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CHOO Radio Recollections An on line scrapbook of images & text for former staff and listeners alike ================================================================= | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
SPRING/SUMMER 2010 UPDATE All those retro CHOO toques are now gone - you've got yourselves a real collectible... David Webster is the man to contact if you have old CHOO airchecks that have been digitized or still need digitizing before they flake away forever. He can handle cassettes, reels or mp3 formats. Get in touch asap if you have any old airchecks - use the site address on pg one... That's David's evocative photo of 97 McMcMaster now on the Index Page... And Jim Ashbridge has sent along some great old photos (below) from the late 1970s/early 1980s... thanks Jim!
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(ABOVE, LEFT) According to Jim... That's CHOO GM Lorna Braid with afternoon host Bill Johnson on the phone. (ABOVE, RIGHT) Stan Hooper GM 1977-1979 with receptionist Judy Bull. (BELOW, LEFT) Lorna and Bill interviewing the mayor of Whitby. (BELOW, RIGHT) The 1980 CHOO Chili Cook Off Badge involving the Oshawa Kinsmen Club. Does anybody have any other details? Dates? The photos look like they might've been taken in Lorna's corner office but it's hard to tell. What was the "Wheel of Fortune"? And - most importantly - why did we once think polyester leisure suits were so cool? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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CHOO FACEBOOK PAGE UPDATE - MARCH 2012 Gary tells me Google has arbitrarily changed the status of our CHOO FB page. You now need to join FB to see it. Also - if you were a member of it you may now need to resubscribe to it. If you can't access it, can't find it, email this site and I will forward your request to Gary to sort it out for you. Please be patient!
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(RIGHT, ENLARGED) The actual cartoon I once stuck up in the CHOO reception area in the early 1980s. Why did I do it? What happened as a result? Well, it was like this...... It always disappointed me a bit that there were no photos of the weekend on air staff in the tiny reception area at 97 McMaster Avenue during my time at CHOO. The faux-wood panel wall had framed portraits of all the weekday announcers and news staff but none of us part-timers. The reason given? Weekenders were considered to be too transient, too impermanent. By way of a mild protest but mostly as a joke, one weekend I found an old cartoon of a real "transient" - a hobo - sitting in front of an ancient radio microphone. I photocopied the little drawing, added "Listen to John Richards on weekends" and stuck it up on the wall with a small ball of tape beside such framed CHOO luminaries as Bill Johnson and Brian Belfry. I expected it to be found immediately Monday morning and taken down but not before bringing a few chuckles to the weekday staff. To my amazement, the next weekend it was still there. Nobody had commented on it. The only possible reason was nobody had even noticed it! I thought about taking it down but a few of my fellow part-timers started a "pool" to see how long it would stay up. It continued to give me a chuckle upon arriving every weekend to see it still happily displayed on the wall. Weeks and weeks went by, possibly even a month or two or three. Eventually I no longer even remembered to look at it. So it came as bit of a shock to be called in one day to explain why I had "vandalized" the reception area. What was I trying to do to the station's reputation? In my defence I pointed out that anyone seeing it would probably find it amusing but clearly nobody had seen it because... it had been up for months. When the absurdity of the situation had finally sunk in, abject apologies offered and promises made never again to invoke my alleged sense of humour in redecorating the station, all was pretty much forgiven. I'd like to add that it brought about a change in station policy but it didn't. During my years at CHOO we part-timers never did get our photos put up on the reception area wall. (Did any part-timers manage to do so later?) As to who won the pool - after all these years I honestly don't remember. Hmmm... but now I think about it - I wonder if I was ratted out by the winner? LOL! - John Richards
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More recollections to follow PRE-XMAS 2010 Go to the next page!
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