Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Marc Weisblott from 12:36: Toronto Mike'd #1124

Episode Date: October 6, 2022

Mike chats with Marc Weisblott of 12:36 about the current state of media in Canada and what you oughta know. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Yes, We Are Open, The Advantaged Investor, Canna Cabana, StickerYou, Ridley Funeral Home and Electronic Products Recycling Association.

Welcome to episode 1124 of Toronto Mic'd. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery. Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA. StickerU.com. Create custom stickers, labels, tattoos, and decals. Palma Pasta. We'll see you next time. podcast from Raymond James Canada. EPRA, committing to our planet's future means properly recycling our electronics of the past. Ridley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since

1921. And Canna Cabana, the lowest prices on cannabis guaranteed. Joining me today to discuss the month that was, September 2022, is 1236's own Mark Weisblot. Wait, wait, wait. One more thing. When you introduce me, Mike, don't forget to add FOTM Hall of Famer Mark Weisblot.

How could I forget that? And let me ask you, Mike, in these hundreds of episodes that you've done to date, how many people have ever turned down an appearance on the Jesse Brown Canada Land Show

in favor of hanging out with you? So that happened today. It happened in the last few weeks when Jesse wanted me to come in favor of hanging out with you. So that happened today. It happened in the last few weeks when Jesse wanted me to come on his podcast to talk about what's going on with the 1236 newsletter. And I said, hold your horses. Give me some time to figure out what is going to happen. And on that note, we're once again joined by the VP of Sales, Tyler Campbell.

Hello. VP of Sales, welcome back. You're like Mark Wiseblood's good luck charm. He's like a lucky rabbit foot he wears around his belt. I'm honored. He's on fire today. This is very exciting. Well, when we did our episode last month, it was a very moist late night recording, and I

noticed you were inspired so much you did Toast with Cam Gordon and Stu Stone similarly late into the evening. But not my call. I would have done it much earlier. Hey, you said moist. Moist? I like moist enough, but you know, I prefer Sloan. A little like New Sloan as we get things

going here today. New Sloan as we get things going here today. If it feels right Except I'm blinking Make it real life Magical thinking I like the bops. Okay, Sloans, this is Magical Thinking. And we're trying to do some magical thinking

with a little help here from VP of Sales because as the newsletter is currently on something of a hiatus, which is to say, I promise to do it at least on Thursdays. And today we're on the heels of Yom Kippur. And before that, Rosh Hashanah. So as Canada's number one Jewish journalist, I was on assignment through those Jewish high holidays. And even though I could have mustered a newsletter, I have high hopes to do something a little different with it, with a Substack platform and app. But like I said, before I can go hang out with Jesse Brown, we've got to figure out what's happening here.

So that includes me trying to find out how much I can monetize with the audience we built with the newsletter. Because as we have chronicled here over a period of months, I'm no longer published by St. Joseph Communications Media after 88 months riding on the coattails of Toronto Life magazine that came to an end August 2022. And I'm on my own, given custody of the 1236 name and a wide-ranging email list and

I want to get this right! So, we're still trying to figure out what can happen since I got here a month ago with a resolution to sit down and hang out with all sorts of people out there. I still haven't gotten around to a lot of those meetings. That's why we have to do them during the podcast, Mike.

Even you, when I got here today in your backyard boardroom, you're like you're too busy making things happen. That was a private discussion. To contemplate what we can do in the future. I know the feeling. That's what I'm trying to say. what we can do in the future. I know the feeling.

That's what I'm trying to say. Like, at the same time that you're busy doing a bunch of stuff, you gotta outsource that energy to other people to help figure out where to go next. Tyler Campbell just hanging out with us for no reason whatsoever. But he happens to have the title here

at TMDS of VP of Sales. Okay, I can't wait to look. I'm going to crack open my cold Great Lakes beer. Do you guys have some fresh craft beer from Great Lakes Brewery in your possession? You want to do it all at the same time, or is that crazy? You want to count? Let's do it coordinated, right? Five.

Hold on. Okay. Ten. Five, four, three. Wow. That's three fresh cans of Great Lakes beer opening up. Cheers to you guys. Okay, so what am I trying to sell here?

It's essentially saying. What are you selling here? What's going on? I've got this newsletter, 1236. If you're listening, you probably know what it is. I found it. Even Steve Paikin knows my name. It took a while to get confirmation of that one. That's a big fucking deal.

From listening to his recent appearance on your show. And yes, we are open for business. If somebody has an idea that works with the audience that I've got and the newsletter that I have been putting out, we've experimented with a bit of advertising, including a promo for TMDS. If you want a podcast, get in touch with Toronto Mike. That's all you wanted to try to add.

I don't know what can come out of one impression, but there's a lot we can do in the future, and that's where things are at right now at 1236. So as far as the newsletter content is concerned, this podcast is all you're going to get this week. If you're hept to the fact that I'm on here, we'll get back to the at least once a week newsletter very soon. Hopefully some new adventures in Substack, given the technology they're building over

there, more details to come in the weeks ahead. Did you say, yes, we are open? You said those words, right? Did you say, yes, we are open? You said those words, right? Did you know season three of the award-nominated Yes, We Are Open podcast from Moneris and hosted by FOTM Al Grego launched this month? Are you listening to that one, Mr. Weisblatt?

Al Grego, who will knock on your door and offer to cuddle with you in exchange for sharing with him your deepest and darkest secrets about what it's like to try and bounce back in small business. Look, he had his most recent episode I listened to, which was great, was about a woman who started a cannabis retail store. And I love that episode of, yes, we are open and everyone should subscribe and listen.

But when it comes to cannabis, I am a Canna Cabana man. They will not be undersold on cannabis or cannabis accessories. Mark, thank you for giving me a gift when you showed up today. You brought me storytelling by Tori Spelling. Say that five times quickly. Yeah, I'm trying to clear out a bunch of clutter, and that means purging some books that I forgot that I still had hanging around. I noticed I had two copies of Tori Spelling's memoir from 2006.

So I figured instead of sending both copies to the curb, I might as well deliver one to the producer. Maybe I can sell this to Stephanie Wilkinson, maybe. The producer of Tori Spelling's husband's upcoming podcast. Oh, this book, I skipped to the acknowledgments. This book is dedicated to Dean, who showed me what true love is. I think I'm in love with Dean.

We spent a lot of, I should point out Dean McDermott, not that other one. We spent a lot, just in case there's any confusion, we spent a lot of time together, and I can't wait to read Tori Spelling's book here. That's wild. Well, it's somewhat out of date. Hasn't she had four, five, six, seven children?

She's given birth to five children. So that beats my record. Lots of tabloid stories about her marriage being on the rocks, but as far as you can tell, they still have a happy home. I don't ask a lot of questions about Tory because it's always me, Dean, and Mary Jo Eustace who are chatting. Sometimes I chat privately with Dean about other things, about fatherhood and stuff. But I have been avoiding the Tory questions. I'm saving them for when he's on Toronto Mike.

This is Dean McDermott reuniting with his ex-wife, Canadian cooking show host, Ken Kostick. Right, the late great Ken, who apparently was a CIA agent or whatever, the CSIS agent maybe in Canada. Apparently there's a whole story she has about Ken's secret double life. Based on reports from TorontoMike.com, the tears are flowing during these episodes

that you're taping with Dean and Mary Jo. Oh, it must be Twitter, yeah. Very emotional as they deconstruct their relationship. There's a lot of crying and it's very emotional

and it's like, it's real talk and it's authentic. Like, I'm there to make sure. I'm just there to make sure it's authentic. I don't want them to stage anything or fake anything. So I'm witnessing all this in real time. It's legit. Like this is legitimately, like this is a ex-husband and wife together talking about what went wrong, how somebody was hurt here. Somebody was hurt there. There's a lot of magic that happens. And I can't wait to

share this audio of the universe. When does that drop? Hopefully soon. If I were the boss, I would have dropped them already, but we're waiting for a few things to come together in Hollywood, so I'm just waiting on Hollywood stuff to run through the cycle, and then we'll get these things out.

And then you're going to leave me and Tyler to our own devices while we forget all about our friend Hollywood Mike. Hey, well, speaking of leaving things behind, David Alter left his shades behind. Those are nice. And I know I'm not recording the video, but they look kind of cool, right?

Should I keep them? Should I pretend like they're not here? Because he's going to at some point come back. I think you should wear them in the selfie. But shout out to David Alter. What did you think of the Alter episode? A very, very angst-riddled appearance there from David Alter.

Those are good. You should keep those. Okay. Tremendous anxiety runs through his veins. Maybe it's because he's a member of the tribe. On the eve of Yom Kippur, he was contemplating all the mistakes that he's made in his life.

I would recommend that episode for anybody that likes to hear about what it's like trying to build a media career in this country and falling down a few times along the way. I can relate to that experience. The very first time I was on Toronto Mic, that's what I talked about here. Being slightly older, I listened to somebody like that telling their stories of frustration, trying to make it in media, and dude, this is the gig that you signed up for. So at the same time

that he is providing this visceral formceral form of of entertainment i gotta say with a little more hindsight it does come with the territory wishing him the best of luck in his future endeavors your most recent guest before now david alter and i'm uh informed by ian service tim as his stew would call him, that that episode never did appear on Google Podcasts, but he validated my XML and said it was perfect, as if I needed him to tell me that, of course. So we don't know why, but hopefully when we publish this episode,

it will also publish David Alter's episode to Google. Google! Fun fact, this jam was played live at TMLXX. By the way, that talk-up you did to the song had to be the worst DJ patter I've ever heard in my entire life about how the last episode of Toronto Mike didn't publish to Google because of an XML file. You don't get song intros like that on Q107, even without John

Derringer to kick around anymore. I was going to say Arias and Symphonies. Noticing FOTM Rob Pruce celebrating the fact that this album by The Spoons 40 years ago today.

This week. October 1982. And this was not even the first album that years ago today this week, October 1982 and this was not even the first album that Rob Bruce made with the band it was one beforehand, Stick Figure Neighborhood I mean, you now know

Rob Bruce he performed at TMLXX already very dedicated FOTM. And just to imagine, he was playing on a record made 40 years ago. And he barely looks 40 years old. It's quite baffling.

But I did find out he dyes his hair. Okay, that's not his natural hair color. But he's got hair. That's half the battle, as we all know. Now, I have a quote here from Rob Proust, who has appeared twice on Toronto Mic, excluding his appearance at TMLXX. Rob Proust writes,

Areas and symphonies 40 years on. That's a long time ago. Several lifetimes at least. Sometimes it seems like only yesterday. Yet how can I have been 16 years old? Only yesterday. The sound of this music is timeless to me. We were living in the moment, creating something which spoke to us

and which was given even more beautiful life by the people who helped to bring it to life. My memories of the creation are deep in my heart, and I think we made something which stands the test of time. I'm going to listen to it today. It's like looking at old photographs, which is another nice thing to do. Spoons, not the spoons. Gore doesn't care.

Nova Heart, that was the bigger hit from this album, but I felt like this song, the title track, was the more monumental follow-up. Okay, what do you guys think of this? Nova Heart is to Spoons as Echo Beach is to Martha and the Muffins. I think that's fair. I think Spoons had a longer tail.

I think they managed to crank out more more memorable jams in a shorter period of time even though the original band fell apart rob went off and joined honeymoon suite uh when you get into nile rogers producing spoons tell no lies romantic traffic i think i think they sure but you can run down Spoons, Tell No Lies, Romantic Traffic. I think they compressed a lot more action into a short period of time, right? Like our pal Rob Pruce, he wasn't even 19 years old, and he was all ready to retire, move on from this band. He was looking for higher ground.

Theme from Lethal Weapon. Now, not to bury the lead here. I don't want to bury the lead. I just want to promote the fact that you, Mark Wiseblood, have read the new autobiography by Roz Weston. Is it memoir? What is that? Where do we begin?

