"Mr. CBC News" Earl Cameron dies
Dan Say
"five minutes of commentary and opinion...."
-----http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2005/01/14/Arts/cameronobit050114.
html?print
C B C . C A N e w s - F u l l S t o r y :
_________________________________________________________________
Former CBC anchor Earl Cameron dies
Last Updated Fri, 14 Jan 2005 12:16:24 EST
[1]CBC Arts
TORONTO - Veteran CBC news anchor Earl Cameron died in a hospital in
Barrie, Ont., Thursday, following a lengthy illness. He was 89.
Cameron was host of CBC's national television news from 1959 to 1966.
He joined CBC Manitoba in 1944 and was quickly transferred to Toronto,
where he captured the prized post of reading the national radio news
five nights a week.
[cameron_earl_file2.jpg]
Earl Cameron
* FROM CBC ARCHIVES: [2]Earl Cameron
[ 2. http://www.cbc.ca/archives/earl_cameron ]
Born in Moose Jaw, Sask., in June 1915, the man who came to be known
as "Mr. CBC News" started out as a teacher, following in the footsteps
of three of his siblings.
Life as an educator wasn't for Cameron, however, and he moved through
a variety of jobs before netting a summer relief gig at a Moose Jaw
radio station in 1939. He went on to become chief announcer and within
five years was working for the CBC.
Cameron was an announcer trained in the British tradition,
authoritative, calm, unflappable, avoiding emotion, never
editorializing. Once, when the studio lights failed during a radio
newscast, he reportedly flipped open a cigarette lighter and read on,
with the broadcast delayed by just a few seconds.
He remained one of the country's top radio news presenters throughout
the 1950s and, in 1959, won the job of reading the nightly 11 o'clock
news on CBC-TV, helping the broadcast become Canada's most reliable
source of evening news.
As the 1960s progressed, however, his impersonal delivery appeared
increasingly outdated. New blood entering the CBC frowned upon the
fact that he was a newsreader and not a journalist. Also at issue was
his participation in the activity then common among announcers of
recording voiceovers for commercials for extra cash.
In 1966, the CBC replaced him with journalist Stanley Burke. Cameron
was made host of Viewpoint, a five-minute program following The
National that shared opinions on public issues. He retired in 1976,
after 32 years with the CBC.
Cameron's influence was such that he was parodied by comedian Eugene
Levy, who created a newsman character on SCTV named Earl Camembert.
A funeral is scheduled for Saturday at St. Peter's Anglican Church in
Churchill, Ont.
Dan Say
> I remember his droll introductions to outrageous "Viewpoint"
> "five minutes of commentary and opinion...."
>
Larry Henderson, George Finstad, George Maclean,
Jan Tennant, Peter Mansbridge, where are they now.
The Globe and Mail: EARL CAMERON, BROADCASTER: 1915-2005 (p1 of 5)
EARL CAMERON, BROADCASTER: 1915-2005
The man with the distinctive, rich voice and famously unflinching
face lent authority to the CBC in the early days of TV
broadcasting. Never a journalist, 'I just read the words'
By F.F. LANGAN
Special to The Globe and Mail
UPDATED AT 9:00 PM EST Saturday, Jan 15, 2005
TORONTO -- Earl Cameron used to tell the story of how he once
walked into a store and found a salesman staring at him.
"Fellow who reads the news on TV looks just like you. Ever watch
him?"
"No," said Mr. Cameron, not telling a lie since he couldn't watch
himself while he was doing his job.
Early on, he discovered the strange kind of fame that comes with
appearing on television. Like the salesman, people thought they
knew him but weren't sure.
"People often look at me in the street. They want to say hello,
but aren't sure whether I'm somebody's brother or a guy they met
recently at a party."
Earl Cameron was a classic CBC announcer, the voice of CBC's The
National, which, in the early part of his tenure from 1959 to
1966, was the only national television newscast in the country.
If Lorne Greene was the CBC's Voice of Doom, then Earl Cameron
was probably its voice from Mount Olympus -- listened to and
trusted by the viewers.
"If Earl said it, you knew it was true and that, even with all
the miseries, all was well with the world," said Knowlton Nash,
who read The National long after Mr. Cameron.
"He was the last anchor who was part of the old school of
broadcasting," said Mr. Nash from his winter home in Naples, Fla.
"No matter how awful the news -- and he broadcast during the war
-- he was always a reassuring presence, giving the impression
there were better things ahead."
Mr. Cameron will long be regarded as "the anchor's anchor" by the
corporation. "His skill and professionalism contributed greatly to
CBC's reputation for credibility, objectivity and dependability in
our newsgathering and broadcasting, and in our role as Canada's
national public broadcaster," said Richard Stursberg, CBC-TV's
executive vice-president. "He was truly a legend."
All told, Mr. Cameron read more than 1,500 CBC newscasts. His
audience believed that if Mr. Cameron said something -- anything
-- then it had to be true. One woman went so far as to say, "he
couldn't convince me that black is white, but if he said it, then
I would certainly give it some thought."
Back in the days when news on television was a few talking heads
and too many words, Mr. Cameron appeared on the CBC's 11 p.m.
news broadcast and became a national institution. He read the
news from a script, not a teleprompter, and was famous for his
diction and flawless delivery.
His fans included those with an ear for perfectly spoken English.
