Pictures Out of Thin Air

young Henry: “No sets. We have no money for sets. Okay? No kitchen cupboards. Is that understood?”

The show went on. When it was over Bob rushed in to see Henry.

“I thought I told you there were to be no sets, no cupboards.”

“But there weren’t”, replied Henry.

“But I saw them with my own eyes,” Bob shot back.

“What you saw was a painting,” said Henry. “I painted it all on a flat.”

Incredulous, Bob ran back into the studio to check it out.

When Bob was figuring out the cost of the television station equip- ment, other broadcasters warned that we might risk everything we had, if the cost was too high, so he decided that there would be only one camera chain at the start. The afternoon I recall that one camera was behaving as it should with Barry MacLaren getting all the right shots of Helen Herring’s interview. Then with no warning at all, it broke down completely. Henry Purdy happened to be right there and grabbing a Polaroid camera he started taking still pictures. The Polaroid developed the picture as Henry rushed upstairs to the control room, slapped the photo on a card and put it in a machine called a tellop. Then Henry would rush downstairs to take another shot. The interview went on as if nothing was happening. Viewers would see Mrs. Herring in a stark pose about to hand the guest some papers—the voice still coming over but no lips moving. The next shot would be of the guest learning forward. Then a side View of Mrs. Herring; it went on and on, like a giant step backward in time to the old stereopticon or magic lantern. Henry was young and agile and Mrs. Herring had a sense of humour. An amused audience scratched their heads in wonderment over what was happening to the modern medium of television.

My father had always considered that local interest, educational and public service programs were of the utmost importance. It was his firm belief that if a community broadcasting station was truly servicing its people, it was bound to have the character of the people it served. Dad had very strong convictions about how radio should not be used, and these could be summed up in the fact that broadcasting should be used in the interests of democracy and for the cultural reinforcement and development of its community. New ideas were always encouraged. One of these had come from Bob Large, who was Program Manager at that period in the 1940’s when great changes were taking place in education

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