I just want to tease it. Okay. Is this coming up later in the episode? Is this how we're working here? I just want to tease it. Okay. Is this coming up later in the episode? Is this how we're working here? We're going to tease it. Fast forward to this part. What's the name of that book? I promised you a book review of A Little Bit Broken.

New book by Ross Weston. FOTM, Ross Weston. Making the rounds, not only from his employer, Rogers, Kiss Radio, but also seeing him on CTV and Global, where he used to work on ET Canada. But I don't know if he'll be getting any serious book reviews anytime soon. Well, you're a serious reviewer. The least I can do, assign myself homework so that we could discuss

the life and career of Roz Weston as part of this 1236 episode of Toronto Mic'd. So don't you dare go anywhere. We're going to be covering that in depth here. I have a clip from Twitter here I want to play. Let's see if this works for me. Stand by. Any moment now, this clip will actually work. Hi, everyone. any moment now this clip will actually work hi everyone i'm here at buckingham palace uh where you can see thousands of people

compelled to be here to bring flowers to lay them at the gates the last time i was here of course the queen was on that balcony as the millions of people filled the mall to celebrate her platinum jubilee. Here we are now, and it is such a different mood. There's tears. More than anything, though, there is gratitude for what this woman has done. The accidental queen at 25, now the longest reigning monarch in British history. And the people of this country and across Canada mourn her. I'm here covering this as a special correspondent for City News,

and it is truly an honor to be able to reflect on the legacy of this remarkable woman that I've admired my entire life. So last time you were here, Mark, that was the day the Queen, they announced the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. We kind of talked about her in the Ridley Funeral Home segment of that episode. But since then, there's some Lisa Laflamme news that you're going to discuss with us right now.

Yeah, during our sweaty late night session with VP of Sales, not only did we talk about the Queen passing away, but also the firing of Lisa Laflamme from Bell Media. Laflamme is how they say it on the CTV News promo, by the way. Laflamme. I know you like to make it Laflamme, but they don't say that on the CTV News promo.

But continue. Little did we know a crossover event worthy of the Marvel Cinematic Universe was taking place, as it was described in a series of columns by Rosie DeManno of the Toronto Star, that the moment that Lisa Laflamme heard that the Queen had passed away, she had booked a ticket on the Concorde

or whatever they call the airplanes these days, and she was going to the Queen's funeral no matter what. That was how she portrayed her reaction to Queen Elizabeth passing away. She was not going to miss this moment of history, not even knowing how her reports were going to be broadcast. Now, you realize she did not need a broadcast network at all, right? Like, these reports that she was doing on the scene, which you played from a tweet, from YouTube, from Facebook, she could have done this on a platform of her own.

But my understanding is the relatively recent new head of Rogers Media, Colette Watson, is actually a good friend of Lisa Laflamme and provided her with a platform. So we were speculating about what she would do next. Little did we know the following day, Lisa Laflamme accepted a special correspondent job with City News to cover the 10-day process leading up to them throwing the Queen into the ground. And, boy, the headlines followed.

We have never seen so much pageantry provided to a Canadian news anchor by the fact that here was Queen broadcasting Lisa Laflamme getting back into the field, able to reclaim her own crown, that she would become the center of attention for the way the Canadian broadcast landscape covered the death of the Queen. Was anybody here paying attention to any of that?

Mike, were you riveted to each dispatch that Lisa Laflamme provided from Buckingham Palace? No, that audio I just played was the only Lisa Laflamme I heard from her trip to jolly old England. Tyler Campbell, VP of sales. How did it go for you? Did you rely on this coverage to keep you enlightened? Same as Mike. Beyond that clip, I saw nothing, and it was queen activity 24-7 in my house.

My parents, my mom is a queen fanatic. What network was your mom watching? She was watching BBC primarily. That's a diehard. Love it. Go straight to the source. But as we learned from the coverage surrounding her dismissal from CTV News, perhaps with help of her husband,

the former editor-in-chief of the Toronto Star, Michael Cook, who now works for Navigator, a public relations firm that specializes in crisis PR. She definitely knew how to put herself front and center. And that's exactly what happened. Even Rosie DiManno, still at the Toronto Star to this day. We'll talk shortly about some of the other drama going around that newspaper. Rosie D'Amato, notorious for never wanting to be recorded or photographed, okay? Like, she has spent her entire career ducking away from a camera.

Any media interview request, including from Toronto Mike. Correct. She flatly turns down. It's not her thing. What did she reply to you? Strictly a print gal. I'm a print gal through and through. I am not going to do a deep dive interview with anyone.

Rosie D'Amato, maybe there was a little debt that she felt that she could pay back to her former boss at the Toronto Star, keeping it in the family here. Or maybe she felt like here was her part. Here was her opportunity to become a central figure in this media event, got this exclusive interview, sitting in a pub in London, England, pondering the passing of the Queen with Lisa Laflamme. More grist for the mill, more fodder to hang Bell Media out to dry, because we've also had a few business news stories, essentially saying that the wrong people are in charge at Bell Media. And we knew this all along, right?

They gave these roles of supervising journalism, television, and radio to people whose experience was in the telecom industry, who came in with a certain expectation. Their specialty was delivering a certain kind of profit margin. They were very successful with BCE shareholders, and everyone who considers themselves part of the journalism tribe is just rolling their eyes on everything that's happening here, right? Like, we never imagined that the chief correspondent for CTV News

could be laid off. Last episode here, we talked about Michael Melling, who was the manager, among other things. Somebody overheard him saying that he didn't like the fact that Lisa let her hair go gray. That turned into an entire cause celeb, even though she said nothing of the sort for herself. She didn't need to.

And so in the process, we had this crisis situation at Bell Media. Rogers still dealing with the bruises of that outage that happened at the beginning of the summer, the fact that they're still standing by waiting to take over Shaw Communications, and maybe that whole situation is about to be jeopardized. They needed a win, right? They needed something in that column to show that they had an edge over Bell, and there was Lisa Laflamme willing to pay for her own plane ticket. For all I know, she covered all the expenses herself

in exchange for this airtime on City News, which itself is kind of a diminished brand. We've discussed that over the years, right? This is not the City Pulse of yesteryear. May I ask a silly question? Once Gordon Martineau signed off and told us Modern Family is coming up next, that was the end of the era.

They've never recovered. But Mr. Wiseblood, I have a question. As a guy who lives in Toronto, of course City News was called, we called it city tv it was a toronto station is that a national network like is there a city tv network across the country in the big cities in the large markets okay so vancouver's got one uh city tv station whatever whatever that's worth at this point in time city tv just celebrated its 50th anniversary

and it's very awkward scenario right because moses Neimer was once, for all we know, escorted out the building. He was given, I don't know, 24 hours to clear his desk. Everybody always thought Moses owned the place, and it's coming up on 20 years since he last worked there. He's off at Zoomer Media. He's not able to be a central figure of what's going on at CTV. It's all very awkward because I don't know that they could very easily invite back Gordon Martineau,

Ann Roszkowski, Pam Seidel, I don't know, you name it. Most of them have been guests on Toronto Mike. All the people that Rogers Media ever put out to pasture at City TV were not available for comment on this channel having been around for 50 years. Oh, Peter Gross was waiting for the phone to ring. Nobody called. Now, I was watching a bit of breakfast television. There was Dina and Sid, and they did a phone in. You know, what were your memories of City TV?

And somebody did call up, and they mentioned Peter Gross. I was wondering if that was Peter himself putting on a fake voice to make sure he got a shout out in the proceedings, lest he be forgotten. They also had a cameo from Ed the Sock. Who just wrote me an email. They let Steve Kersner

was allowed back in the building. But as far as the A-listers of City TV look, they're giving a lot of shout-outs to Mark Daly. He's the one former employee who they still acknowledge on the website, because he died before they could put

him out to pasture, give him the tap on the shoulder, send him off to an early retirement. Mark Daly is still welcome for a mention on City TV. The most seasoned City personality there? Yeah, I think so.

At this point in time, whoever's keeping score, because they moved away from having a TV anchor. Here they are celebrating 50 years of City TV, reminiscing about the Baby Blue movie, all the stuff that Ed Conroy keeps tabs on. I collaborated with Retro Ontario. It was an article. You can find it on the website of the Canadian Jewish News,

a Jewish angle on the history of City TV that I worked on with Retro Ontario. So that was the kind of thing that we were doing, knowing that the real story wasn't going to be told any other way. Here was an opportunity to do like a semi-authorized and yet at the same time not controlled by any media company in particular, acknowledge the legacies that were created there. I'm glad VP is sitting here right now because VP, you're on the mic there. What's the status of our Mikeumentary on the 50 years of City TV? Thanks for asking, Mike. I'm so glad you brought it up.

It's in development. I have cut a number of clips and I am about a quarter of the way through the script. There have been some life events that have slowed me down, but it will get done within the next month or so. As I say on those episodes, they don't exist without the efforts of this handsome young man, VP of Sales. But let me tell you something, Toronto Mike, you and me and Tyler and Retro Ontario and pretty much anyone listening to this podcast. Name them all. We. Steve Paikin.

Rob Proust. Richard Southern. Mike Epple. Keep going. In this media environment, we are the custodians. Blair Packham. We are the historians. We are the ones who have kept the fire burning.

We are the world. who have kept the fire burning. Because in this environment of these telecom-owned media companies, you can't count on City TV itself to do justice to its own history there. And yet, enter Lisa Laflamme, who might as well show up on City TV's newscast, might as well be the special correspondent focal point, because they didn't have anything else going on. So the stage was set for her to now become the face of City TV. And yet, despite all the speculation, will this be a long-term gig? Will she be around forever?

Because they could just hand her the keys to the whole thing. They got nothing else going on. But I guess we're given a little bit of suspense here that she has some relationship with the station and maybe at some point she will turn up on these Rogers TV stations and she will go up against Omar Sachedina doing this kind of late night newscast.

But you do need resources to pull this off. You can't just have a bunch of recent Ryerson, TMU, Toronto Metropolitan University graduates out of the field. You have to build and develop resources that might be tied to

the Shaw acquisition and what happens with global TV. Maybe they will get more muscular as city TV again, but then comes the even bigger question is, who is paying attention anymore? It's like when Trevor Noah announced he was stepping down from The Daily Show, right?

Like a lot of the pundits who wonder who's going to replace him, who's going to take it over, and then you get into this existential zone here in 2022, doesn't even matter anymore. Well, here's the thing. Does a person hosting a show like that, is anybody even going to notice if you bring in a big name? Well, you're talking like the potential

future where it's Lisa versus Omar, the network showdown. I've never been so excited for something. I have zero intention of tuning in to see. Yeah, battle of the network stars. The best we can do in terms of CanCon, but they still have this obligation to produce Canadian content, news programming.

They might as well just hand it over to Lisa. But I don't think it's a situation where she's going to do this guerrilla journalism alone, right, where she's got a blank check just to go on a trip around the world, serve as her own videographer, whoever was shooting her there. I don't know if that was Michael Cook behind the camera. It might have been a tripod. Ultimately, she could be creating this network on her own. Brandon Gones, formerly of CTV.

How's that going? I don't know really how it's going as much as someone who symbolically just said, I'm going to go independent. It's going as much as someone who symbolically just said, I'm going to go independent. I can reach my generation of people with news through different platforms that no longer require CTV. I think it was a bold move to make at the time. I did it as much as Brandon Gones. Like, I did that.

Right? Like, that's what this is. Well, you're not doing person on the street reports. Watch me. In different corners of Toronto. I'm thinking about it. I don't know how you measure these things. I mean, VP of sales, help me here.

It really comes down to who you can get to support your endeavor. Yeah, exactly. It doesn't matter what the view count happens to be on YouTube. You need that for the sake of optics. But ultimately, you can show that you've gotten a certain reach, if there are people paying attention to you in different ways, maybe you can make a business out of that at this point in time. Once again, what are we doing here hanging out with Tyler Campbell?

