passed away about a month or so ago. Elvis, this is Elvis's daughter we're listening to right now. we're listening to right now. Yeah, Lisa Marie Presley,

which I think this version of the Dawn Henley song, kind of like the end of an era when if you were, I don't know, famous for nothing in particular, it was still considered somehow you should put out your own album, even if you couldn't really sing. Like having a compact disc available for sale with your music on it

was a way of monetizing this fame that you attained. I think, well, don't forget there was a Lindsay Lohan album. There was a Paris Hilton album all around the mid-2000s. Hilary Duff, I think. Yeah, Hilary. So many of them over the years. But I think... Don't forget Don Johnson had an album back in the day.

But the Kardashian era kind of did away with that. There didn't seem to be that sense of obligation because also like VH1 stopped playing videos in the United States and there was much more music in Canada and there was kind of like, okay, you know,

people know your name. You're famous for something. Like, I don't know, you were married to Michael Jackson, let's say. Like, how are we going to make money off this? And at one point, Lisa Marie Presley, being Elvis' daughter and all, decided that she had to be a singer of her own. And when that came to an end, I don't know that anybody was missing it. Like, when she stopped making albums and nobody cared anymore.

But she had one hit. It was Lights Out in 2003. And then covering Don Henley, Dirty Laundry. Like it was her rebuke, right, to like all the tabloid media speculating, talking trash about my life. Like the fact that I married Michael Jackson. And here was her way of making a statement that she was stinging them, getting back at the haters.

I don't know, if you were inclined to go to Walmart and buy a Lisa Marie Presley CD, you would have stood in solidarity with her, right? Who are all these people standing in the way of Lisa Marie Presley CD, you would have stood in solidarity with her, right? Who are all these people standing in the way of Lisa Marie Presley, who just wants to have her say, wants to be known, spread the word of Scientology, for as long as she was in that? All of this is a prelude to a really sad story, which was the fact that Lisa Marie's daughter, sorry, Lisa Marie's son,

that Lisa Marie's daughter, sorry, Lisa Marie's son, and Elvis's grandson, Benjamin Kehoe, died at age 27 on July 12th. And in fact, it's Riley Kehoe, who's Lisa Marie's daughter, who's done acting, Gotten attention for that. Rougher ride there for Ben. And with his grandmother, Priscilla Presley, still around

because well, she was really young when she married Elvis. Much younger than Mr. Presley, yes. And it makes it possible for you to hang around long enough to have some great, great grandchildren. And recently, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane has come up a few times on Toronto Mic'd

and she's in that movie. Priscilla. And yet for all the riches associated with Graceland, Benjamin Kehoe took his own life July 12th at 27. And no songbirds are singing When the twilight is gone You come into my heart

And here in my heart you will stay While I pray And here in my heart you will stay While I pray My prayer is to linger with you at the end of the day in a dream that's divine. My prayer is a rapture Upon hearing that Kelly Preston died on July 12th at age 57,

two years after a breast cancer diagnosis, which they kept quiet, a little strange then to get reflecting upon this teen movie that was her breakthrough role called Mischief. And yeah, that was where I first would have heard of her. Mischief was one of these movies that

came a few years later, but like in the wake of Porky's. And the whole thing was like you would have a teen movie, but you would set it in the 1950s. As a result of that, you would get like an older demographic that would want to see it for nostalgic reasons, reliving their youth. But at the same time, you would include a nude scene or two. And as a result, you would make sure you got all the teenage boys lining up to see it during the day. And I think I was one of those teenage boys, really young teenage boy.

And recall going to see this film. And of course, it was like a whole important ritual, you know, coming of age for young men that we're all going out together to see mischief. And in the process, we were introduced to Kelly Preston as a result of this awkward lovemaking scene, which appeared in the movie. Subsequently, oh, another one I liked, I think came out a year later. It was 52 Pickup, a movie based on the Elmore Leonard book.

And she was in that as well. That one I remember. Mostly, though, we heard about Kelly Preston because she was the wife of John Travolta and that they were very embedded in the Scientology movement. And yet that didn't stop her from still being a celebrity. And the movie Jerry Maguire is one that people remember her from, right?

Where she played that love interest role alongside opposite another Scientologist. Gee, those connections maybe came in handy. Gee, those connections maybe came in handy. But when it came to being in the movie Battlefield Earth, along with Travolta, maybe that was some indication that her career wasn't going to come back to the level of her original promise. What was really sad is the fact that John Travolta and Kelly Preston, one of their three kids, Jet, he died at age what was it?

