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October 15, 2020 12:34 pm  #1


CityPulse's smashing LiveEye truck

Cool little piece of history about CityPulse's LiveEye truck (is it a 1977 Suburban?) that is smashingly protruding from 299 Queen St. W in Toronto....guess we shouldn't be surprised that BellMedia had to ruin some local history by repainting it in CP24 livery.... "This is City TV....Everywhere..."

https://www.blogto.com/city/2020/10/history-wall-smashing-truck-299-queen-street-west/?fbclid=IwAR0KktcFBzld6L91QUZkMx7QZN1ysHrZ_UV9yRAoJlzKlpUR0YyPsvRXXtw
 

 

October 15, 2020 1:36 pm  #2


Re: CityPulse's smashing LiveEye truck

Johnny B wrote:

Cool little piece of history about CityPulse's LiveEye truck (is it a 1977 Suburban?) that is smashingly protruding from 299 Queen St. W in Toronto....guess we shouldn't be surprised that BellMedia had to ruin some local history by repainting it in CP24 livery.... "This is City TV....Everywhere..."

https://www.blogto.com/city/2020/10/history-wall-smashing-truck-299-queen-street-west/?fbclid=IwAR0KktcFBzld6L91QUZkMx7QZN1ysHrZ_UV9yRAoJlzKlpUR0YyPsvRXXtw
 

Very old news about the repainting..    

Bell flipped it the moment they took control of 299 Queen West.   In fact tried to even take it down before hitting some legal issues with Toronto Heritage and locals.    City has left 299 Queen West long ago and I would not expect them to keep CITY owned by Rogers on a Bell building regardless of what the truck was originally. 

 

 

October 15, 2020 4:41 pm  #3


Re: CityPulse's smashing LiveEye truck

Brings back memories.  I don't know who the dude is (tourist?) but that's my car in the background
[img] [/img]

 

October 15, 2020 5:31 pm  #4


Re: CityPulse's smashing LiveEye truck

radiokid wrote:

Bell flipped it the moment they took control of 299 Queen West.   In fact tried to even take it down before hitting some legal issues with Toronto Heritage and locals.    City has left 299 Queen West long ago and I would not expect them to keep CITY owned by Rogers on a Bell building regardless of what the truck was originally. 

Yup. They came to their senses and realized the truck can still be a free ad for what ended up being Bell's CP24.

 


RadioWiz & RadioQuiz are NOT the same person. 
RadioWiz & THE Wiz are NOT the same person.

 
 

October 15, 2020 5:36 pm  #5


Re: CityPulse's smashing LiveEye truck

The article talks about using the phrase "The City Is Our Newsroom." I know the guy who suggested this and it was hardly original. He saw it in an ad used by WABC-TV and suggested it to Stephen Hurlbut, the news director. He loved it and the station effectively stole it from the New York station. It certainly fit their image. 

 

October 15, 2020 7:10 pm  #6


Re: CityPulse's smashing LiveEye truck

RadioActive wrote:

The article talks about using the phrase "The City Is Our Newsroom." I know the guy who suggested this and it was hardly original. He saw it in an ad used by WABC-TV and suggested it to Stephen Hurlbut, the news director. He loved it and the station effectively stole it from the New York station. It certainly fit their image. 

As I understand it, "Everywhere!" was taken from WABC (used first for CityPulse and then later, all of Citytv).
"The City is our Newsroom" came from a quote by David Crombie, who in 1977 said of CityPulse, "the city is their newsroom" - at least that is what he told me.

I wrote the Live Eye article, btw

 

October 15, 2020 7:23 pm  #7


Re: CityPulse's smashing LiveEye truck

I don't doubt what you say, but my friend was actually in the newsroom when it happened and showed the N.D. the ad. He doesn't recall whether it was from a newspaper or somewhere else, but he can swear on a stack of Bibles that it came from The Big Apple. At least that was where Hurlbut saw it for the first time. 

Can't say where "Everywhere" originated, but I have been told by many who worked there at the time that while Moses is often credited as being innovative - and he was at times - he was also very, very good at borrowing ideas from others and citing his team as the originators. 

By the way, your site on YouTube is great and I can't recommend it enough. But if you do go there, make sure you have a lot of time to spend. You may be on it for a while. 

Retrontario On YouTube

 

October 15, 2020 8:03 pm  #8


Re: CityPulse's smashing LiveEye truck

RadioActive wrote:

The article talks about using the phrase "The City Is Our Newsroom." I know the guy who suggested this and it was hardly original. He saw it in an ad used by WABC-TV and suggested it to Stephen Hurlbut, the news director. He loved it and the station effectively stole it from the New York station. It certainly fit their image. 