It's all about figuring out how do we leverage this thing that we've got? How do we turn it into more of a powerhouse than we've already been able to happen? I wrote a piece on TorontoMic.com this past week about Buffy St. Marie. I was thinking about her last Friday. And I realized the great story shared with us by Mr. Witkin, Barry Witkin,

who was the co-founder of the Purple Onion in Yorkville there, was that she wrote Universal Soldier in the basement of the Purple Onion here in Toronto. That great song, probably the best song, Buffy St. Marie, even though she did the song from Officer and a Gentleman that won the Oscar. What's that one?

Love Lifts Us Up Where We Belong? Yeah, she wrote that song. At least co-wrote it. Okay, so why am I talking? I just want to say, shout out to great sponsors of this program, StickerU. StickerU.com because of course barry whitkin's father sorry his father his son he looks like his father but his son andrew whitkin founder of sticker you and they've been supporting this so that we can build our own ctv our own cbc this

is our own city news we're doing it right now that's what this is we're doing it right now at the same time we had another high profile departure just announced here at the beginning of october from ctv news evan solomon who was hosting uh ctv news what's that show called power play do i got that right is that the show where they oh that's hockey night in canada they uh where they where they interviewed lobbyists and they they pretend that they're just doing this talking head TV appearance just for their own health, right? Like they're an analyst, they're an observer. No, they're appearing on these talk shows. They're making all these appearances so that large corporations can give them money to lobby the government.

Disclosures might be welcome on some of these shows. Tyler, you notice this. They don't really explain what might be influencing a particular point of view of somebody who presents themselves as a political partisan, that there actually happens to be an agenda behind any position that they're purporting to take. What happened to journalistic ethics? That's my question.

Evan Solomon got fired from the CBC for dealing art on the side. And the people he was dealing art to were like Mark Carney when he was head of Bank of Canada, that at the same time he was appearing as a guest on his program, they had a paper trail of him doing these different art deals. He got turf from the CBC. It happened real fast. Remember that one?

And then he had to show that people were still willing to talk to him. This was one of the savvier moves that ever saw in the history of media. He started like a podcast, a satellite radio show, just to show that Stephen Harper would still be willing to do an interview with him, and very quickly climb back onto the air at CTV. Well, this week we have learned that Evan Solomon, leaving Bell Media, leaving his high profile perch, Question Period, the Sunday morning talk show, the Evan Solomon radio show, and then he would do TV in the afternoon based in Ottawa, leaving

CTV to work for the Eurasia Group to become the publisher of something called GZERO Media. And when it comes to the masses out there hearing of a pivot like this one, no one really understands what this is. And here's the whole point. The Eurasia Group, they are one of those influencers out there in the world of power and money. Gerald Butts, BFF, Justin Trudeau, he is working with the Eurasia group. He most likely recruited Evan Solomon to do this job, and now he will be in charge of something called GZERO Media. So you want to talk about the type of online broadcasting

where it doesn't matter what your view count happens to be. The whole point is to target your programming towards the elites. And I figure if you're a guy like Evan Solomon in his mid-50s, he's been playing the media game for a while. Started with Shift Magazine. You guys remember Shift Magazine? They started this thing as an independent publication. They made a bunch of deals with different media companies.

People wanted to be with the cool Gen Xers, what they're talking about in cyberspace. He leveraged that into his CBC position, and then the art dealing that ended that era, but then smooth transition to CTV. But if you are Evan Solomon after so many years and you reflect upon the fact that the only viewers that I care about are the ones with power and money,

why not leave the mainstream mass media network and just go straight to the source? Why not just talk to the only people you cared about all along? I think it's a brilliant move for somebody like that. And it's kind of a concession, right, to the fact that more people will be paying attention to him if he's speaking to them directly than if he goes and broadcasts on the CTV News channel and hopes that somebody tunes in or maybe is wishing that they would be following him on Twitter and see a clip from the show. This is a case of somebody going straight to the source.

In that sense, I got to give Evan Solomon a lot of credit for his candor that he's just like walking away from the whole CTV News thing. He's still got some position, I don't know, special correspondent. He'll be based in New York. He'll be standing by when... Wait, wait, New York's not in Eurasia? Whenever there's something where they need

a man on the street in Washington, D.C., I guess he'll be an easy foreign correspondent for an assignment like that. So he's still keeping a relationship with Bell. We'll see how long that lasts, if it even matters anymore. But here is someone who, in fact, is saying, I'm not getting the kick that I used to get out of the CTV platforms. Maybe there's a ceiling about how much money he can make.

This remains unspoken, but you got to figure that this Lisa Laflamme drama has also maybe played into a distaste for having a long-term relationship full-time with this corporation and leaving the Bell Media radio stations in the lurch. CFRB, 1010, CFRA in Ottawa, CJAD in Montreal. They were reliant on Evan Solomon to kind of be the anchor. He gave a gravitas to the programming because all the influencers were paying attention to Bell Media. I don't know if he can be replaced as far as having these connections

and being this kind of talk radio host. So there was somebody who had a very strategic landing outside of CTV. He did not have to wait for the tap on the shoulder, a favorite phrase of Toronto Mike, to be told that his services were not required here anymore. And that here at age 54, he is off to greener pastures and probably a bigger paycheck. And a lot more excitement for the guy here in the universe. How many times can you do interviews with the same, quote-unquote, political consultants? Ask them what they thought about what happened in Parliament today.

He's been there. He's done that. So happy trails to Evan Solomon, not an FOTM, by the way, right? He's been off your radar. Well, he's never said, yeah, he's off my radar. I have not had the chance to ask him yet. I haven't got around to that one, but he's way off my radar. Like I have never heard a minute of this man speak.

Like I'm listening to you in this gravitas. I'm intrigued. I gotta dig up some archival footage and hear what I've been missing. Hey, but I am also super psyched about the Ross Weston book review. But before we get to that, I'm hoping we could have a little chat about what the hell's going on with the Toronto Star. What is the deal, wise blot? Well, Tyler Campbell is

in the house and me and Tyler Campbell have something in common. We both spent a period of our lives working for one young street in different forms, in different eras. It didn't necessarily overlap. But here bonding with VP of sales, we just happened to be discussing about the fact that he was one of the pioneering web guys working at one young, at the time, innovative process of uploading newspaper articles to the Internet. My own experience was with iWeekly, mostly in the 1990s, during my 20s, as an extremely low-paid correspondent. Part of my salary was paid in complimentary compact discs and had a presence there in the Alternative Weekly newspaper,

which you guys knew who I was from that era back then because I don't feel at the time that I leveraged it enough. Maybe my personality held me back, right? Like, I think I could have gotten further along by making contacts. I don't know. Maybe I thought I was too cool

to try and get a better job. This has been plaguing you your whole life. Go out and beg for it. Well, because if you get a platform in a free newspaper with, you know, 100,000 copies sent out every week, I didn't understand how the game was played, right? I didn't understand that I was supposed to find people who knew who I was. I was supposed to get a bigger and better job. I just thought I would, like, carry on and suddenly some magic would happen, as if at the time the bloated Torstar Corporation, this overlaps with them

starting to try and figure out how to work the internet, right, that they would somehow find me and decide this guy who was writing these wacky columns in the music section of a free newspaper, in fact, was the media visionary that we were standing by that we were waiting for. Tyler, I mean, how many people worked at the Toronto Star in in the time that you were there late 1990s you were what uh hundreds thousands of employees working out of this building they had a whole press operation that had thousands of people the newsroom there they probably had eight or nine floors in the building massive infrastructure and then once we got to 1996 7 8 there's this whole idea that we

need to be on the internet too that's where you came in can you can you disclose anything about your experience from a a quarter century ago i mean how do you even get this job to begin with how did it happen for you i i worked at the hamilton spectator before that doing much of the same thing and i was recruited to the tor Toronto Star for an extra $3,000 a year to go and work nights. That was a raise that I was waiting for. I could have used that $3,000 at the time. Yeah. So we worked nights putting the paper online. We'd do the work from about 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. And then we'd go to the bar for two hours. And then we would come back after last call and finish it up and it was very primitive

and just a horrible job. Were you having to retype articles out of the newspaper? In some cases, yeah. Someone would come to you with a type written page and you would have to input it into the computer? We'd go down to the newsroom and get the sheets and mark up the stories we were going to do and then fix

the rudimentary html they got uh output you did you consider this to be a formative experience or were you just another gen xer paying your dues a little little a column a little column b you know i thought maybe there was a career in uh in in journalism for me but i think my experience there kind of uh kiboshed that uh And yeah, it was out as quickly as possible. Did you resent the fact there were all these boomer journalists who were getting paid considerably more than you, in a lot of cases, do a lot less work, right? Like you would be a columnist, I don't know,

you put in an hour or two a day just to file your copy. All they wanted was your mugshot and your words in the newspaper. I've learned over the years that the number one thing here is reliability. It didn't matter what you wrote, especially when there was a lot of space to fill. It was whether you could deliver the copy in time.

And there you were working at the bottom of the ladder, having this job of turning their words into digital gold, pixel dust. You were charged with this responsibility. Did you get the sense at the time that anyone was reading this stuff? Or was it still all iterating? We had no idea.

There was no analytics. No analytics, no stats, no way of finding out how many people were looking up the paper on the Internet. But this was a time, of course, when the cash was still rolling in. A big, thick newspaper would come out most days of the week. There was money to burn. At the time, you would have had to be a moron to not continue to make money off things like a classified section of a newspaper. All this stuff had been entrenched from the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and people do forget that even though most people were online,

we're starting to get into the personal computer as a fixture of our life, print was still extremely dominant in everybody's mind, and it was the engine of the whole operation. No one at the time had the sense, like, one day all this stuff going online is going to end the thing that is making everybody money. No, absolutely not. They just carried on like this was the way it was going to work forever. We've got to be on the internet.

We've got to be on the internet, but most people are never going to get around to this thing. Most news readers will never adapt to this other technology. No one will ever think that a newspaper should be on my computer, and nobody ever thought at the time, we reminisced a bit about this a few weeks ago, nobody ever thought that you had to update a website over the course of a day.

It was the whole idea you were creating a morning edition. You were working that overnight shift. Maybe a little tipsy after your visit to the bar. Shout out to the Jersey Giant on Front Street. The contents of the newspaper would show up in the morning online, and that would be enough. You wouldn't go back at noon expecting to see a new story on there because VP of Sales hadn't shown up for work yet.

And only when you went into the content mines doing your job late at night could you be entrusted with this business of making magic out of the newspaper. So let's flash forward 25 years. The Toronto Star is in deep trouble. The old infrastructure can't hack it anymore.

I mean, this was at the time a public company, but it had, you know, about the five families that owned Torstar that controlled the whole operation. They were the ones signing your paychecks and mine. My paychecks were very small. Eventually, I was part of the Toronto Star on the blogging frontier. They wanted to explore and experiment. That was this website Toronto Mike remembers.

Yeah, sorry, guys. I just got back from my bike ride. What's going on here? Paved. Paved. P-A-V-E-D. I read it. What a weird name.

Was Better Living Center before or after that? That was like the demonstration of what I wanted to do. So I enjoyed. So I'm a blogging guy, and I like blogs. I still do. And I subscribe to your RSS feeds. That's where I first kind of read you. It wasn't so much iWeekly for me.

It's Better Living Center, and then this Toronto Star endeavor. The Toronto Star is backing a blogger. And I got to be that guy. And I was interested in what you wrote. That's why you're here right now. You might have been the only person in town who paid any attention to what I did. Probably. You know what?