Age 16. Wow. And that was back in 2009. And that, in fact, going through that, she subsequently had another son, Benjamin,

her daughter, Ella Blue. These were the kids of Kelly Preston and John Travolta. So obviously we have a grieving Travolta here under the circumstances. A real tragic story, but even before she met Travolta here under the circumstances. Real tragic story, but even before she met Travolta, there was Kelly Preston living the high life which included being engaged

to Charlie Sheen. And that came to an end because there's a story out there, even though later she denied it, that Charlie Sheen shot her in the arm. Wow. That'll do it. Thank you. Go on for too long. I'm just going to start staring at the clouds, Mike, here in your backyard. Albatross by Fleetwood Mac.

Do you know this piece of instrumental music? It seems to be familiar to me, but I don't know if I know this piece of instrumental music? It seems to be familiar to me, but I don't know if I know this piece of music. Because this was a number one song in England. One of the first songs from Fleetwood Mac when they originally were spawned

from John Mayles Blues Breakers. And the biggest hits that they've left behind from that era were Oh Well, another song, mostly instrumental that Fleetwood Mac still performed to this day. Went through Lindsay

Buckingham, and on their latest incarnation it was Mike Campbell, the Tom Petty guitarist that joined Fleetwood Mac. He took over that song, and they play that in every concert. And Black Magic Woman, covered by Santana,

which was one of the better-known songs from Peter Green. Well, Peter Green goes down in history as the founder of this band, which took the name from its drummer and its bassist. It was Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac. But he was seen as the prodigy. He was the young guitarist that could play in the sweet tone that no one else had figured out before. tone that no one else had figured out before, and it resulted in these instrumentals like Albatross, which inspired Sun King, a song from Abbey Road, the album by the Beatles

that they said was inspired by watching Fleetwood Mac pioneer this style all their own on this number one hit. And what happened with Fleetwood Mac after that was a combination of some struggles with his mental health and also bad trips with LSD. It sent Peter Green into a state where he couldn't really carry on. And he was out of the band. That was it for Peter Green's iteration of Fleetwood Mac. It seems like it was the LSD that did him in and the band carried on without him.

But then at one point, Fleetwood Mac were playing in the United States. Was it the guitarist Jeremy Spencer who left to join a cult and they called Peter Green back to fill in for him while they were on tour in the United States. So they hadn't become estranged. He was just off doing his own deal.

And then we had Fleetwood Mac in these different eras, other members of Bob Welch and Bob Weston. And then we get to Fleetwood Mac as we know it, right? With Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham. The rumors. The rumors. Okay, so just imagine Peter Green at that point in time

was like not even 30 years old. And here, like this thing that he created had turned into the biggest rock band in the world. And he was going through it. Now, Mick Fleetwood would always speak about the fact they made sure the guy was taken care of financially. But just to watch his going on, right, at the same time that he became this obscure figure.

But those who knew, knew that Fleetwood Mac would never have happened without him. And he showed up on a couple of Fleetwood Mac albums doing some little parts. He was right up to the album Tusk. Even reunited with Mick Fleetwood when he put out a solo album in 1981. But, you know, for all the different incarnations and iterations of Fleetwood Mac, they never got it back together with him, even though they expressed interest in doing so. And even though he was still performing to the best of his abilities over the years, we never had that full Peter Green and Fleetwood Mac reunion. Well, people were thinking of him

right up to, I guess, some of the last days that you could have had a rock concert, because at the end of February, there was an all-star tribute to Peter Green that took place in England in late February. I mean, they're not even sure if he was aware of it or not. His health was in a state where we lost him July 25th at age 73. Fleetwood Mac's Peter Greenbaum, better known as Peter Green. A little, uh, some little Richard here. Magic School Bus. Shout out to Stu Stone. Joanna Cole, who originally wrote the Magic School Bus series of books,

died July 12th at age 75. And Stu Stone, a voice on the Magic School Bus. You talked about that on Pandemic Fridays. And so this year we lost Joanna Cole. We lost Little Richard who sang a theme

from the Magic School Bus. And we lost, most sadly of all, Stu Stone's father, Jack Eisenstein. Right? That's Stu Stone's original name.

Yeah, the Jack from, if you've seen his documentary Jack of All Trades, the Jack and Jack of All Trades passed away. It was Stu Stone who had this strange relationship with his father, who was like a sports card dealer, Thornhill, Ontario, at the height of hysteria over sports cards. It was a store called Sluggers, franchised into a chain that was a documentary Stu made about reuniting with his father after so many years of not communicating. And he was wondering, where could you find that now to watch? And it's not on Netflix.

