Free Anchorboy by Jay Onrait Page B

whether going in the entertainment direction was even a viable option for a complete and utter jackass like me.
    I sent a VHS tape (still prominent in 1999) to A-Channel news director Darcy Modin, and she called back surprisingly fast. Shockingly fast, actually. I should have realized I was immediately in a position of bargaining power, but I was simply too surprised by getting a phone call at all. Darcy told me the entertainment anchor posts had been filled, and she was actually wondering if I might be interested in hosting the station’s brand new morning show,
The Big Breakfast
. Years later Darcy would reveal that her first two choices for the job had fallen through over, surprise, money. Turns out A-Channel was a bit desperate. Desperation! The gateway to opportunity! (That was an alternative title for this book.)
    While travelling in England in the summer of 1998 I had seen the U.K.’s version of
The Big Breakfast
on Channel 4 with Johnny Vaughan and Denise Van Outen, and it seemed like a laugh riot and something I’d love to try. Darcy offered to send me a few VHS tapes of Calgary’s
Big Breakfast
show starring Dave Kelly and Jebb Fink so I could watch them and have an idea of what I might be getting myself into. They arrived a couple of days later, and I popped them into the VCR at my apartment near the legendary Bessborough Hotel in downtown Saskatoon. I was immediately captivated by the show. Dave Kelly was the absolute perfect morning show host, like a young Regis Philbin. Perky, friendly, good-looking, but not
too
good-looking, the guy positively radiated energy, but not in an
annoying
way. The guests and subjects he tackled were actually interesting to me. Local restaurant chefs, local bands, and local entertainment happenings. To sum up, the whole thing was very
local
.
    The thing I liked best of all was the free-flowing nature of the show and the sense that the hosts were genuinely enjoying themselves. While
Sportsline
had been a very structured and classic-stylenightly highlight show featuring teleprompter reading, highlight reading, and a bit of occasional banter,
The Big Breakfast
was pretty much the exact opposite: three hours of pure mayhem on the prairies. No script, no prompter, no rules! The formula was relatively simple: One main host in the studio, another co-host on remote, and a news anchor, preferably female, who bantered frequently with the main studio host and kept the show a little bit grounded. It was, for all intents and purposes, a note-for-note rip-off of Citytv’s
Breakfast Television
format that had been so successful in Toronto. Without all that pesky traffic and transit reporting getting in the way of the fun.
    Darcy liked the demo tape I had sent her for the entertainment reporter job but wanted to see something more. “Could you head out onto the street in Saskatoon and interview people and ask them interesting questions?” Um, no, I’m pretty sure me stealing a camera for an afternoon would arouse the suspicions of my current boss in Saskatchewan, I replied.
    “Well, I need to see something more than just you reading highlights. I need to know you have the personality to pull this off.” I should point out that at the time I wasn’t exactly dressing as the Phantom of the Opera and screaming at the viewer every five minutes like I did on
SportsCentre
. Other than dressing up in an afro wig and disco outfit for Halloween I had kept things pretty normal at
Sportsline
(admittedly, dressing in an afro wig might not be considered “pretty normal”). The demo tapes I was sending out reflected a young, competent, but fairly boring broadcaster. Not much “personality” to be seen there. Luckily, I have friends who are a lot more talented than I am.
    My friend Jeff Cole was in my class at Ryerson and is now a highly sought-after freelance television director and cameraman in Toronto. He was the guy at Ryerson that
everyone
wanted to have working on their projects, because he was