The last time I talked to Dave Bookman, I went on his show on CFNY to talk a little bit about what I was up to with paved.ca. And then back to iWeekly for a kind of encore. I had ideas about the future there. But again, I was not in a position where anyone was going to pay so much attention to me that what I thought about anything was going to matter. They were still in the process of having to deal with the fact that they had all this infrastructure invested in creating a newspaper, and it became increasingly apparent that this business isn't what it used to be. And we get to the point where they had to sell the Toronto Star. Two rich guys step in.

Jordan Bitov, whose family is well-known from the Canadian catering business, and that segued into sports. And brought in the Raptors. Brought in the Raptors. Had a piece of the Sky Dome, specifically with the concession stands and the restaurants and the Hard Rock Cafe.

Okay, so Jordan Bittoff. And another guy named Paul Rivett, who would work with Fairfax, the investment firm. Okay. And were presented with these two gentlemen, 50-something BFFs. Okay. Fresh-faced saviors of the newspaper industry. Okay, fresh-faced saviors of the newspaper industry. These guys are joined at the hip with their vision of what they want to see with the Toronto Star.

For $60 million, they took it off the hands of the original ownership structure. Star Touch and then the pandemic and all sorts of other disastrous investments kind of left them with nothing, with no choice but to sell. They even raised the price a bit, sweetened it. They had a rival bidder. They sold off something called Vertical Scope.

They ended up instantly making three times the money that they paid for the Toronto Star. It's like if you bought a desk and there was three times the money you paid for the desk inside of the desk. That's what happened with the Toronto Star. But here we are, September 2022. Word gets out that, in fact, these two co-owners of the Toronto Star have lost patience with one another. And both these guys have locked horns. They can no longer get along. They can no longer work together to the point where they wanted to see each other in court and decide what the future of this ownership structure would be.

And in the reports of their respective demands, it's hard to tell who is on which side. demands, it's hard to tell who is on which side. Which guy is the protector of journalistic integrity? And which one has just gotten fed up with losing a lot of money? And which one is sports gambling all the time? Let's make it a sports gambling paper. And based on what I've read, I can't really figure out which one is on which side. It seems like Bitov is the one who has gotten very passionate about journalism, who sees himself as a guardian of the newspaper. But Paul Revet is, in fact, the one who was seeking an injunction that he did not want Bitov to have license to get rid of very specific people.

There was even a list of names. He was one of those names. So here he is trying to create a situation where either he hands the paper over to Jordan Bitov or Paul Revet gets to take it as a result and everybody was standing by waiting for

the trial of the century. Which one of these 50-something billionaires would prevail and emerge with ownership of the Toronto Star? Very quickly after it was heard in the court, they came to a resolution, you guys will figure this out privately for now. And so this has all gone behind closed doors, and we're going to have to wait and see

what happens, which vision for the Toronto Star will prevail. Part of the dilemma here is the fact that they were standing by waiting for the government to bail the newspapers out. You guys are hepped to this. They're waiting for the Online News Act to be passed. And I think that was part of their gamble. They've lost patience on that front there. Stay tuned for more excitement from One Young Street. If it's as exciting as that last 20 minutes, I don't think my heart can take it. I'll be quite honest with you.

That was intense. That was awesome. Palma Pasta. Go to palmapasta.com. Four locations in Mississauga and Oakville. Delicious lasagna. Delicious Italian food. Great supporters of this podcast.

They fuel the real talk here. So if you're going to drink some Great Lakes, you got to eat some Palma Pasta. Here's some New York groove as we talk Roz Weston's book. I'm back. Back in the New York groove. I'm back. Back in the New York groove. book. VP, how's your beer? How's that Great Lakes taste?

It is empty. It was delicious. Do you want me to get you another one? I mean, if you're going that way. No, there's lengthy periods of time where I can just disappear, so don't worry. Mr. Wiseblood, I will get you one. Do you want an ale? Do you want a lager? Do you want an IPA?

I'll do a lager again. If there's lager, yeah, okay. Mark. Yeah, bartender. What's my order? I'll have what he's having. There's an IPA here. Let's

turn the channel for a moment. I'm going to slip away and get a beer for the VP in a minute. On the mic. That's a burst for Mark Wiseblood from 1236. 1236.ca. Sign up for that newsletter. It's going to be something. We just don't know what yet.

Okay. And by the way, I got the URL to redirect after our last episode. I get results. I'm like Peter Silverman. Watch it, buddy. You do run Toronto Mike Digital Services. Okay, where do we begin? You've built up the suspense for an hour.

My review of A Little Bit Broken by Roz Weston. Can you make it as thorough as your review of the two owners of the tour star aren't getting along and need to figure it out? Make it as thorough as that. This book, I'm holding it in my hand. You got it from the library. What's your branch?

Is that too private to ask you? What's your local branch of the library? I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours. If you don't want to game the system, you can get books delivered to any library you want. I know. Which is your local branch you go to to pick up those books? Let's keep that confidential. I will declare. I might be changing my

branch soon. Wow. You're going to move south where all the cool kids are? I got Mimico VP here. I go to the new Toronto branch of the library. I'm there often. You know the Witchwood Library, which factored in the Scott Pilgrim movie?

Witchwood? Witchwood at Bathurst and St. Clair. Of course. That place had turned into a real dump, but they spent a few years renovating the place, if you're familiar with it at all. That's part of John Tory's Toronto. He's big on that.

Okay, this book is called Little Bit Broken. It's a memoir. It was written by... A Little Bit Broken. Oh my God, it's covered by the library. These boons. Okay, A Little Bit Broken, a memoir. This is by Roz Weston, who's an FOTM,

and he's currently the morning show host at Roz and Mocha on Kiss 92.5. And across the country. I mean, it's not just Toronto. I forget those things. Thank you for telling me. I've got to rename this podcast. Canada Mike. Let's get into it, Wise Blood.

What did you think of the book? And then Tyler and I will question. Okay, New York Groove by Ace Frehley of Kiss. The defining moment in Roz Weston's life as he talks about how this was the first LP record that he ever purchased in his

life. He was seduced by the cover of the Spaceman, Ace Frehley, from the Kiss solo albums. He doesn't specify whether he bought it from a cutout bin. You might recall when those Kiss solo albums. He doesn't specify whether he bought it from a cutout bin. You might recall when those Kiss solo albums originally came out. That was

one of those infamous albums from 1978 that what would they say? Shipped gold and returned platinum. I think that was a saying. And so for years you could get his solo albums on the cheap.

It was the sighting of the Ace Frehley solo album that set Roz Weston on his path of rock and roll debauchery, which he chronicles in this book. From growing up in the shadow of the old hide house in Acton, Ontario. It's worth the drive. Navigating his way through adolescent life.

Writes about his various angsty experiences. Being a small town Ontario teenager with big dreams of stardom that eventually take him to Humber College to study radio broadcasting and an internship with the Howard Stern Show. And I always knew that Roz had this experience. I'm not sure exactly how. I think at one point he even did some shifts

on Q107 at the time that they brought Howard Stern on there. Just interject before you continue. There's actually a full episode

of Toronto Mic'd featuring Roz Weston in which he goes into great detail on all this stuff with Howard Stern, but please continue. But I don't think

he ever clarified exactly what his experience was like there. He moves to New York. He gets Humber College to agree to give him a course credit because in order to do slave labor for Howard Stern New York City, this is in 1994. This is the original peak of the Howard Stern Show after his private parts book came out,

generating hundreds of millions of dollars for Infinity Broadcasting, but still relying on young volunteers to enlist for the Howard Stern Show and be characters on the air. I remember when Roz was on Toronto Mic, he talked about how the fact that he was one of the new crop of interns, that Howard would bring them on the air to introduce themselves, and he was instantly overshadowed by a guy named Gay Rich who became a character on The Howard Stern Show.

This is a period of time that Howard himself would like to have erased from history where there was a lot of mirth and merriment around the fact that for the first time in the history of the Howard Stern Show, they had a homosexual working in the building there. And you guys listened to vintage Howard Stern, and you could imagine that a lot of the things that Howard and the crew had to say would get him canceled in the media climate of today.

And so they milked that gay rich thing for all it was worth, and Roz Weston was never spoken of on The Howard Stern Show ever again. And here in this book, he details what he did all that time during his internship, kind of a back office drudgery job where it'd come in every morning and he would work on the paperback version of the private parts book, whatever he was doing, transcribing interviews, some sort of stenography, as he admits in there, nothing glamorous at all. Is he thanked in the book?

Like when that book comes out at the end, does it say, thank you, Roz? Well, here's the thing. Howard Stern is one of very few associates that Roz mentions by name. And so what we've got here is one of those memoirs where you're left to do a lot of guessing about who exactly he's talking about. And he gets into some length about how the Howard Stern internship, you could imagine having that on his resume, that was worth a whole lot more in Toronto. In the mid-1990s, if you said, I was an intern working for free

on the Howard Stern Show, I think that would get you a job interview absolutely anywhere in the Toronto media. And even though a lot of this book gets into his personal anxiety, I don't know, body dysmorphia, whatever he was going through, childhood trauma, I mean, without all this stuff to talk about, I don't know how they would have filled, what is this? What's a page count?

320 pages of Ross Weston's book would not have been possible without him just rambling on about everything that's ever gone wrong in his life. He should be thankful that I was willing to spend this much time with him. Because any one of us, anybody listening to this, could just start sp you know, start spouting out like random anecdotes from our childhood. Everything we've ever gone through and expect somebody to be

an audience for this and somehow start thinking about how this contributed to the totality of your current existence. But there's no denying the fact that Roz, the Roz and Mocha radio show, is a top performing broadcast, pop radio for,

for Rogers media. They, they landed on something here, but there had to be a climb. Something had to happen for him to get there. And that includes talking about him working for someone who is not mentioned by name, a Toronto broadcaster named Arlene Bynum. Are you guys familiar with Arlene Bynum?

Yeah, I've heard her. She did fill-in work on 640. I've heard her. She had a TV show for a little while, too. Yeah. Originally on CHFI. When they had to do on these FM radio stations talk shows, they would have Chronicle on CHFI.

This is the 1990s. And Arlene Bynum would be the host. A bit of a slow talker, right? Like a Ken Dryden style. Kind of a smiley voice. She was always very happy to be here. You've got to listen at three times the speed, right? Perhaps a little condescending to the audience.

Like, I'm a little smarter than any of you. And that's why I'm sitting here. You do a good Arlene Bynum the way that Blair Packham does a good Weissbauer. Doing these interviews with all these movie stars while you're sitting there working at your office job forced to listen to me. I believe based on the way that Ross describes it,

again, I haven't annotated every page of this book, the reason he came to prominence in the life of Arlene Bynum is he was the only person who was willing to put up with her bullshit let me quote some of his own words Ross Weston back then though Russ Weston whoa wait slow down slow down you're telling me Ross is a Russ? Not Ross, by the way. Before I would call him Ross. No, it's Russ. I verified this by going to YouTube, looking up the credits on an Arlene Bynum TV show. Okay, so Arlene Bynum, she went from CHFI, from Rogers Media, to do her interviews on television, on Global.

They had a specialty channel called Prime, which was supposed to be for senior citizens. Just can-con,Con CRTC obligation programming. That was their specialty. She was doing the job. I think somewhere in here, somewhere in here, Ross describes it like a low rent version of Larry King Live. That's a show that he was appointed the producer for. That's a show that he was appointed the producer for. In Roz Weston's own words,

every day was a demoralizing indoctrination. Fully comply or you were dead to her. I sat with her for hours at the hairdresser three days a week just to keep her company because her stylist had long gotten sick of her shit and no longer talked to her. She'd go on about how everyone was out to get her and how everyone was out to get us. How, quote, the world was Walmart, unquote.

What did I say about her condescending attitude there? Verified here in this book. And she was sick of having to dumb things down for the masses. That's how I feel. Each week she told me who I needed to hate and how we were in this together because everybody was coming for our heads.