It's at the Toronto Public Library. It's on the Canopy with a K service. If you go on there, free of charge with a library card, you can remember Jack Eisenstein, Jack of all trades. So shout out to Stu Stone. Some condolences here. We couldn't get through the memorial section

without acknowledging the Jack of all trades. Got on a plane in Frisco And got off in Vietnam I walked into a different world I would have thought I couldn't break the rules 13 months and 15 days I would have thought Charlie Daniels was 83 years old 40 years ago. Yeah, right, right. But no, because he died on July 6th, we learned that he made it to 83, not too bad. The devil went down to Georgia,

but Charlie Daniels Lived to Tell the Tale. This was his song. Still in Saigon, which kind of borrows from Call Me from Blondie. I thought the opening is Call Me from Blondie. Absolutely. I was thinking the same thing.

And this came out afterward. Definitely. This was 1982. And I can remember in 1982 seeing a report, maybe, I don't know, some American TV channel. Like, this was a provocative song because it was still at a point where the Vietnam War was fresh in everyone's memory. And, like, it wasn't something you were supposed to talk about. And even on the Wikipedia page, it credits his song with, like, opening the floodgates for all these songs about Vietnam, which you know.

Born in the USA. Right. And Goodnight Saigon by Billy Joel and Walking on a Thin Line by Huey Lewis. 19 by Paul Hardcastle, another one that was really controversial with the Americans. Right.

And right up to Copperhead Road by Steve Earle. Cribbing there off Wikipedia, but I think it's important, this kind of forgotten song, a bit of a hit, made it to number 22 on the Billboard Hot 100 as a pop song. It mentions Canada nice and early. Shout out to Canada. Charlie Daniels, rest in peace, still in Saigon. Thank you. John Saxon died at age 83 here at the end of July 25th, 26. Nightmare on Elm Street, Dream Warriors. Song by Dawkin.

Dawkin is the kind of band, you're seeing these American bands that are into playing concerts even during the pandemic, right? With like no regard whatsoever for who's in the audience. A certain type of retro rock band, right? That's perfectly fine with doing these shows

who have the kind of fans that are willing to risk an outbreak by all gathering together. And we've got this whole sub-genre taking shape. We have the Chainsmokers. They played a show in the Hamptons. The governor, Andrew Cuomo, was on their case now about this because of the video that's related to it. We had Great White doing a concert that got a lot of attention, right? Great White

showing their talent for having concerts that could end in fatalities. I'll never forget the station, yeah. And then there's some other concert involving like an all-star cast of Smash Mouth. They're willing to play a festival,

like a show like this. I think they're the headliner that is South Dakota having no problem with social distancing issues. Trapped, another band, like the official a new metal band

of the MAGA generation. Is that right? Because I'm prominently featured in some NHL video games I played in the earlyGA generation. Is that right? Because I'm prominently featured in some NHL video games I played in the early 2000s. Buck Cherry and Quiet Riot are in this festival. And the guess who?

Oh, with the Sass Jordan's husband. I guess. Does he live in the United States? Is he able to cross the border? When you mentioned Paul Hardcastle, I remember Sass had a story about him too and bumping into him in Europe I remember Sass had a story about him too, and bumping into him in Europe.

So Sass is all over the place. But playing Doc, and not to commemorate any future deaths they might be associated with, but the fact that here was this actor from Nightmare on Elm Street who died at 83, but John Saxon, most immortal of all, is the fact that he was in the movie with Bruce Lee. Enter the dragon.

And once you've got that credit behind you, I mean, look, right up to Quentin Tarantino's movie from last year, that the legend of these martial arts movies that Bruce Lee made, and then sort of one of his co-stars,

John Saxon saxon at 83 Speaking of Quentin Tarantino. For a few dollars more, that's what this is, right? It's Ennio Morricone. Right. Who kind of, didn't he like basically invent the whole idea of making this style of music for the screen that was as expressive as the acting going on there? A whole bunch of movies associated with Morricone and later interpretations of his work. I think I first

knew who he was because John Zorn, the experimental musician, had an album, The Big Gundown, which was like these new wave versions of his songs and right up to a tribute album that featured Metallica of the music of Morricone.

