Rock Radio Scrapbook
AIRCHECK OF THE WEEK
For week of
August 22, 2010
Weekly issue #594
Subject:
JACK DENNETT TRIBUTE
Station: CFRB Toronto
Date: August 27, 1975
Time: 33:42
"I believe in news truth, news decency and integrity." - Jack Dennett
On Canada's authoritative news voice,
he was the voice of authority.
For a-quarter century, Jack Dennett held down one of Canadian radio's most coveted posts,
the 8 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. newscasts on Toronto's CFRB. His broadcasts always
began with "Hunter's Horn" - the first few bars of "A Hunting We Will Go" played
by a hunting horn - which he had inherited from Jim Hunter, who did the
broadcast until his death in 1949. Near the end of his life, surveys showed
Dennett had 406,000 listeners on his twice-daily newscast, which he wrote
himself. Dennett never missed a scheduled
newscast and worked up until about a month before his death on August 27, 1975,
of cancer, at the age of 59.
Dennett arrived at CFRB in 1943 from CKRC Winnipeg, and originally did the 11 p.m. newscast on CFRB. He started in radio in the early '30s at the age of 15 as an office boy at CFAC Calgary. Dennett's big break came May 30, 1932 - his 16th birthday - when an announcer didn't show up and he got to fill in.
By 1935, Dennett was doing hockey interviews and in 1945 became part of the Hot Stove League NHL radio show from Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens. He joined the TV version of the Hot Stove League in 1952 and continued with both the radio and TV broadcasts of the show until 1962, when he continued with the TV broadcast only. Just days before his death, Dennett was inducted into the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame.
Dennett interviewed every Canadian prime minister from R.B. Bennett to Pierre Trudeau. A lifelong admirer of Winston Churchill, he considered one of his best broadcasts to be a half-hour memorial tribute on Churchill in 1965. The broadcast was made into a record and distributed in Ontario schools.
CFRB presented the following tribute to Dennett within hours of his passing. Narrated by CFRB newsman Torben Wittrup, it contains the voices of Wally Crouter, Gordon Sinclair, Bob Hesketh, Foster Hewitt, Conn Smythe, Jim Coleman, Pierre Berton, former Ontario premier Bill Davis, among others, and of course Dennett himself.
We're pleased to present CFRB's tribute to Jack Dennett here.
(The Bill Dulmage Collection)
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