It was us against the world. She was paranoid and irrational. Two little elves is what she used to call us. And whether I thought I deserved it or not, I was now 24 years old. Okay, this is around based on his birthday. Doesn't lie about his age here. I'll give him it or not. I was now 24 years old. Okay, this is around based on his birthday. He doesn't lie about his age here. I'll give him credit for that.

1998. I was making $75,000 a year. Not bad, huh? For a guy who a couple years earlier was doing slave labor for Howard Stern, sleeping on a roach-infested mattress in New York City. Arlene Bynum decides that he is a chosen one, anointed to be her producer, $75,000 a year, a salary that she negotiated for him. Now, what is your verdict, gentlemen? Do you think Ross Weston is an ingrate? He doesn't even mention this woman by name, okay?

But, I mean, there's no question. I verified it. I went to YouTube. I saw producer of the Arlene Bynum show, Ross Weston. I don't believe that is a different guy doing a low-rent knockoff of Larry King Live on Canadian TV. Would you not be more grateful if you had a mentor like that? Truth be known, I've known he's a Russ for a long time, but when someone says

that this is their name, I go by their name they give themselves. Ross was a Russ, now he's a Ross. I would love to have Arlene Bynum on Toronto Mike to get her to review this book. This sounds like it's explosive, but again, the not naming her, that's a lawyer thing, right? You don't want to get her to review this book. This sounds like it's explosive. But again, they're not naming her. That's a lawyer thing, right?

Like you don't want to have her come at you with some kind of a libel notice or something, right? But my understanding through Arlene Bynum is that Russ already had a relationship then with Rogers Media, Rogers Radio, and that he was in the background of the original Kiss 92.5 with Mad Dog and Darren Jones, Mad Dog

and Billy. Are they mentioned in that book? Remember that station? I don't think they get a shout out. I don't think they're given any credit. I don't think they're mentioned by name. And so here's a guy who is talking much like, I don't know, every other one of Toronto Mike guests about what a hard time he had trying to make it in the media when this is the this is

the gig that he signed up for and i think he was already with david alter he was already in the zone okay he writes about how he he was connected with global tv at a budget he he wanted to do a show at the playboy mansion uh his wish was their command they gave him a budget i don't know something something went awry he's complaining about what happened there. But I think within a relatively short period of time, Ross Weston made a lot of contacts. I don't think it was a fluke that we know who he is today.

Hey, can I do a disclosure here? Hold on, real quick. I don't think it's an accident that he has this double-day book deal. Just going to interject real quickly to say that Ross Weston, who's been on Toronto Mic'd, and we did it in this very basement. It's episode 120. If you want to pause and go back and listen to episode 120 of Toronto

Mic'd. Well you don't want to go back yet. I've still got more things to say about it. They'll come back. Now okay. Yes and I want to hear more about this book but I'll just say in my brief 90 minutes. I've spent 90 minutes with this man in person. He was extremely pleasant. Like I enjoyed the conversation. Extremely pleasant. Extremely tall. Well yeah he's 6'5 I think. was extremely pleasant. Like, I enjoyed the conversation. Extremely pleasant. Extremely

tall. Oh yeah, he's 6'5", I think. And extremely handsome. You know what? He is very, yeah, that's right. So doors, and I know this from experience, okay? Doors fly open for handsome guys. Just like they fly open for beautiful people, okay? So he's such a charismatic character

who wants to read a 320-page book about how fucked up he is well you did and i know leave a fumka did and i'm uh please continue with your review i just wanted to point out that i liked my experience with him and one last little thing we did have a uh we bonded over our mutual love of custom who passed away last year we heard him on the ridley funeral home segment last year but uh i remember we had a really nice exchange when i reported to him that custom had passed away and so all my experiences with ross weston who did record something for episode 1000 by the way so it's not that long since he's been on have been extremely positive continue mark wide what am i saying anything bad about the guy vp how am i doing here you're doing

great and if i may if i may before um i think we found a new revenue stream here and that's audiobook uh sort of annotated audiobooks with 1236 oh like pop-up video yeah i think if you get wiseblood's voice i think there's good money in that 1236 reading so when you're in the voice of ross weston's talking about this woman he worked with who was horrible or whatever, you hear Mark Wiseblood's voice go, he's talking about Arlene Bynum. Okay, speaking about

his charismatic qualities. Sure. As a Humber College student, one of the things he writes about is getting hooked on the telepersonal ads that he would find in the back of Now magazine and how he was in a state of mind where late into the night he would be working the phones, meeting a lot of cougars in downtown Toronto, getting getting wined and dined by older women in exchange for sexual favors. He'd make a good gigolo. Based on what he's talking about in this book,

there are a lot of older women in Toronto, I don't know, now they might even be in their 70s or 80s, who have spent the night with Russ Weston. They see his face on all these billboards, and they say, I got it on with that guy. And I don't think if you spent intimate time with Roz, you would ever forget it. It would just live with your memory forever. And it seemed like at the time he had no shame.

I mean, he chalks it up to youthful indiscretion. He wasn't doing anything wrong. All these women were consenting. He was along for the ride. He was enjoying these experiences. Maybe he became a more confident man as a result of using these telepersonal lines. Maybe this is an experience I missed out in my life,

but I can live vicariously reading about Roz. After his time working with Arlene Bynum, trying to do this show at the Playboy Mansion, I don't even understand what the point was except just hang out with Hugh Hefner and the girls next door. Do you need a point to hang out at the Playboy Mansion? Well, he managed to get some global TV's money

to get that experience. They called on Ross to do a show. You might even remember, it was on the Toronto One TV network called Last Call. And that was part of them trying to do this uh more youthful it seems so ancient history today because like how could you even think about broadcast tv as we're talking before with city tv and all of its like current obscurities right like

the whole idea that toronto won which faded really fast as a concept would like draw in this new younger viewership would be the new city to be in toronto was on there am i right yeah ben chin and sarika uh seagal who we talked about in the ridley funeral home memorial segment all right uh they were anchors and and chris mavridis was on this newscast future fota that they did well you've been saying that for seven years he calls me periodically and teases me of all the stories he's going to tell. Tell him I say hi. On Toronto One. So they had to do these,

their license stipulated they couldn't do newscasts, they had to do like alternative forms of information programming. So one of the shows was Last Call. I remember Billie Holiday, Amanda Dunn of Kiss 92.5. She was on there with Roz Weston.

Other cast of hangers on, I don't know, rejects from the Lofters reality show. Whatever could pass as an excuse. Jennifer Hedger. Unemployed cast members of Degrassi would make appearances on there, right? You could always get Joey Jeremiah to drop by. It could be a big event.

Maybe Corey Haim was still around, hanging out on this show. Wow. Whoever they could find. And it was Billy and Roz Weston. And I think I remember at the time that they were both part of Kiss 92.5. This is when the channel was fading away.

And Roz at the time said he got this break. There he was on Toronto One. He didn't know what he was doing. This whole TV thing was new to him. But the same producer, a guy named Zev Shalev from Toronto One, ended up in charge of Entertainment Tonight Canada. See?

One contact led to another. So in between all these stories of how Raw's is a little bit broken, what you have are the makings of, I think, what would be a pretty good eight-page pamphlet about how to make it in the Canadian media. And I think he played the game right. Be six foot five, be handsome.

He did a great job. Like one thing led to another, and then he got this ET Canada gig. Be charismatic. He was the main reporter, flying off to movie junkets everywhere, but again, he writes about how he couldn't bear to watch himself on TV, like how he was going through all these syndromes.

We've got VP of Sales here making a face. Like any excuse, I don't know. That was private. Look, I've heard more trivial anxieties on the Dana Levinson podcast. What counts for a problem in the life of a relatively successful media personality? I guess when you give people a platform to complain about everything that they've been through, you tell Ross Weston, you know, give me a 320-page book about everything that's

gone wrong in your life, he will find ways to complain about the fact that he was working as a reporter, being flown back and forth to Hollywood to do like these six-minute junket interviews for Entertainment Tonight Canada. Do you think there's anybody out there who would see Roz Wesson on TV and think, this guy's having a hard time. This guy lives a tough life. He can't deal with anything at all. But then you've got in the backdrop, like a starter marriage that didn't work out, and then he met another younger woman, and at the time she was, I don't know, a decade younger than him,

so she was around 21. She still is, by the way. She was 31. Yeah, but as you get older, it all averages out. And we get to the culmination of the book, where, again, one contact led to another. A lot of status climbing here. I don't think it was a fluke that Ross got

called back to Kiss 92.5. He already had a relationship with the radio station. As far as I'm concerned, he was a perfect morning man. He was the guy for the gig. He was better known because he had been on Entertainment Tonight. I think he just instantly eased into that role of doing this morning radio drive

and Rogers reclaiming the old Top 40 radio station. We've talked about here about how they had a detour into Jack FM, which was a disaster for about six years. They brought on Roz Weston and Mocha Frapp, not his real name, who also had a history with the radio station. And from what I recall in this book,

he makes it out to be like this serendipitous thing, but I think at the time, the program director, Julie Adam, who recently got a tap on the shoulder, not working there anymore from her executive role,

Rogers Media, I think she knew exactly who these guys were. I don't think this was a fluke. I don't think they had to audition for anything. I think they were anointed. They were appointed. They were ready to go. They knew the audience.

They knew the concept. And at the time, it was essentially doing contemporary hit radio for the very same cougar congregation that Raw's had experience meeting, calling them up on the night exchange. I think he was a perfect candidate to be the kind of guy who would do this pop radio

style, but also aim at an older demographic. Into the 2010s, the approach for these radio stations is this is not going to be about the teenage girls anymore. We'll get the teenage girls by appealing to their moms, and we'll get this multi-generational listening going on there. There's been a lot of radio stations that have seen success as a result,

including 104.5 Chum in Toronto and Kiss 92.5. I pulled a clip from the early days of the Ross and Mocha radio show. It was them doing a song parody just to give you a hint of where things started for Ross and Mocha on the radio. Yeah, yeah. on the cover of Now Magazine, but I are the Wonderland. I went on the drop zone, courtside at the Raptors or chilling at the BMO. Parked on the DVP, off-white Lexus. I traded for my buddy for a pair of Leafs tickets. I'm Jewish in Eglinton. I will do a Seda. Why

does the CN Tower now look like a lightsaber? Show it up to Cheryl Hickey. She's still on my TV. Rocking wheels of Parmesan down in Little Italy. Up late in Chinatown. I swear it never shuts down. Tell by my attitude that I most definitely turn. Come on home.

Concrete jungle where all your dreams go. There's nothing you can't do. It's now in the T-Dots. Queen Street West will make you feel brand new. I think I managed to almost get Toronto Mike to walk off his own show by introducing this song into the mix. But it's one I remember from the early days of Ross and Mocha on Kiss 92.5. And I think if they continued in this vein, the radio show would not be around anymore. Like, this is a relic of a different era.

When you would have morning radio DJs doing song parodies. Jesse and Gene. Toronto Mike also very fond of the Blue Jays albums. Variety Village. Different PJs recording their own songs. It's no snow removal machine, I'll tell you that. Shout out to Freddie P. Here's one right here. So, Do It Again

Blue Jays. Tom Cheek and Jerry Howarth did that one. Yeah, I got them all here. There's Sunny Jays by Fred Patterson and the 102 Crew. Blue Jays all the way. Yeah, I love these things. But of the era.

I like them now. I like them ironically. Like nostalgic. This is terrible. VP of sales. Okay. Okay, so Empire State of Mind, right? Well, it's T. State of mind, yes.

T. State of mind. Shout out to Jay-Z. Absolutely. And if Razumoka continued in this vein, they would no longer be on the air. But I think they found the level. I think they figured out who the audience was for this show. In Rogers Media, they became corporate radio stars of Rogers.

And ultimately, Ross Weston became Canada's answer to Howard Stern. He is a nationally syndicated radio personality. I'm not saying it's the same style of programming, but I don't know. He's similarly tall, and he manages to appeal to a wide enough demographic that they've put the Ross and Mocha Show on these stations across the country. The book that we radio geeks wanted to read was how the Ross and Mocha Show actually became a success, right?

