Rock Radio Scrapbook

AIRCHECK OF THE WEEK
For week of November 21, 2010
Weekly issue #606

Talent: BOB LAINE
Station: CHUM Toronto
Date: November 25, 1964
Time: 16:44

When Doug Thompson started at CHUM in 1965, he not only achieved a lifelong career dream but also made a friend for life.

Doug tells Rock Radio Scrapbook the story of himself, CHUM, and Bob Laine...

"When I was growing up in Oakville, during the late 1950’s and early 60’s, my parents gave me their Stromberg-Carlson radio. It was a huge piece of furniture, standing about 4 feet high. My father, brother and I struggled to carry it up the stairs to my bedroom where we positioned it right beside my bed.
This was a real treat to listen to. I had a small transistor radio, but the sound coming out of the Stromberg-Carlson speakers was vastly superior – it was just so warm. I used to have the radio on (CHUM naturally) while I did my homework, listening to Dave Johnson and the HiFi Club. Bedtime was usually around 11, so I had to turn the radio off then. I was allowed to listen longer on Friday and Saturday nights and that’s when Bob Laine, CHUM’s all night master, entered my life. For some reason, the song I most associate with Bob is Jorgen Ingmann’s "Apache" which he played a lot as his opening song around 1961 when it was a hit.

Every year, I’d go to the CNE with my parents and brother and while they went off and did their thing, I went to the Princess Gates and stood around and watched the CHUM guys at the Satellite Station. I did the same thing at the annual Sportsman Show. I still have all the CHUM promo pieces they handed out back then - the CHUM jocks and newsman in the black bowler hats in Bermuda shorts, and later, a brochure with them wearing boater hats. I also got most the CHUM guys autographs.

We moved to Edmonton in late 1961, but by then, I’d already been bitten by the CHUM bug and vowed that I would work there ‘some day’. That ‘someday’ took 4 years, but I walked through the doors at 1331 Yonge Street as a full time employee on February 1st, 1965. My shift was 6 p.m. to midnight, so after sitting and watching mid day op Peter Crampton all day, I took the controls at 6 p.m. Chief operator and Production Manager Fred Snyder (who was also Moose Latreck on-air) left me by myself and said he'd be back just before 10 p.m. to show me how to get into delay for Speak Your Mind with Larry Solway. He did (just barely.) Around 11 p.m., Bob Laine walked into the control room, introduced himself (as if I didn't know who he was) then went off into the newsroom to prepare for his show.

We became friends that night and over the course of my operating period (about 18 months before I was promoted into the Production Department) we became lifelong friends, so much so that we're still working together today on the CHUM Archives and as board members of the Canadian Broadcast Museum Foundation (as of November 2010.) I treasure our friendship, but occasionally my mind wanders back to 1960-61, when Bob Laine was just a "disembodied voice in the night", but one of the friendliest voices I had ever heard."

Enjoy Bob Laine on CHUM here.

(The CHUM Archives/Bob Laine and Doug Thompson)

More from the CHUM Archives here!
 

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