In 1966, TV columnist Dennis Braithwaite wrote in The Globe and
Mail that "I consider him a uniquely talented news reader, the
only one at the CBC who, in my hearing, has never made a mistake
in phrasing or pronunciation."
Earl Cameron was born in Moose Jaw, Sask., during the early
months of the First World War. He inherited his magnificent voice
from his father, Ernest, who was described as having "one of the
finest undiscovered bass-baritones in North America" by Sir
Arthur Benjamin, the British composer who toured North America
judging choral contests.
The elder Mr. Cameron wanted Earl to become a teacher like his
brother and two sisters. Earl did go to Saskatchewan Teachers
College, but soon decided the vocation wasn't for him. He liked
to tell a story of his brief career in the classroom. "I was
hired to teach in a little town called Kildare. This was during
the great Western drought of the '30s and it hadn't rained in
Kildare for a long time. My second day on the job there was a
downpour of 3˝ inches. I figured I had done enough for the town,
so I left."
Perhaps it wasn't a great idea at the height of the Depression,
for he next found work shovelling coal for $18 a week. After
that, he worked on the railway for 25 cents an hour. His break
came when he heard of an audition for a summer job as an
announcer at CHAB, the local Moose Jaw radio station.
"I had about 70 others competing against me for an announcing
job. The whole public speaking class at the YMCA," quipped Mr.
Cameron, who had a droll sense of humour despite his unflinching,
stone-faced persona.
His distinctive, rumbling voice won him the job, and it quickly
became permanent.
He soon moved to CKY in Winnipeg and stayed there for four years.
The station was owned by the Manitoba Telephone Co. but, as it
happened, the CBC also used the staff and facilities there and
Mr. Cameron quickly made a good impression. The CBC promptly
lured him away and, in 1941, he arrived in Toronto. It wasn't
long until he was reading the National Radio News.
After television arrived, Mr. Cameron served as the backup for
Larry Henderson, who was the reader at 11 p.m. When Mr. Henderson
quit in 1959, Mr. Cameron was given the job of reading the
National News.
For the next seven years, he was a familiar face, opening the
program with a nod of his head, a hint of a smile and a quiet
"good evening." It was a no-nonsense approach to a no-nonsense
subject, and both Mr. Cameron and the network liked it that way.
Then he got down to the serious stuff (commercials were not
allowed during the news) and he worked hard to avoid the
slightest gesture or change in inflection that might betray an
emotion or a personal opinion. If the program's editors provided
him with a "kicker" to end the newscast, he would permit himself
an expression that might suggest a chuckle.
He was the anchor, a term that didn't make it into the Oxford
English Dictionary until 1965, from 1959 to 1966. In many ways,
he was the last of a breed.
"Earl was devastated when they decided to go with a journalistic
anchor rather than a traditional broadcaster," says Larry Stout,
who was then a CBC news writer and reporter. "He didn't think of
himself as a journalist, but rather as a broadcaster."
That got him into a bit of trouble. Like other announcers, he was
allowed to do commercial work. Mr. Cameron had two big clients --
Crest toothpaste and Rambler, a car made by American Motors. The
toothpaste ads caused some complaints of bias -- by politicians,
among others -- and in 1965 Mr. Cameron was given a choice: no
more jobs doing ads if he wanted to keep his high-profile job
reading the 11 o'clock news.
In the end, he chose the news over toothpaste, but a year later
he was dumped anyway. Mr. Cameron's replacement as the main
reader on The National was Stanley Burke, who had worked as a
foreign correspondent.
Mr. Cameron took over rotating duties that included reading the
early evening news that went across the country. He also
introduced the opinion program Viewpoint.
Earl Cameron was always strictly a newsreader. He wasn't allowed
to change a comma of copy. It was a union regulation and not one
he minded. "I just read the words."
While his diction may have been perfect, he was wrong on the
direction that TV news was taking. In 1967, he told the Toronto
Telegram, "I've heard that Huntley and Brinkley and Walter
Cronkite say that the era of the broadcast journalist is ending
-- and here the CBC is just trying to start it."
The tradition at almost all TV networks now is that the main
newsreader is not "just an announcer" but someone who has advanced
through the ranks as a reporter. The change did not occur
overnight.
Stanley Burke quit and was replaced by announcers, including
Lloyd Robertson.
Peter Kent, a field reporter, read The National after Mr.
Robertson and he was followed by others of similar background.
For all that, Mr. Cameron and Mr. Robertson were remembered as
newsreaders by the audience and by the comedy troupe SCTV, which
played on their names in a running sketch that featured rival
anchors Earl Camembert and Floyd Robertson.
After Mr. Cameron's demotion from his TV job, he was still one of
two readers for The World at Six on CBC Radio. And he stayed on,
introducing Viewpoint until it was cancelled in January of 1976. A
few months later, Mr. Cameron retired after 32 years -- and the
world seen through a Canadian television screen was never the
same again. "He was very, very Canadian," said Mr. Nash. "As
Canadian as wheat."
Earl Cameron was born in Moose Jaw, Sask., on June 12, 1915. He
died Thursday in Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie, Ont., after a
lengthy illness. He was 89. He is survived by his wife, Adelaide
and son Harold. He was predeceased by his son Clark, who died in
a car accident in 1984. Funeral services will be held on
Saturday.
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