But mostly it was like about all these westerns. Like the good, the bad, and the ugly is that. It's my terrible cover of that particular. And I mentioned Tarantino because I believe he won his only Oscar for The Hateful Eight, I think. So Tarantino, again, resurrected a legend, and he got an Oscar, I believe. And The Mission was a soundtrack that gets mentioned a lot. Right.

Kind of hear that, like when people want to show how intelligent they are, that's the kind of soundtrack that they put on kind of to exude higher-brow musical tastes. But that's like over 30 years ago now, and Ennio Morricone made it to age 91, died on July 6, 2020. A long time ago, a million years B.C., the best things in life were absolutely free.

But no one appreciated a sky that was always blue. And no one congratulated a moon that was always new. So it was planned that they would vanish now and then. And you must pay before you get them back again. That's what storms were made for. That's what storms were made for And you shouldn't be afraid for Every time it rains, it rains Pennies from heaven

Don't you know each cloud contains Pennies from heaven? You'll find your fortune fallen. Regis Philbin, who died, they said natural causes, although it was like a heart condition. Turned out age 88. And what a life for Regis Philbin. I think it was after he died that we were reminded, because he was laying low recently, that he was no longer making those television appearances in

the last couple of years. But who would have known? Who would have noticed? Because Regis Philbin was in our lives for so many years. Just a ubiquitous presence on television. In fact, it was when he was touring with Don Rickles, and I saw somewhere it was the death of Don Rickles that kind of made Regis feel like he wanted to step back from the spotlight. David Letterman, who had Regis Philbin on as a guest, how many times? He couldn't even count. I mean, Letterman said a million times.

He said when Regis retired, that's when David Letterman lost interest in TV, when he left that morning show, the Regis and Kelly show, Regis and Kathy Lee show. That's when Letterman thought also that it was time to hang it up, that here was a guy that he loved, one of his favorite guests of all, because there you could just have, you know, Regis show up on screen, and the chaos would follow, and that he was a performer that was really made

for that whole generation of television viewers that we would, like, recognize him as this kooky, older relative that would show up on TV, do this morning show where they would riff and talk about absolutely nothing. I mean, even they admitted it over and over again, that the Regis Philbin morning show wasn't to be mistaken for intelligent television, that it was really all about ad-libbing all the way through. And Regis, who originally was a sidekick

on the late-night Joey Bishop show, and he had those old-school Las Vegas styles, eventually he figured out how to move it to more of a high- camp angle and become this character. When Regis was on, you were expecting Regis, perhaps to an excessive extent sometimes. But he had to deliver. When he took over as host of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, he said over and over again, he single-handedly had saved the ABC network.

And he might have had a point, because you remember when the Millionaire Game Show was at its peak? They were showing it every single night of the week. It was a massive phenomenon. Are you kidding me? And I remember whoever the first guy was who won that million bucks, it felt like history was being made. It was a huge moment for that show, no doubt.

And Toronto connection to Regis would be Gelman, his producer, Michael Gelman, because, of course, I mean, everybody, I guess Regis and Kathy Lee and their spouses and their kids were all part of the show, and he would always throw to Gelman, the producer, Gelman. And Gelman's wife was originally one of the VJs, PJs on YTV, Laurie Hibbard. Yes, I do know this.

And then she became part of the Regis extended universe as well, Laurie Gelman. YTV, once home to the aforementioned Liza Fromer. Absolutely. And Nicholas Piccolos. Shout out. Okay, we're stretching here, but of course,

it's not hard to find remembrances of Regis Philbin. This is a big one. I mean, again, he was just always there. Like, whether it was,

even if you didn't watch Live with Regis and Kathy Lee, like, you knew Regis and Kathy Lee, you knew the parodies. I watched a lot of Letterman, and he was always, you know, even if you didn't watch live with Regis and Kathy Lee, like you knew Regis and Kathy Lee, you knew the parodies. I watched a lot of Letterman and he was always, you know, always full value. A great guest on Letterman and a frequent guest on Letterman. Who wants to be a millionaire was a big deal. Like he was just, and he had the record, right?

For most hours clocked on television. Most hours clocked on television and he would admit himself, he said absolutely nothing of any redeeming value whatsoever. A role model for us all here, whether it's broadcasting or podcasting, when it comes to the idea of spending hours at a time doing a show about nothing. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 Mark, do we know, so Regis had the record for most hours broadcast on television, but do we know whose record he broke?

Hugh Downs before the new millennium, right, up until 1999, it was Hugh Downs who accumulated the most hours on television. And, I mean, he did it, like, even before we were born. Because there he was, the co-host of the Today Show on NBC, and he did this game show called Concentration. on NBC, and he did this game show called Concentration. And by the late 70s, Hugh Downs was ready to retire. 40 years ago, what?

