Montreal Gazette

`Cool' uncle, friends with Shaq and U.S. Vp-elect Harris, now heads up TVO

- JOE O'CONNOR

As a Harvard Law School graduate, Jeffrey Orridge understand­s discretion, of saying what needs to be said without saying a single word more.

And what he won't say, for example, when asked about Kamala Harris, vice president-elect of the United States, a personal friend and godmother to the children of his favourite cousin, PR executive Chrisette Hudlin, is anything remotely juicy.

“Kamala and I are both lawyers, remember,” Orridge said, with a chuckle.

Harris, rather, “is one of the smartest and most genuine people” he knows, and she has not changed a whit from the day they first met several decades ago. It is a perfectly honest, completely benign descriptio­n of the incoming VP, and it leaves a listener grasping for more tidbits.

Deeper insights that Orridge, the new chief executive of Tvontario, the province's public broadcaste­r, respectful­ly declines to disclose, although he is willing to catapult into a yarn about how a native New Yorker landed at TVO, of all places.

Heading a public broadcaste­r is not a job with an abundance of glamour, nor is it one without serious challenges. Of particular note in this on-demand viewing age, where the likes of Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and Crave TV are gobbling up market share, is that consumers are ditching their cable, so trusty old standbys such as TVO can, at times, seem almost quaint, given its mix of children's shows, documentar­ies and current affairs.

But that's not the way Orridge views things. “Part of what we are as a society is perpetual learners,” he said. “There is always a value in providing education and showcasing things that are important in life, things that have a purpose, such as documentar­ies.”

With that in mind, let's set a scene: Long before Orridge assumed the helm at TVO, took the oath of Canadian citizenshi­p, became the first Black commission­er of the Canadian Football League (or any major North American sports league, for that matter), negotiated Olympic media rights as a bigwig at the Canadian Broadcasti­ng Corp., he moved to Toronto in 2007 to become chief operating officer of Right to Play, a non-profit, because he wanted to do something with a “defined purpose” that his children could one day be proud of.

Orridge understand­s the desire to give back. His mother and two older siblings were social workers in New York; his uncle was secretary of state there; and his cousin, David Paterson, is a former governor.

Public service is partly what makes the family tick, though Orridge's path was somewhat different.

He was always the “cool” uncle. The uncle who once worked at USA Basketball, became a toy guy at Mattel Inc. and looked after Shaq's “shoes” as director of global sports marketing at Reebok Internatio­nal Ltd.

That would be Shaquille O'NEal, giant basketball icon. Orridge spent much of his time at Reebok working on the Shaq file, and recalls a trip to Dallas with O'neal in the mid-'90s.

The private plane the shoemaker promised to ferry the NBA star to Texas barely had enough legroom

for him to fit. There were delays, and that was before O'neal instructed a limo driver, while finally en route to a commercial shoot, to stop in front of a 7-Eleven.

He then climbed out of the back of the car, all 7-1 of him, and took a homeless person shopping. There were no cameras. This was just Shaq being Shaq, buying groceries for someone in need, Orridge said, and it was a beautiful thing to see.

“His level of generosity is well-documented, but the spirit of it does not always get captured,” he said.

By the early 2000s, cool uncle Jeffrey and his wife, Carly Gleser, a rising executive at Warner Bros. in Los Angeles, were living in a West Coast “mini-mansion.” They had a pool out back and two fancy sports cars in the driveway, but they gave them up to move to Toronto, a change of scenery, not to mention climate, so he could work for Right to Play.

They later made the move permanent and became dual citizens.

Growing up in New York, the sports-minded Orridge had an image of Canada as a “cool” place, one that was more progressiv­e than the United States.

Jackie Robinson played baseball in Montreal. Bernie Custis was the first Black American quarterbac­k in profession­al football history, and he only got a shot because he went to Hamilton to star for the Tiger-cats. The Undergroun­d Railroad wound north to Canada and freedom. Vietnam draft dodgers found safe refuge here. Orridge and his father, Egbert, had a ball in Toronto, once upon a time, when he was a little kid.

“When you have that kind of history — the Canadian brand — it was one that was open, welcoming and tolerant,” he said.

As an adult, Orridge sees more clearly his adopted home's imperfecti­ons. Canada is not all unicorns, rainbows and Kumbaya. Racism exists, though it's not quite as prominent as it is in the U.S.

That said, Orridge has taken some profession­al knocks in his adopted country. CBC lost the NHL broadcast rights to Rogers Communicat­ions Inc. on his watch, and as CFL commission­er he denied the link between repeated blows to the head in football and degenerati­ve brain disease, a position for which he was widely criticized.

Now he is the head of an unsexy provincial public broadcaste­r, but that doesn't make him entirely uncool. Shaq's old shoe guy can henceforth boast to being the purveyor of Paw Patrol, must-seeTV as any parent with children between the ages of three and six will tell you.

On Tuesday, day two of his new job, Orridge could be found on a Zoom call in his home office in north Toronto. His upper lip was adorned by a moustache he had grown for charity, and that he was committed to shaving, under instructio­n from his wife, by day's end.

Appearance­s aside, Orridge has his work cut out for him. To stay relevant in the cable-cutting age, he hopes to grow TVO'S digital presence, modernize its systems and add to its growing stable of online learning resources for teachers and stay-at-home learners, all the while staying true to the broadcaste­r's educationa­l mission.

Stakeholde­rs, including the province, which chips in about $40 million annually to the operating budget, plus corporate sponsors, such as TD Bank, Ontario Power Generation and the Dairy Farmers of Ontario, as well as individual donors at home, will be watching.

One documentar­y, alas, that they are not going to see is the true, unvarnishe­d, inside tale of Orridge's decades-long friendship with Kamala Harris.

They are both lawyers, after all. Of the soon-to-be vice-president, he will say this: “The importance of her ascendancy goes well beyond just who she is as a person, it is what she represents. It is very cool.”

 ?? PETER J. THOMPSON ?? Jeffrey Orridge, new CEO of TVO, hopes to grow the digital presence of the Ontario public broadcaste­r, modernize its systems and add to its growing stable of online learning resources.
PETER J. THOMPSON Jeffrey Orridge, new CEO of TVO, hopes to grow the digital presence of the Ontario public broadcaste­r, modernize its systems and add to its growing stable of online learning resources.

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