Chapter Seventeen Looking Ahead to Television Private radio pioneered Canadian broadcasting. Private enterprise sought broadcasting licenses when they were going begging. Without a penny of subsidy from government (and so without any cost to the taxpayer) individuals across Canada , many of them merely enthusiastic amateurs, laid the foundations of broadcasting in this country. They put up the original transmitting stations, they bought the equipment, they put on the air the best programs they could procure and they did this at a time when radio advertising was virtually unknown and when the operation of a station was a most uncertain enterprise. Like all pioneers, their reward was in hope for the future. It was this hope that my father was working for in 1946, a very busy year for him. He was President of the Maritime Association of Broadcasters and Hon. President and Vice-Chairman of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters. During the next twelve years the private broadcasters in Canada would be making major breakthroughs in the establishment of today's broadcasting structure. That year my father was a member of a committee presenting a two-part brief on broadcasting to the federal government. Most of the men who planned this brief had been in radio since its inception and all of them were imbued with the conviction that there was an important place in Canada for community- based privately-owned broadcasting. The opening statement of policy was brief and clear-cut. It said: "we emphasize our belief that, regardless of patterns accepted as suitable 152