Back when CityPulse was ‘everywhere!’
How 1977 broadcast redefined Toronto’s news landscape
Forty years ago, Sidney Lumet’s eerily prophetic film Network was released in theatres, an acerbic satire about a television network so desperate for ratings it allowed its news division to be taken over by entertainment programmers who treated the news like a scripted series.
Barely a year later, ragtag Toronto UHF TV station Citytv launched its revamped news program — now dubbed CityPulse — with a clear mission statement from channel boss Moses Znaimer: “You can decide that news is 24 discrete minievents delivered with the voice of doom, or you can say, as we do, that it’s the daily soap opera of Toronto.”
With the recent departure of Gord Martineau from City and CityNews (now operated by Rogers), the last remaining strand from the earlier, more radical CityPulse has been severed. Martineau’s exit has stirred up many memories from the glory days of CityPulse and reminded us what made the news broadcast so essential back in the day.
Music
Music always played a vibrant part in Citytv’s early output, but never quite as crucially as its role in framing CityPulse. The initial 1977 broadcast kicked off with a thundering Maynard Ferguson cover version of Bill Conti’s “Gonna Fly Now,” better known as the Rocky theme, a piece of music that forever remains linked to the broadcast. When CityPulse split its initial 90-minute running time into two separate shows, a cover version of the Temptations’ “Masterpiece,” performed by Grover Washington Junior, opened the later show (dubbed CityPulse Tonight), its gritty grooves providing suitable afterhours atmosphere.
Audience
Before CityPulse premiered in Sep- tember 1977, local news was as bland as milquetoast, mostly fronted by serviceable, silver-haired older men. Znaimer peppered his “soap opera” with real salt-of-the-earth people, who reflected the community that CityPulse served. Suddenly there were women and people with disabilities, all with diverse backgrounds and a command for what was actually happening at street level. Such equality may be mostly taken for granted nowadays, but in the ’70s this helped bridge inclusion to Toronto’s many multiracial communi- ties. It was also a sage business decision.
Personality
Znaimer, an adherent of communications guru Marshall McLuhan, hired celebrated U.S media fixer Jacques de Suze to help develop CityPulse by binge-watching Toronto newscasts for a month from his hotel room. Suze’s notes suggested firstly that CityPulse define itself by developing reporters as “stars,” as their presence was often more important than the story itself. The first decade alone introduced us to the likes of Dini Petty, JoJo Chintoh, Mark Dailey, Lorne Honickman, Brian Linehan, Bill Cameron, Stephen Lewis, Jim McKenney, Peter Gross, Mary Garofalo, Jim Tatti, Anne Mroczkowski, J.D. Roberts, Jeanne Beker, Colin Vaughn and, of course, anchorman Martineau.
Everywhere!
Part of CityPulse’s electric appeal was the concept of it being “Everywhere!” later repurposed as the subtitle of the station itself. Then-Toron- to mayor David Crombie once famously said of CityPulse: “The city is your newsroom.” With a fleet of branded cars and trucks tearing around Toronto all hours of the day (on slow news days they served as moving billboards), and a reputation for being “the eyes of Toronto,” there was a feeling that nothing could happen without them knowing about it, capturing it on video and reporting it.
Newserials
Astandout hallmark of the early days of CityPulse were “Newserials,” longer, more in-depth reports stripped across the week to give reporters an opportunity to explore complex issues that often had no tidy resolution. Most famously, Dini Petty allowed a crew to follow her pregnancy and film her giving birth, but the subjects ran the gamut from Toronto alcoholics living on skid row (the award-winning “Raymond — No Fixed Address”) to racial strife at Jane and Finch, undercover daycare exposés to crooked cops and underage male prostitution. It was heavy stuff, but always handled with great care and, when appropriate, bold wit.
Legacy
Many of CityPulse’s most remarkable innovations have since become commonplace. Pretty much every news broadcast now finds reporters standing instead of sitting, walking around crowded sets with cameras and the guts of a studio fully exposed, but these were conceits first brought about at City’s old 99 Queen St. E. location. Lone wolf reporters out in the field, shooting, reporting and editing their own stories was a concept pioneered by CityPulse’s very first “videographer” Dominic Sciullo. Perhaps the show’s greatest local legacy comes in the form of the original Live Eye truck bursting out the side of the now City-less 299 Queen St. W. building. Misleadingly marked up with new CP24 branding, the Live Eye was CityPulse’s own Mystery Machine: a defining character in its own right, who still watches over the city it once dutifully served.