World at Six at 50: 6 defining moments from over the years
'Some people find it too jazzy,' was one of the early complaints about the CBC Radio program
Fifty years ago today, CBC Radio listeners heard something completely new.
It was Oct. 31, 1966. Halloween. As the clock hit 6 p.m. in the Maritimes, there was a crackle, the faint sound of satellite beeps and then a deep, resonant voice.
"Good evening, this is the World at Six, from CBC News Toronto …"
It was the first broadcast of CBC Radio's flagship evening news program, hosted by Bruce Rogers and John O'Leary.
Launching World at Six
World at Six was part of a revolution that happened at CBC Radio during the 1960s. Back then, the notion of combining news and analysis was novel — so much so that Rogers recalls that the program made some CBC managers nervous.
A print advertisement from 1966 for the World at Six. (CBC)
World at Six also used fresh production techniques and pioneered the use of music in news programming. The program seems to have provoked a bit of controversy in the early days.
"We've had a few complaints," the program's first senior editor, Angus McLellan, told the CBC Times, the broadcaster's internal newsletter. "Some people find it too jazzy."
Tradition of storytelling
In the 1970s and '80s, CBC Radio put more of the world into World at Six. Reporters fanned out across the globe, bringing the voices of people in far-flung places to Canadian audiences.
This was long before digital editing. Reporters would assemble their pieces using two tape recorders. And there was no internet either. Audio had to be sent down a standard phone line.
Susan Bonner prepares for the 50th anniversary broadcast of the World at Six in a studio Monday at the Canadian Broadcasting Centre in Toronto. (David Donnelly/CBC)
"You'd go into the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad and the first thing you do, before you unpack your bag or have a glass of water, was go over to the phone and see if you could take the mouthpiece off," says Dick Gordon, the longtime CBC Radio correspondent.
Gordon would attach his tape recorder to the phone receiver using alligator clips, dial the newsroom and press play — and then hope the international line wouldn't cut out.
Great moments on World at Six map closely to big news events of the day. But throughout the show's history, there's been an effort to capture the voices of ordinary people caught up in the sweep of world events.
In 2006, against the backdrop of a North Korean nuclear test, Anthony Germain travelled to a Chinese village on the North Korean border. There, he captured the scene of a Chinese fruit vendor tossing apples, bananas and plums across the river to feed a starving soldier on the other side.
The penalty for accepting that charity could have been death in Kim Jong-il's North Korea.
"Even at that time I knew this was going to be a fantastic World at Six piece," says Germain. "It was the kind of show that would give me the time to tell a story like that properly."
CBC Radio correspondent Anthony Germain is shown while reporting in China. (CBC)
Germain's story won one of the biggest international prizes in radio, the Edward R. Murrow National Award from the RTDNA.
When World at Six began, there were no smartphones, no laptops, no 24-hour cable stations. When listeners tuned in, it could very well be the first news they would hear that day. Today, the radio program is available also online and via podcast.
Here's a look back at six defining moments from World at Six.
1. Apollo 11 — July 21, 1969
Buzz Aldrin salutes the American flag on the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969. (NASA/Reuters)
World at Six covered the first mission to the moon with a one-hour special edition on July 21, 1969. Bruce Rogers and John O'Leary hosted, with Bob Evans reporting from Houston.
"A battering of emotion when they docked," Evans reported "And it has left a person, me, and every newsman here I think is almost drained of emotion."
2. The October Crisis — Oct. 12, 1970
A newsboy in Ottawa holds up a newspaper with a headline reporting the invoking of the War Measures Act in October 1970. (Peter Bregg/The Canadian Press)
During the October Crisis, following the kidnapping of British Trade Commissioner James Cross, Bruce Rogers and members of the World at Six team travelled to Quebec. At times, the entire World at Six broadcast, or close to all of it, was devoted to developments in the fast-moving story.
"It was horrendous. All of us felt about it very, very intensely," says Rogers.
He remembers being in Montreal with Tom Earle, the longtime parliamentary reporter, when the War Measures Act was invoked. "The two of us took a walk around McGill and were just amazed at the chill at that university. And we were in Westmount on one occasion, talking to a dentist whose office had been raided. A dentist of all people!"
3. Air India disaster — June 24, 1985
Irish sailors unload debris from the Air India Flight 182 at a navy base in Cork after the plane crashed off the coast of Ireland on June 23, 1985. (AFP/Getty Images)
The day after Air India Flight 182 went down over the North Atlantic, World at Six produced a series of in-depth reports.
The grim scene in Cork, Ireland. The political reaction in Ottawa. The concerns about a second bomb on a CP flight.
4. Somalia Affair — Sept. 8, 1995
Pte. Elvin Kyle Brown is followed out of the courthouse at Canadian Forces Base Petawawa in March 1994. He was sentenced to five years for his role in the death of Somali teenager Shidane Arone. (John Hryniuk/Canadian Press)
CBC Radio reporter Michael McAuliffe received one of Canada's biggest prizes in journalism for his work on the Somalia Affair in 1995.
As the lead reporter on the story, which was carried across CBC News, including on World at Six, he obtained some previously secret documents that revealed what senior military leaders knew about the beating death of a young Somali teen in the custody of Canadian soldiers.
The Michener Foundation credited his work with contributing substantially to the creation of a government inquiry.
5. 9/11 — Sept. 11, 2001
Smoke pours from the twin towers of the World Trade Center after they were hit by two hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001. (Robert Giroux/Getty)
As host of World at Six on Sept. 11, 2001, Barbara Smith was one of several CBC hosts who were live on air through a special broadcast that lasted more than 24 hours.
"I remember when 9/11 happened. I was home, it was in the morning. So I thought, 'That's it, I'm going to work.' You just don't think about it; you go," she recalls. "And once you got in the studio, you were on for hours and hours and hours.
In the days that followed, World at Six stayed with the story, providing in-depth followup coverage, first in New York and Washington, and later in Afghanistan, covering the war that followed.
6. Election of Barack Obama — Nov. 5, 2008
Barack Obama and his family arrive on stage for his election night victory rally at Chicago's Grant Park on Nov. 4, 2008. (Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images)
In the lead-up to 2008 election of U.S. President Barack Obama, World at Six went on the road to a number of battleground states. On election night, Bernie McNamee and the team were in front of the White House.
"There had to be at least 10,000 people standing outside the wrought iron fence. And people just chanting: 'Yes we can!'" says McNamee. "The lights were on in the White House. And Bush was there. He had to have heard this chanting going on outside.
"And slowly, a couple of the lights went out. And this woman said to me, I guess they turned the lights out on us."