Like, what are you getting into 320 pages about how Ross Weston was affected by every relationship that he ever had in his life, or how he was bullied back in high school, or what it was like growing up in Acton with big dreams of volunteering for the Howard Stern Show in New York City. I could have gone for a few more chapters of learning about the success of Roz and Mocha on the radio. Is it up to Toronto Mike to extract these stories? Because they're certainly not in the book. Episode 120, buddy.

I don't know if we have to wait for a sequel. So as far as his professional journey is concerned, it kind of ends by the fact that he met with Mocha.

They paired up on the Toronto Airwaves, eventually National. They got Maury Sherman in there. He gets a little condescending shout out like a footnote.

Planet Maury. Are you familiar with Maury? He's a longtime producer of the show.ending shout-out, like a footnote, Planet Maury. Are you familiar with Maury? He's a longtime producer of the show. Yeah, I think he's a fan of the show. I think he flirted with coming on at some point. But you don't really get into the details of what happened after Roz Weston reached the top. There's really no follow-through

on what that experience was like to run a successful morning radio show in Toronto. Instead, the book ends on an entirely different note. VP of Sales seemed hap to what was happening here. And it's Ross Weston putting out a video on YouTube about that his ulterior motive in writing an entire memoir was so that he could finally propose marriage to the mother of his child.

This kid is like 12 years old. Tyler, you watched the video? I can't believe you did this homework assignment without me telling you in advance. Tyler, so this video, he gives away the ending of the book, right? I saw the tweet. I didn't actually click the video yet.

He's like, okay, so the ending of the book, of course, is that he proposes to his girlfriend at the end of the book, right? I saw the tweet. I didn't actually click the video yet, but he's like, okay, so the ending of the book, of course, is that he proposes to his girlfriend at the end of this book. Yeah. Okay, so I don't know. Has it compelled you? I mean, he overcomes his fear of commitment. I guess that's the whole point. And the fact that initially, maybe this was not a relationship that

he was planning to have, but it turned out that way. You know, they have a wonderful daughter. This is not necessarily a culture that I understand. Why is a guy agitated about proposing marriage to a woman that he's lived with for like 15 years? This way, you guys might have to help me here. Is this something that people genuinely get anxious about?

Or are we portraying the idea that that ross weston lived with this woman lived with this child all this time supporting them on his on his two big canadian media salaries and yet he couldn't actually put a ring on it until september of 2022 well i don't know that my personal feelings which is very subjective here i would say don't bother like it's working for you not to have that unnecessary legal document. Just keep on rocking in the free world. But I want to know

if it doesn't work out in the end that's when they're going to have to explain to the listenership. So tell me this though. I need to put the bow on this so I can transition

to the Ridley Funeral Home memorial segment and then it's a parent teacher curriculum night at my kids' schools. I don't have all day. But would you recommend somebody pick up a copy of this

Roz Weston memoir and read it? I would recommend getting to know a little bit about Roz. I would recommend inviting him on Toronto Mike and naming names rather than all these pronouns. I'm not so sure about that because you can sort of, look, I paid enough attention to the media. I know who he's talking about here. I figured out the whole Arlene Bynum business.

Again, I don't know if it's a legal thing or whatever. It's definitely a legal thing. The past hour of Toronto Mike, will that hinder my chances of getting Roz Weston to return to Toronto Mike? Like when he listens to this, he can say, oh look, Mike just shit all over my book for the last hour. Yeah, but I don't think that's what happened here.

I haven't read it, Roz. Okay, but even reading this self-indulgent nonsense in the form of a book, which, you know, you got to admit, this is a way of monetizing your content. How many morning radio DJs have ever written books? Howard Stern, Private Parts, Miss America, Howard Stern Comes Again. But, I mean, the whole idea of a mass marketed book by a Canadian top 40 radio morning man. Yeah, he wrote a fucking book.

He wrote a book. I've never written a book. But I want footnotes. I want him to name names. Here's a challenge. Roz Weston, get in touch with Toronto Mike. I want to hear what you left out of these pages, and I want you to elaborate on exactly what happened,

your experiences with certain personalities, and to clarify exactly which of these relationships worked for you. I don't get the sense in reading A Little Bit Broken that this guy actually had a hard time doing anything at all. Right? And if it was a struggle for him to get to the top, I

don't think it was any different than anything anybody else have experienced out there. We've all had our ups and downs. But if you want to get a glimpse, without naming names, about what it takes to be somebody who gets to command the airwaves every single morning, then, yeah, I recommend taking

Roz Weston's A Little Bit Broken, just like me, out of the library. Learn how to plan invest and live smarter with the raymond james the advantaged investor podcast featuring insights from leading professionals the advantaged investor provides valuable perspective for canadian investors who want to remain knowledgeable, informed, and focused on long-term success. Chris Cooksey hosts these awesome episodes. And if you want to stay in the know, subscribe to The Advantaged Investor. I just posted an episode on RESPs on torontomike.com. That's the most recent episode of the Advantage Investor Podcast from Raymond James Canada.

Speaking of great podcasts, I just recorded yesterday with Brad Jones from Ridley Funeral Home. And we talked about the community that we live in, Tyler. And we talked about shopping local

and with fiercely independent local vendors like Great Lakes Brewery and Palma Pasta. Check that out. Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home. Proud sponsors of this memorial segment

of Toronto Maked. I had no idea how much I'd need her My life has been so settled and she's the reason Just one word from her and my troubles are long gone Ooh, where'd I get it all? She's just a girl She's a boy She's just a girl She's a boy Jesus, bye! In Spain, my love A beautiful being, so sad and so strong You gave me a story, you gave me a song

When he played his guitar, she would weep My love So one rainy day, the spirit took flight She made him a cap full of magic And I, for his birthday, to rule a great stage Performed till old age, my love And why did you never arrive? Before you left I saw tears in your eye

And your mama just told me You, my love Estaba en los dos y yo Mark, every month you give me a list of those we've lost the previous month and we load them up to pay our respects and pay homage to these people because this is the Ridley Funeral Home Memorial segment. I've added this gentleman to the list because I knew him. Like, we weren't hanging out, but I knew him for a variety of reasons. I'll explain.

But Elias Theodoro, Canadian mixed martial artist. He was in the UFC, the middleweight division. He was ranked number 13 when he left UFC. But this gentleman, who I've spoken to as recently as December 2020, I put him on a bunch of podcasts I produce. He was on Heart to Heart. He was on Humble and Fred a few times. But he succumbed to cancer at the young age of 34 years old. This happened in

September 2022. And he didn't tell those, he didn't tell many. He told maybe those in his immediate family, but I know Jess Moran, who's become a good friend. She was very close with Elias and was representing him from a PR perspective, and she had no idea he was sick. So I just wanted to open things up by talking about Elias Theodoro, only 34 years old. Did you know he got a New York Times obituary, even? Well, I should not bury the lead here, that he's the first professional athlete

to receive a therapeutic use exemption for cannabis in North America. He got that in January 2020. So he was allowed to fight with cannabis in his bloodstream. And that sort of made many aware of his endeavors. But he was a great fighter. But I'll just say because of my experiences with him, always via Zoom, but with Dr. Hart and Humble and Fred and I think even Chef Jordan Wagman,

all my experiences with him, he was just a sweet guy. He's from the GTA and he's just really pleasant and humble. Very Canadian, if you will. Great loss. Very young. And you know what else

he did something none of us can lay claim to he was on the cover of 11 different Harlequin romance novels that's a mind blow the quote from

in the New York Times obit that he joked he was your mom's favorite romance cover and your son's favorite fighter good looking guy there he was favorite romance cover, and your son's favorite fighter. Good-looking guy.

There he was. Roz Weston-esque in his handsomeness. Yeah, picking up the baton from Fabio, who was always the name that came to mind when it came to fame based on the cover of these romance novels. Age 34! That really sucks! Now I seen places and faces And things you ain't never thought about thinking

If you ain't peeped then you must be drinking And smoking Pretending that you're loking but you're broken Let me get you open Now Lil Timmy got his diploma And Lil Jimmy got life And Tamika around the corner Just took her person off the pipe The other homie shot the other homie

And ran off with his money And when the other homies heard about it They thought that it was funny But who's the dummy? Cause now you done lost the hustler A down ass brother done been replaced by a bustler And though I got love for you I know I can't trust you Cause my crew is rolling hummers And your crew is rolling dusters And just because of that you act like you don't like a brother no more I guess that's just the way it go I ain't trust you, cause my crew is rolling hummers and your crew is rolling dusters And just because of that you act like you don't like a brother no more I guess that's just the way it go, I ain't tryna preach I believe I can reach, but your mind ain't prepared

I'll see you when you get there I'll see you when you get there When you ever get there See you when you get there I'll see you when you get there I'll see you when you get there If you ever get there See you when you get there More temptation than faith, I guess we're living for the day

I seen a man get swept off his feet, my boy With an AK, the situation's so twisted Everybody getting lifted I'm just trying to take care of my kids and handle my business Yeah, it's way too serious, so you gotta pay close attention So you don't get caught sipping when they come to do all the kidding Life is a big game, so you gotta play it with a big heart Some of us gotta run a little faster, cause we gotta lay the score

But I'll be a fool to surrender when I know I can be a contender If everybody's a sinner, then everybody can be a winner No matter your rag color, deep down we all brothers And regardless of the time, somebody up there still loves us, I'm a scuffle and struggle until I'm breathless and weak, I done strived my whole life to make it to the mountain peak always keep reaching, sure to grab on

to something, I'll be there when you get there waiting with the soundstrung I'll see you Well, I wasn't happy to learn about the life and death of Elias Theodoru, but you know, usually I bring you a bunch of Toronto, Ontario, Canadian obituaries to start off the Ridley Funeral Home Memorial segment. We don't have very many of those this month.

I think only a couple others. And so we're resorting to my contribution here, starting off with the Canadian connection being people that Stu Stone had a relationship with. And as you recently had an episode with Toast, I know you were wondering. You had just heard that Coolio had died. Right. And you bet on the fact that Stu had a connection with Coolio, and you were right. I had a connection with Coolio, and you were right.

He just seemed like a stew type that he would have come across in his many travels, much like George Lucas and Bob Saget. Coolio artist Leon Ivey Jr. Wait, wait, wait. Coolio's not his real name either? He died September 28th at age 59. Too young. And beyond having something to do with Stu Stone,

I can't say I even knew what it was. Was it one of these reality show projects? Something where there was some stew stone adjacent participation. What we know Coolio for most of all, all the tributes central to everything everybody remembered about Coolio was the song Gangsta's Paradise. Number one hit song. That won an Oscar, right? Copious sample of Stevie Wonder.

Yeah, big fat Stevie Wonder sample in that one. Popper's Paradise, right? That was the Wonder song? Pastime Paradise. Pastime, right. Popper in Paradise is Frozen Ghost. Yeah, Frozen Ghost, right? I am a popper in paradise.

As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Coolio's best known line, which came in handy when people were recalling his inspiration when he died. I mean, this guy was originally like a party rapper.

Fantastic Voyage. Right, that's the first Coolio song I ever heard was Fantastic Voyage. And the other one was one, two, three, 4, Something New. And See You When You Get There, another song that is appropriate for a shout-out to Ridley Funeral Home. Packabell's Cannon was a song he sampled.

They're very much modeled after the Stevie Wonder thing in Gangsta's Paradise. FOTM Kevin Shea. Yes. Someone who spent a lot of time as a promo man in the music industry before he pivoted to being a hockey author, working with the Hockey Hall of Fame.

