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The 6 o'clock
SCAN News Team |
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Gary McLaren, Larry McIntyre and Don
MacDonald |
When SCAN first started Mcintyre,
Macdonald and I were known as the Scan Clan. The
origin of the name escapes me now but I do recall we
kicked around a variety of names for that 6PM newscast
before coming up with Scan.
We wanted something short and
catchy. At one time, the 3 of us sort of rotated, each
of us spent one week out of three working the late
afternoon and night run doing the late news. The
other two worked the days, writing, reporting and
performing on the 6PM show, which contained a local and
area newscast, plus another national/ international
segment, and a sportcast, and weathercast.
There was also an interview segment
in the program during which we brought in civic
officials, service club members, local and area
politicians etc.
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Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau on
the SCAN set with Gary McLaren
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Somewhere in those years we brought
in outside people to do our weather reports. Dave
MacDonald and Jim Miller, both of whom were
employed by the federal government Meteorological
service at the Waterloo-Wellington Airport weather
office. They alternated doing the 6 pm weather depending
on which shift, early day or late day they were
scheduled for at the Airport.
The 6 pm SCAN news program was very
successful, so much so that people in the community took
to referring to that news program as - "SCAN'.
thanks to Gary McLaren
SCAN...
where did the name come from?
by Larry McIntyre, SCAN
co-anchor
When CKCO decided to create the
hour-long six o’clock package, Scan was the one
suggestion among many that continued to be put forward,
and with the launch date imminent finally adopted. As a
masthead it already had currency in the News Department.
In the early 60s the News Department had published a
daily one sheet headline newspage under the masthead
‘Scan’ – the morning newsman wrote the content, cut the
stencil, inked the rollers and ran off Gestetner copies,
then delivered them not quite dry to downtown Twin City
restaurants for mid-morning coffee drinkers to ‘scan’ as
a local station promotion.
The initial opening title and
closing credits to the show were an oscilloscope scan of
the audio tracked theme that Pat Ludwig and I had worked
out on the studio Hammond, shot SOF (Sound On Film) by
Doug Lehman, with the word ‘Scan’ flipping superimposed
onto the screen over a live studio shot.
Scan was a major innovation in CKCO
programming: an hour-long supper hour news program that
pushed news viewership back from 6:30 to 6:00 o`clock,
expanding on the previous 6:30 half-hour, initially
straining the resources but driving the expansion of
CKCO`s News programming, bumping out the 5-6:30 supper
hour movie that had been the previous programming
staple, going head to head with CFPL London`s
longer-established Panorama for early evening audience
in Southern Ontario.
As Gary McLaren has remarked, the
word came to identify the six o’clock CKCO news package,
referenced still by long-time CKCO viewers.
thanks to Larry McIntyre
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