Everybody steals from everybody.

When I started in TV here in Rochester in '97, it was at an all-news local cable channel owned by what was then Time Warner. 

It operated out of a newsroom set with lots of fake exposed brick, with the anchors moving from desk to desk and perching on the corners to do their intros. The whole on-air look was blatantly ripped off from City, and our (now late) news director happily admitted as much. 

 

October 16, 2020 3:20 am  #9


Re: CityPulse's smashing LiveEye truck

Moses 'borrowed' a ton of stuff from WABC (didn't his sister work there for a bit?).  'Everywhere' was an Al Primo idea.  They even wrote an 'Everywhere' song for the Eyewitness News stations in the mid 70s.  Here's the version used by Orlando's Channel 9, circa 76.  WABC brought 'everywhere' back in the mid 90s, after City made it a thing.  Their version was a lot more cinematic (Channel 7 spent a fortune shooting their promos on film) but it didn't have the same...oomph! as City.  Eyewitness News imaging used 'Everywhere' in promos up until about 2014.  The last station to use it regularly was the CBS station in San Fransisco - KPIX. 

 

October 17, 2020 8:32 pm  #10


Re: CityPulse's smashing LiveEye truck

Hi RA,
Oh the "Dead Eye" as Gord used to call it. Two of the greatest guys ran it,  Brian Dean and Bryan Cook (Cookie), I think that's what their first names were if my 65 year old memory serves me. They knew this monster inside and out, probably better then Ron Reid did! If there was a location in Toronto that could see the Bank of Montreal building, then it was a go.  If you were downtown in the shadow of the B of M these crafty guys could bounce the signal off another skyscraper and back to the receiver, no kidding. They used a left or right circular polarization to angulate the signal. I bet they were great pool sharks!
Longest range shots were to Niagara on the Lake, Caledon Hills and the Pickering Nuke plant. It was even rented by American Broadcasters once in a while for live hits on their morning shows long before BT.
Driven into the ground, but what a piece of cutting edge technology for its time!

 

October 17, 2020 9:07 pm  #11


Re: CityPulse's smashing LiveEye truck

Wasn't Chris Mulligan, Cynthia Mulligan's ex, in charge of that department? 

 

October 18, 2020 10:47 am  #12


Re: CityPulse's smashing LiveEye truck

RA,
This was in the old building 99 Queen East.  When we moved to 299, we still had one Live Eye but a few years later, got another one, so Chris started co-ordinating both for the 6.  As for CityPulse Tonight, it was up to editing, usually me or others to aim the live eye.

 

October 18, 2020 6:14 pm  #13


Re: CityPulse's smashing LiveEye truck

Wow this discussion took me back in time.  The first Live Eye. Doing Intro's, extro's  and chats with Gord/Dina or Bill. How many times was I standing out in the cold, 30 seconds before they are supposed to come to me, with Cookie still working desperately to get that  elusive signal. Almost always, he would make sure it was there. It's with that truck we all learned how to do the the live "breathless", talk 2-3 minutes about what's happening behind you, and make sense doing so. I believe its why we were always so much better  than any other newsroom when it came to doing the live election shows, with the live hits from all the different locations.  Great history.  Great memories.    

 

October 18, 2020 7:26 pm  #14


Re: CityPulse's smashing LiveEye truck

Mr. Honickman - it's a pleasure to have you join SOWNY. I'm sure there's a lot of City TV memories you can share if you're in the mood. 

Here's one that I was told about by a former co-worker of yours on a day when you were anchoring CityPulse at 6. He said it was one of those lazy summer days when there was nothing really going on. The producer - I think he said it was the late Clint Nickerson - had changed the lead about four times. But by 4:30, there was just nothing that stood out as a top story.

And then, like a gift from God, the skies opened up and brought down a huge storm, filled with lightning and thunder, the kind you only see in the heat of a summer day.

Nickerson instantly changed the lead to "Toronto hit by major storm," and the great shots of Mother Nature tearing through the city. Unfortunately for him, the storm didn't last long and by the time the opening credits rolled, it was over and the sun was back out. I'm told you asked him repeatedly to change the lead to something else, since there wasn't any more weather to talk about. But he refused, having nothing else to fall back on. 

And so you threatened to go on the air and say, "Good evening, it's raining. Now let's go out to David Onley on Queen St. where it's not raining!"

Of course you didn't and the show went on from there.

True? False? Anyway that's the story I heard and I thought it was hilarious.