CBC
Radio fired me after just one day of work.
It was Friday September 18, 1981.[i]
Not a good day. But at least I can say I worked at CBC at the same time as Max
Ferguson, and I can appreciate why, when Ferguson passed away at 89 in March
2013, he was eulogized as much for the length of his half century radio career
as its content.
It’s
not easy to keep up the creativity for that long, particularly amidst all the
irony and bureaucracy of an institution like the CBC. Part of the answer for Ferguson was,
ironically, to get fired. He shared the story of his firing, re-hiring under
contract, and pay increase along with other anecdotes in his 1968 Leacock Medal
memoir “And Now ... Here’s Max,”[ii]
a book written about the half way mark in that long career and life.
Ferguson
called it “a funny kind of autobiography,” and it is a bit different. He shares very little of his personal life in
it. But because he was well known and popular, book-buying CBC fans were
willing to shell out for his broadcast-industry war stories strung together in
sequence. In each, Ferguson describes his experience in terms of colorful
characters, practical jokes, and mishap induced by administration.
Some
of his stories are pretty funny. Others
are not so effective because cited personalities are no longer known and the
premise of CBC’s domination of electronic media is dated. But all draw on Ferguson’s friendly style.
The
book starts in 1946 with his first radio job (at the private station CFPL in
his hometown of London, Ontario). He was
earning $25 per week, $5 over the norm in recognition of his unusual
qualification of a university education.
CBC recruited him for its Halifax, Nova Scotia operations in December of
that year.
In
Halifax, he fell into the role of performer rather than announcer when he was
told to host a “cowboy” music show called After
Breakfast Breakdown. In a story now
well known as Canadian broadcasting lore, Ferguson tells us that he didn’t like
the music, was embarrassed, and decided to cloak himself on air in the persona
of "Old Rawhide," an elderly cowboy who ridiculed the music he was
playing. To Ferguson’s surprise, the
character was a hit. At one point, some
9,000 listeners in Atlantic Canada wrote in requesting photos of Old
Rawhide. Ferguson amused himself by
adding other characters to the show, which eventually moved to the CBC flagship
operations in Toronto where it accessed a national audience.
Through
the late 1940s and early 1950s, Ferguson, as Rawhide, anchored one of CBC
Radio’s most popular programs. Yet, as
his book reveals, he was not paid a cent for his Rawhide work during those
glory days. Formally, Ferguson was a regular CBC staff announcer paid only for
routine on-air duties. In a circumstance
many in government bureaucracies would recognize, CBC management said his job
classification would not allow for a raise or any incremental money for his
optional work on what was one of the network’s most popular programs. Ferguson decided to test the “optional”
nature of the arrangement by staying home.
With
his termination in the works, a CBC executive[iii]
suggested that he leave, become a private sector producer, and provide the
Rawhide show to the network as a contractor and non-CBC employee. Ferguson took the advice - and immediately
received a fee that was four (4) times his former CBC employee salary. The best part of the deal for Ferguson was
the freedom to move his family back to Nova Scotia and to mock his meal ticket.
By
the end of the book, Ferguson’s stature as a performer had reached the point
where he could drop the Rawhide character altogether and pursue a more flexible
style in The Max Ferguson Show. Over the following years, Ferguson produced
daily skits, parodies of literary classics, and satires of current events. He used his show to promote alternative
music, folk music, and what is now known as World Music. Very few cowboys.
He
was creative and often off the wall. In
one skit, he performed as two talking heads that had been grafted onto one body
to allow CBC to pay a single performing fee for two voices. This tells me he and his colleagues could
laugh about the bureaucracy around them.
And
this might be the main reason why he managed to do so well and to stick it out
for a lot longer than just one day.
Max Ferguson Trivia
[i]
By union rules, the corporation had to pay a salary when trying me out as a
researcher for the CBC Vancouver Noon Hour show. I know the date because of clippings on the
news story I screwed up.
[ii]
The title of the book was the standard introduction to his radio shows as
delivered by well known CBC announcer
Allan McFee.
[iii]
The Executive was Harry J. Boyle, a Leacock Medal winner himself.