He made it to age 99, so there he is in the late 50s. I don't know, he made a lot of money. He was, you know, ready to disappear in Scottsdale, Arizona, let a younger generation take over on television. But here's what happened. ABC had started a primetime news magazine show called 2020. And when it kicked off in 1978, they did a first episode of the show, which looked like an acid trip. The first episode of 2020 was so legendary that in 1993, when I went to the Museum of Television and Radio in New York City, and what you do at the time,

like you would get as part of your admission to watch something from the archives, you would take the video cassette into this little booth and watch a show. The thing that I had wanted to see the most, because of course there was no YouTube, there was no way of archiving it otherwise, what the hell was going on on this first episode of 2020 that ABC ended up pulling the plug on the

format and calling up Hugh Downs and bringing him out of retirement? And now it's on YouTube, of course. And yeah, it's real wacky. And it was that show 2020 that they called in Hugh Downs to save it, ended up being the anchorman of the show for over 20 years, ended up co-hosting with Barbara Walters and another connection to John Gallagher. Because John Gallagher was once featured on 2020, but to this day laments the fact that he didn't get to do a live spot because some terrorists decided to try and blow up the World Trade Center. Right, that was 9-11. Another bad luck moment for John Gallagher. Well, okay. So Hugh Downs, once he's into his 60s and 70s doing this ABC News thing, you'd imagine

the job was pretty chill. Like he would fly in. He would do his bits on TV. He'd already spent the most amount of hours on TV. He was such a natural, whatever. He would just read the teleprompter. He would take his cues. They would record this stuff. Then he'd go out to dinner

at a fancy restaurant. Maybe lunch the next day. He'd kind of hang around. Maybe they needed him like what happened with Spike Gallagher that day when there was breaking news. But this was a pretty easy gig. I mean, he was coasting all the way to Y2K, and that's when Hugh Downs stepped aside as a regular TV personality.

And, you know, as he went through his 80s and 90s, there on the 1st of July, lots of remembrances for the fact that the previous record holder for the most hours on television was no longer with us. Happy trails to Hugh Downs. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 ¶¶ Gone with the Wind, which can no longer be watched on HBO Max, on that streaming service, because of cultural insensitivities. Cancel culture came for Olivia de Havilland just in time for her to die.

I was scanning the magazine racks at a drugstore and I saw the National Examiner tabloid. If you know the hierarchy of American tabloids, as long as this business is still around, you'll know the Examiner is the one that's for the oldest demographic of all. They print this newspaper and they aim it for people over 80. And if you read about celebrities in the National Examiner, they're going to be people that you're familiar with if you're pushing an age limit of three digits. There on the front page, it marked the fact that Olivia de Havilland was turning 104.

This was a few days before July 1st, and I wondered on Twitter, is Olivia de Havilland going to live long enough for this cover to remain relevant? Well, guess what? She did, and she hit age 104 July 1st and died 26 days later in Paris, France.

And Olivia de Havilland won five Academy Awards, including one for Gone with the Wind. And I guess what it was like in the late 30s or 40s, what it was to be a movie star. Not only Olivia de Havilland, but her sister, Joan Fontaine, also an Oscar winner. And Joan and Olivia spent most of their life not talking to one another. Joan and Olivia spent most of their life not talking to one another.

And Joan died in 2013, made it to age 96. Not bad. Yeah, but there Olivia had to live with the fact that she survived her younger sister. Imagine, though, Mark, being, you know, starring in Gone with the Wind and you only showed up in the Ridley Funeral Home Memorial section of the 1236 episodes of Toronto Mic'd in July 2020. Not too shabby. Okay, are you satisfied with the length?

Because we missed a few deaths here. We can always put them off to another episode. I did a lot of cutting room. Yes, I couldn't. Simply, we used to have that two and a half hour hard cap, remember? We're still going over three hours today. Well, if anyone made it this far. If I had put all your deaths in here, we would be going until 3.30, 3.45.

But here's the debate that goes on in the comments, right? If somebody is going to make it to two hours, are they not going to deal with three hours? And Joe Rogan does three hours. And if Toronto Mike wants to be taken seriously as a podcast and look at a future with a 100 million dollar deal listen Mike and I'm gonna have to get used to three hours what am I saying and that

we have other things to do Mark and that brings us to the end of our 695th show you can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Mark is at 1236.

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