A great anecdote, courtesy of Kevin Shea on Facebook. One of the characters that Kevin Shea spent a lot of time with, Weird Al Yankovic. And Weird Al Yankovic, forever embedded with Coolio because of the Weird Al parody,

Amish Paradise. And the controversy that ensued, right? Weird Al very fastidious about seeking permission from the subjects of his parodies, right? Going all the way back to My Bologna. Why there's no Prince parodies. And he had thought he had permission from Coolio to turn Gangsta's Paradise into Amish Paradise.

Well, it turns out that Coolio, I don't know whatever state of mind he was in, he might have been a little high that the word came down to Weird Al that Coolio had signed off on doing Amish Paradise. And then after it was released, after the Bad Hair Day album became a hit, legendary album cover with Weird Al with the Coolio hairstyle, with the dreadlocks sticking up. There you had Coolio accusing Weird Al of cultural appropriation,

maybe being a little bit racist in taking this very sincere song from the soundtrack to Dangerous Minds and turning it to the subject of mirth and merriment, making fun of the Amish. And perhaps it was implied that Coolio wanted to do some damage to Weird Al, break a few bones. Kevin Shea's story was that Weird Al was on his plane ride to Toronto from Los Angeles to do the promotional rounds for Bad Hair Day, which included doing his periodic Much Music appearances, doing

the Owl Music special over there. This wasn't the episode where I had a cameo appearance. This was 1996. And Coolio was the kind of guy that if he was taking his seat in an airplane a few rows ahead of you, you would notice that it was Coolio sitting there, and Weird Al spent the entire flight from LAX to Toronto with his hoodie covering his head. Weird Al gets into town, he's doing his business around the city, and he's into one of his late night editing sessions at Much Music,

who happens to be shuffling through the halls with his big entourage coolio and weird al freaked out and responded by hiding under a desk spent an entire hour making sure that Coolio would not notice that he was in the building and confront him and possibly commit a homicide at the nation's music station. Managed to avert any such tragedy, and eventually Coolio made peace with Weird Allen, said somebody should have stopped me,

somebody should have told me that I was out of line in terms of condemning this parody that I was into the idea all along. I wish I had the right kind of manager that wouldn't get the word out and when Coolio passed away Weird Al had a tweet.

Did you notice Weird Al with Coolio? They were embracing, holding hands. They kissed and made up. Love to see it. Friends to the end. And so along with Gangsta's Paradise, we have Amish Paradise,

forever remembered in the legacy of Coolio. And yet, as the story goes, in order to produce this song, they had to give Stevie Wonder three quarters of the publishing. I'm not surprised. Any illusion that this guy got rich out of having this huge hit, I think there was a reason why you eventually saw Coolio doing a cooking show.

Not to mention whatever else Stu Stone was doing. There's a reason he crossed paths with Stu Stone on his way to the bottom. Stu! He only hangs with Stone on his way to the bottom. Stu! He only hangs with celebrities on the way out. Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home, father of six, artist Leon Ivey Jr., That's like talking about Brad Jones.

Coolio. Thank you. guitar solo Boy, you trouble, boy, you get Can't take the heat Send on home a hurricane Hitch it to your feet Take your trouble, what you get All you travel, boy, you get Hand down the cigarette There he goes Watch the worthy in the yard

Send on home a picture for Scott Watch the whirly rovers go Don't you know If you think of me you're not Send the man a lullaby Are you going far? Are you going far? Do you guys recognize a voice on this track?

Michael Stipe. VP, what's your guess? I was thinking Michael Stipe as well. All the way. Okay, well, this track, the jam from the Golden Palominos supergroup led by someone who died in September 2022 or sometime earlier this summer. It was one of these things where we belatedly found out that we had lost a guy named Anton Fear. And he was big on the art rock scene,

originally associated with the band Pear Ubu. And the Golden Palominos was the name of the unit that he was a frontman of as the drummer. And it underwent a whole bunch of different incarnations. As a result, he had an association with a whole bunch of musicians who went on to a lot bigger things.

Bob Mould from Husker Du. He was one of the people who Anton Feer was drumming for. I think that was the album Black Sheets of Rain. Matthew Sweet before Sick of Myself. Sick of myself when I look at you. Before he got into power pop, he was kind of an art rock guy.

Bill Laswell, John Zorn, Laurie Anderson. Sid Straw was a vocalist. He discovered Anton Feer had an association with them all. He died back in June of 2022. Sorry, he died in September 21st, 2022. That's it. Or no one was actually sure when he died because he had turned into one of these

obscure characters. I mean, he had left the music industry. Nobody could keep track of exactly where he was even though he had all these superstar associations. So one of those people that he worked with was Michael Stipe

outside of REM. I remember this jam from one of those albums that I had to buy on an import cassette. You were there, brother. Visions of Excess. And subsequently, when REM had their album Out of Time, the third single from that album, it was after Losing My Religion and Shining Happy People. They had a single where Mike Mills of R.E.M. Were you a VP and R.E.M. guy?

I was, yeah. So they had a song on that album that Mike Mills was a singer of. And these modern rock radio stations were not into the voice of Mike Mills. Modern Rock Radio Station were not into the voice of Mike Mills. And so it was a song from the Golden Palominos, Alive and Living Now, that became a hit on the Modern Rock charts. And that was the one charted hit that ever came out under the name of the Golden Palominos.

Anton Feer, just getting this right. Yes, he died September 21st, 2022, at age 66. An extremely influential drummer with the Lounge Lizards and the Feelys. Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home for Anton Feer. here. I finally found the nerve to say I'm gonna make a change in my life Starting here today I surrender all my love I never thought I could

I'm giving all my love away And there's only one reason that I would And baby, it's you The way you move, the way you talk, the way you say The way you move, the way you say The way you say Every morning you rise and open your eyes I just want to be. Next year, let's call this day our anniversary Jesse Powell is an R&B singer who died on September 13th at age 52.

I don't know if anyone knew the cause, but somebody has to give a shout-out to these Quiet Storm singers who, after a while, seemed a little generic. The names blurred together, but this song, You, by Jesse Powell, made it to number two on the Billboard R&B charts and a top-ten hit, number ten on the Billboard Hot 100. He also was the older brother of Trina and Tamara.

Deep cut here. They had a hit called My Love is the Shhh. Remember that one at all? Watch your mouth. We got Scott Turner on the line. He would be able to verify all these songs. I think it was mostly just me and him. When he brought us a

I'm Raven, I'm Raven based on that Mark Cohn walking in Memphis. I can't stop playing that thing. I love I'm Raven, I'm Raven. Thank you, Scott Turner. And so Jesse Powell, when he died, brought back memories of you from early 1999,

but into the 2000s, you did not manage to sustain the fame. Where else, at least in Toronto, are you going to hear an acknowledgement of Jesse Powell except the Ridley Funeral Home Memorial segment? of Jesse Powell, except the Ridley Funeral Home Memorial segment. Jesse Powell, dead September 13th, 2022,

at age 52. A one-hit wonder with you. Often to be most eloquent is to be silent. You're quite right. The film we've just seen has said it all. I think we should say that those nominated for the best performance by an actor are... Marlon Brando in The Godfather. Michael Caine in Sleuth. Laurence Olivier in Sleuth. Peter O'Toole in The Rfather. Michael Caine in Sleuth. Laurence Olivier in Sleuth.

Peter O'Toole in The Ruling Class. Paul Winfield in Sounder. The winner is Marlon Brando in The Godfather. Accepting the award for Marlon Brando and the Godfather, Miss Shashi Littlefeather. Hello.

My name is Shashi Littlefeather. I'm Apache, and I'm president of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee. I'm representing Marlon Brando this evening, and he has asked me to tell you in a very long speech, which I cannot share with you presently because of time, because of time, but I will be glad to share with the press afterwards that he very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award. And the reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry. Excuse me. And on television, in the future,

our hearts and our understandings will meet with love and generosity. Thank you on behalf of Marlon Brando. Okay, well, well before Will Smith and the slap, one of the more notorious moments in the history of the Academy Awards was Sashene Littlefeather accepting the Oscar on behalf of Marlon Brando, who declined the award, best actor for performing in The Godfather.

And there she was protesting against how Hollywood was portraying Native Americans. And you had some claps in there, some applause, but a little bit of booing out there, too. I think I heard John Wayne booing. It took until June 2022 for the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences to have a statement of apology to Sashene Littlefeather

for how she was treated on the Oscars stage 49 years after the fact. They read it at an event on September 17th, 2022. October 2nd, Sashene Littlefeather passed away. What do you think about this? Having read a memorial to her on torontomike.com. I'm shocked it took so long for that apology because, and I understand this is the Godfathers.

What is that? 72? What are we talking? 73? 72 movies? 73 Academy Awards. Godfather 2 is 74. Okay, so what took you so long?

Obviously, time, what is it? Aged like milk is the expression they'd use on Reddit. That reaction, the boos and the John Wayne types, aged like milk. So boo to the Academy for taking so long and apologizing to Ms. Littlefeather. You know, we had in a previous Ridley Funeral Home Memorial segment Buddy Holly's drummer,

and it was you, Toronto Mike, who reminded me that we have another Buddy Holly-related death. I just hit the hell of little things you say and do Make me want to be with you Rave on, it's a crazy feeling And I know it's got me reeling When you say I love you Rave on

The way you dance and hold me tight The way you kiss and say goodnight Rave on, it's a crazy feeling And I know it's got me reeling When you say I love you Ray Vaughn Well, Ray Vaughn, it's a crazy feeling And I know it's got me reeling

I'm so glad that you're revealing your love for me Rave on, rave on and tell me, tell me Not to be lonely, tell me You love me only, rave on Well, Ray Vaughn, it's a crazy feeling And I know it's got me reeling I'm so glad that you're revealing your love for me Ray Vaughn, Ray Vaave on and tell me, tell me. Not to be lonely, tell me.

You love me only, rave on to me. Yes, Sonny West, who died at age 85 on September 8th, 2022. Just last month, we talked about the drummer of Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Jerry Allison, died age 82. Some confusion on my part about the origins of a real wild child. I corrected you there. Well, yeah, you were right. You got me. We didn't have to issue a correction that it had Australian origins.

Right. And what do you think? The day the music died, I think it's really happening now. Yeah, they're all catching up to him. But Sonny West, let's point out, he's the co-writer of two of Buddy Holly's biggest hits. So we heard their Rave On, and

the other big Buddy Holly hit that he co-wrote? Oh boy! They seem to earn enough money off these songs. They didn't have to work for several decades. But eventually during the 2000s he made something of a comeback as

the Buddy Holly royalties kept on coming. You know, the 50s nostalgia that never seemed to go away. Although you gotta wonder now.s nostalgia that never seemed to go away. Although you got to wonder now, now these people are starting to die. We grew up inundated with the 1950s, right? In the shadow of happy days, American graffiti.

I mean, this was our childhood. Sha-na-na. Eventually we have to come to the point where nobody's going to remember the music of the 1950s anymore. This Elvis movie, I guess, might have been the last stand. Do you think that eventually the 50s will become hot again? That this 1950s style of music will have some kind of renaissance? Do you think we've seen the best of it come and gone?

Us three, we're all Gen X, okay? We all were raised with the 50s nostalgia jammed in our throat. So as we get older, we're all in our 40s and 50s, and at some point when we're up there, we'll have what I have for the 72 Summit Series, like that secondhand nostalgia. You look back fondly on something you weren't there for, that you weren't even alive for.

So I will say the 50s stuff, particularly with Elvis, and, you know, the last man standing, if you will, because he has not yet passed, and I think at some point soon we're probably going to be playing some great balls of fire on this program. But Jerry Lee Lewis is still with us. But most of those early rock and rollers

are long gone now. But I think our nostalgia for the 50s will last quite a bit longer. You added Maury Willis. I bring jams for these things. Listen, great jam for this. I can't wait to share this.

