As Bernard Bonsor was Rediffusion’s man on site in Trinidad
I was to be Thomson’s person on site. Rediffusion was
responsible for Engineering and Thomson was responsible for
Production. But I was given the added portfolio of Program
Manager when Ken Gordon turned down the job. I was also told that Ron
Goodsman would be the General Manager and that he was coming
from an engineering background in Radio from Rediffusion.
No previous TV experience. They were going to “give him a
chance” at running a TV Station. As Bernard Bonsor was Rediffusion’s man on site in Trinidad
I was to be Thomson’s person on site. Rediffusion was
responsible for Engineering and Thomson was responsible for
Production. But I was given the added portfolio of Program
Manager when Ken Gordon turned down the job. I was also told that Ron
Goodsman would be the General Manager and that he was coming
from an engineering background in Radio from Rediffusion.
No previous TV experience. They were going to “give him a
chance” at running a TV Station.
I arrived in Trinidad late at night two weeks prior to
Independence with the instruction to have TV on the air for the
Flag Raising Ceremony and the Opening of Parliament. I
checked into the Queen’s Park Hotel as previously advised.
Goodsman was there in the morning to pick me up. He
must’ve felt that I was some sort of threat to him because he
greeted me with “I don’t know who you are but I didn’t send for you”.
My first sighting of ttt”s location was that of a
concrete slab with a skeleton construction. I immediately
set about to have a room built that would hold a desk for an
announcer and limited telecine facilities (one 16mm projector
and a slide machine)Â Thankfully most of the equipment had
been ordered before my arrival. For that I give my hat off
to Bill Corkhill who was the first Chief Engineer at ttt.
He was a Scotsman who had a tv background. Also I must
give kudos to Ron Goodsman who had hired some of the staff
before I got there……..people like Hazel Ward, Mervyn Telfer and I believe
Shaffick Mohammed and Errol Harrylal might have been hired by him too.
In addition to the technical part of the set-up I was
interviewing potential personnel, particularly office staff
relating to traffic and log preparation. Compton Welch
came on board early as we required art work for production areas.
The transmitter was being installed by Bruce Reid from
Canada who worked for Canadian General Electric.
By Aug. 24th the presentation room
was completed and
Mervyn Telfer went on the air at 7pm, I believe it was. We
were on-air for one hour each night leading up to the Flag
Raising Ceremonies. A crew from CBS brought in their
equipment and personnel to handle the production. I
arranged for the locally hired staff to shadow the CBS crew so
that they could get a good handle of what I expected them to
eventually be able to do too. I was the Director of the
CBS crew which I’m sure gave me a lot of credibility in the eyes
of the local personnel.
In addition to the above-mentioned CBS personnel, the CBS
Director of Engineering, Joe Stern and his Asst. Director of
Engineering Ron(?) McKelvy, rolled up their sleeves and worked
with Corkhill and several other local personnel in getting the
wiring done and installing equipment. McKelvy and Stern
were in T’Dad for two weeks. The hours were long….7:30am
to 10pm. But everybody meshed together really well
including the people building the structure.
During this period of time potential personnel were being
interviewed and those people who were selected for production
jobs were given intensive training by me. I know I was
pretty hard on them from the beginning because I saw so much
potential in a number of them that I wanted to be sure that they
understood the responsibilities they were
taking on. As the station increased its on-air
hours I found myself putting in a lot of time with the Sales
Dept. and making sales calls with salesmen in trying to sell
time on tv. At that point I put in a call for Charlie
Moore to join me and take over the production training and
operation. Charlie had worked for me when I was the
Production Manager in Calgary 1957 -1960. I knew I could
count on him as he was a tireless worker with tremendous insight
into production techniques.