You get a line, I'll get a full, my honey. You get a line, I'll get a pull, my honey You'll get a line, I'll get a pull, my baby You'll get a line, I'll get a pull, line And wheel me down to the cordon, oh, well, oh, yeah Mm, sugar, baby, mine Mm, what you gonna do when you your chair gives out my little sweet thing? What you gonna do when your chair gives out my baby?

When you got no liquor, no chair, no shoe You lay across the bed with your head in the blue Well, oh yeah, sugar, baby, mine Take a hint I did add Mari Wills to the list because not only was he a great baseball player, he's the one who kind of brought back the whole stolen base strategy and revitalized stolen bases. But if you look at his career numbers, and I know Tyler is a fellow baseball fan, like hell of a career in baseball,

but this jam we're listening to right now, this is him. He moonlit, moonlit? He moonlighted as a singer. He would play live and record music, and this is him singing this jam. Did you know that BPSL?

I did not know that. Yeah. So I'm learning. First of all, great career. I mean, he had the stolen bass record. He had 104 stolen basses in 1962, which was a record. He was like a seven-time All-Star. He was the All-Star Game Most Valuable Player in 1962.

He won multiple gold gloves. He played the 14 years, and he had 20. The guy had a great, not a power hitter, but he had a great career, and he was a heck of a singer here, and I wanted to pay respect to a man who lived to be 89 years young. Well, you're teaching me something, too, because I couldn't even pronounce his name. Oh, yeah, you said Willis. Yeah, it's Wills.

But, man, if you can be... This is, to me, this is as impressive as Otani. Like, you know, this guy can hit, he can field, and he can sing, buddy. Woo! You know what I do in all these years of online writing and editing when I mispronounce somebody's name or spell it wrong?

I Google the mistake so that I can take comfort in the fact that other people have made that error too. So I am just here to report that other people talked about Maury Willis, who had died. What you talking about, Willis? September 19th, 2022. Thank you for your correction here. Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home. guitar solo Okay. Okay, I'm going to put VP of Sales on trial here

because he reminded me, are we giving a Ridley Fino home? Shout out to Kitten Natavidad. Natavidad. Part of the Russ Meyer repertory. Feliz Natavidad. It was his dad, her dad, right? That's right.

Women with exceptionally large bosoms. And I said to VP, was she in the movie Faster Pussycat Kill Kill? And he said, absolutely no, she was not. Oh my god. So we queued up Faster Pussycat in honor of... I have to fix this in post. This is unacceptable.

Natividad. But in fact, she was a star of movies made by her ex-boyfriend, a guy named Russ Meyer. And it was, in fact, after Faster Pussycat Kill Kill. When You Were Mine by Mitch Ryder, R-I-D-E-R, because she was in this music video from the early 1980s. Here's what Wikipedia is good for, giving us this instant research. It was a Prince cover version by Mitch Ryder. How we doing?

And she is in this music video of When You Were Mine, which then Cindy Lauper did a version of. Oh yeah, she's voluptuous. Okay, good to have this instant fact check

here. I have never seen this music video in my life. 1983, Mitch Ryder, When You Were Mine. Have you ever seen a movie made by Russ Meyer, young Mike? I've not. Is this part of your education? I've heard, obviously. Tyler Campbell seems familiar with this cinematic oeuvre.

We saw one last night. I did see one at the Bloor Cinema once. They did a Russ Meyer retrospective. Yeah, same with me. You know, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls? I originally saw that in Rep Theater, one of those in Toronto, at the time where it seemed like forbidden fruit. Perhaps I had not yet passed the age of majority

to see a restricted film in the province of Ontario, and I had to see this crucial pop culture artifact written by Roger Ebert, famously known. enough, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. But you would have seen Kitten Natividad in the movie Up! Exclamation point. Not to be confused with the Pixar film. And Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens, which was a... I'm going to run up for my kids and say,

guys, you're going to love this. Old man balloons. Someone definitely did that. And they're like, oh, they're balloons all right. Someone definitely did that at one point. She pivoted to pornographic productions in the 1980s, but she still interfaced with A-listers because she was a stripper at the

bachelor party of Sean Penn in 1985 before he got married to Madonna. And also she was in the movie The Wildlife with Chris Penn. Sean Penn. The late great Rest in Peace, Ridley Funeral Home.

And was in a movie with Stu Stone. The boys. You would have seen Kitten Natividad on The Gong Show. Hosted by Chuck Beres. Remember that one? Of course. Are you old enough to have seen The Gong Show in real time? I don't know if I saw the original

Gong Show, but I saw A Gong Show. The $1.98 Beauty Show hosted by Rip Taylor. Remember that at all? That was some real campy stuff. I only remember hearing about that when he passed away. Late 1970s, I'm pretty sure I saw that. Did not understand anything that was going on.

And there we had the life of Kitten Natividad, responsible for introducing many, many young men to a certain type of cinematic experience that they might not have had otherwise. Kitten Natividad died September 24th at age 74. Thank you. guitar solo Well, Portland, Oregon and Slogin Fizz If that ain't love, then tell me what is Uh-huh, uh-huh

Well, I lost my heart, it didn't take no time That ain't all, I lost my mind in Oregon In the booth in the corner with the lights down low I was moving in fast, she was taking it slow Oh, oh, oh, oh Well, I looked at him and caught him looking at me I knew right then we were playing free in the morning It's a good thing Loretta Lynn left this jam behind as part of her later discography.

It's a great fucking jam. Can I just say, what a great fucking jam this is. Because otherwise she would have been the kind of country singer I would have been on the line to Toronto Mike's mom to explain Loretta Lynn to me. Good luck. She only heard one artist ever, I think. So, and this is Kenny. VP of sales,

Loretta Lynn was listening to her music part of your parents' life? I mean, were you familiar with country music in the 1970s? Was it part of your heritage? A little bit. A little bit. I do remember Fifth City very well. Keep your hands off of my

man if you don't want to go to Fifth City. And that's where you learned about birth control, right? The pill. That's right. A coal miner's daughter. I remember when this movie was massive. That was in the theaters, 1980. Sure. Sissy Spacek.

Sissy Spacek. Huge film. Talking about the rags-to-riches story of Loretta Lynn, based on the story of her life. Hey, shout out to VP, who turned me on to that Cocaine and Rhinestones podcast, although I had a weird exchange with that guy on Twitter. Most people do. I don't know.

He didn't understand why we'd want to talk about Canadian country. And I'm like, that's like my jam, man. Shout out to Neil Young. Hey, so this, I just want to say, the Red and Lynn country, that's all fine and good. This Van Leer Rose project of Jack White is excellent. It's great. It should have been as big as the fucking Johnny Cash revival stuff. I think it was still pretty huge.

I mean, I remember when I first got into listening to a lot of adult alternative radio stations on the internet. This was a big track in that non-commercial public radio world with Jack White, who was definitely a bigger deal at the time. He's still pretty famous, and there he was, the person. But he's no Rick Rubin, apparently, because we didn't get anything else. He befriended her. Well, I mean, it was definitely on the edge, and I think that the mainstream acceptance of that kind of sound,

a lot more abrasive, I think, than the Johnny Cash comeback. But this goes all the way back to 2004, when Loretta Lynn was already seen as, you know, like a real elder stateswoman. Oh, sure. And she'd been hanging around 18 years later. It was on October 4th, 2022, that she died at age 90. So we're not closing with Loretta Lynn.

I can't believe it. Holy smokes. We have one more to go. Can you read my mind? Do you know what it is that you do to me? I don't know who you are. Just a friend from another star. Here I am, like a kid out of school, holding hands with a god. I'm a fool.

You look at me, quivering, like a little girl, shivering. You can see right through me. Can you read my mind? You can see right through me. Can you read my mind? I'm telling you, this month was curiously lighter on the Ridley Funeral Home Memorial segment items from Canada. But we might as well close with someone who died at age 88 and did get the Canadian Press treatment from David Friend of the Canadian press. He wrote an obituary for Douglas Kirkland of Fort Erie, Ontario, a photographer best known. He was 24 years old working for Look magazine,

and he photographed Marilyn Monroe, where she's like wrapped in a white sheet. Can you picture these photos? Even if you haven't seen them recently, where she's like wrapped in a white sheet. Can you picture these photos? Even if you haven't seen them recently, very iconic. This made his career that he had this portfolio of Marilyn behind him. And hearing in the background from the Superman the movie soundtrack, Margot Kidder, another one of his credits, was finding this unknown Canadian actress, photographing her that pictorial in Playboy

before a certain level of grooming would be more typical of these models photographed in these situations. Margot Kidder died in 2018. But in fact Douglas Kirkland, a great Canadian photographer, dead at 88.

I'm not exhausted, which means we came in under the wire. And you know I'm going to get nasty emails and notes like, where's the next hour? People want three hours of Mark Weisblatt once a month, so we need more people to die. Is that the deal? Send Steve Paikin to me, and I will explain to him the logic behind doing a somewhat shorter episode. But look how wonderful it was to catch up with Tyler Campbell, the VP of sales. This is all part of our brainstorming, our barnstorming, as we try to envision a future in which our efforts are collectively monetized

on a level that we have never attained before. But I'd like to thank Tyler Campbell for hanging out with us here because I feel like we've innovated. We've created the concept of the third mic on Toronto Mic'd. He should be the fact checker. He just sits there and checks the facts. And he was sharing something with you on your phone and I couldn't quite tell what was going on. I'm wondering what are you guys...

Oh, it's all at live.torontomic.com. You guys having a little fun without me? What's been going on behind the scenes? It's on the public record. Are you guys sharing some dirt? Is there something that I've been saying that's a little bit wrong? Shout out to Roz Weston for providing the raison d'etre.

I don't think I would have left the house in this busy time of year for me at the Canadian Jewish News if it wasn't for me getting down here and talking about the book called A Little Bit Broken. at the Canadian Jewish News. If it wasn't for me getting down here and talking about the book called A Little Bit Broken,

Roz, come on Toronto Might. Defend yourself against the charges as I laid them out about your book. I look forward to hearing it all. And that brings us to the end of our 1,124th show. Don't worry, babe.

We won't be late for Parent Teacher Curriculum Night. Thank you, Mark Wiseblood, for not going over three hours this episode. I'd be in big trouble. I felt like I held you hostage enough with some of these topics that we talked about here.

I got a good bike ride in during the Tourstar chat, so I feel refreshed. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Mark Wiseblood is at 1236. VP of Sales is at Tyler Campbell. Tyler A. Campbell. Tyler is A.

Tyler A. Campbell. And by the way, we got Mike Humenore's coming up. Come on. Here's your chance to applaud them. Absolutely. Mike Humenore's. If somebody makes it to the end,

they want to hear what's coming up. What's in the hopper here? 30th anniversary of the fan. 50th anniversary of City TV. There's much more beyond that, but check them out. And Dave Hodge, Hodge 100, right? Coming up, coming back.

Gotta get that scheduled. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Palma Pasta's at Palma Pasta. Sticker U is at Sticker U. Moneris is at Moneris. Welcome back, Moneris. Raymond James

Canada are at RaymondJamesCDN. Our newest sponsor, welcome Raymond James. Speaking of Kenny Rogers, I always think about Ruben James. Ruben James. EPRA are at EPRA underscore Canada. Cliff Hacking is coming on soon to kick out the electronics jams once more. That'll be good. Ridley Funeral Home. They're at Ridley FH

and Canna Cabana are at Canna Cabana underscore. There's another special episode of Toronto Mic'd in which I get high on the back deck with Andy Palalas from Canna Cabana. That's coming soon. See you all next week Mike's XML is perfect

and I've seen the sun go down on Chaclacour but I like it much better going down on you yeah you know that's true because everything is coming up rosy and gray.

Yeah, the wind is cold, but the smell of snow warms us today. And your smile is fine, and it's just like mine, and it won't go away. Because everything is rosy now. Everything is rosy, yeah. Everything is rosy now Everything is rosy and Everything is rosy and gray