As a teenager working at the radio and TV station in Thompson, Manitoba, Doug Major repaired two broken tape machines so the 1972 Summit Series could air without the usual five-minute test-pattern breaks between reels. Instead of thanks, viewers called to ask why, if the station could run the series live, it couldn't run everything live. It was his first lesson in the gap between a technician's effort and the customer's expectation.
Before I ever held a service ticket, I learned what every technician eventually learns: you fix one thing, and someone asks why you didn’t fix everything. I learned it in Thompson, Manitoba, during the ’72 Summit Series.
How did I end up in Thompson?
I walked into Thompson, Manitoba cold — literally and figuratively. It was my first job outside the family business, and yes, since you asked, I went there on purpose.
I heard about Thompson from a preacher starting a new church there. He talked about the place like it was some frontier outpost that needed hands. Somehow it sounded like just the place for me.
I applied at one place and one place only: the local radio and television station. I walked in, asked for the manager and applied for a job I was completely unsuited for. DJ.
The manager made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Midnight to six on air, as long as I worked eight to five as a TV lineman in the northern Manitoba cold. Minus forty Celsius — or minus forty Fahrenheit. Somehow it’s exactly the same thing. Plenty cold.
What he really saw was a hungry teenager who knew enough about electronics, appliances and livestock to be useful. He didn’t need a DJ. He needed a lineman — one not afraid of hard work and long hours, who’d work two jobs for minimum wage. Well, that was just too good to pass up.
Why didn’t my DJ career last?
My DJ career lasted about as long as a commercial break.
I got about two hours of training, which was okay. But I had a structural defect, and that was me — an introvert’s introvert. I have never been so terrified in my whole life as I was sitting there alone in front of a two-channel board with a microphone.
Most people think of DJ work as a quiet, solitary job. It can be solitary. But every second was jam-packed. Every song and every commercial had to be logged by hand. The teletype machine never slowed down — news, sports and weather spewed out of it like explosive diarrhea. All of it had to be cut, sorted and hung on the right peg.
They replaced me with a broadcasting-school graduate. A sound choice on their part.
What was TV like on a week’s delay?
My second job — the real one — was technician and part-time switcher in the TV studio. Eight to five doing the lineman thing, seven to eleven doing the TV thing.
The station had two main channels. Both were prerecorded in Winnipeg, shipped to Thompson and played a week late. The videotapes came up in big metal cans, and each tape held about forty-five minutes. There were four tape machines, but only two worked — one for each channel.
That meant we’d play a canned segment, and at the forty-five-minute mark throw up the station’s test pattern and change the tape. It usually took about five minutes. A new definition of “tape delay.”
If the operator or switcher wasn’t paying attention, they could replay large sections of the program they’d just shown — or, worse, play a totally different tape. According to station lore, the tapers in Winnipeg once recorded a “blue” movie and sent it up as an April Fools joke. It made it to air in prime time, just because the operator wasn’t paying attention.
What happened when I fixed the tape machines?
Then came the ’72 Summit Series. We were getting those tapes flown up instead of shipped by rail, so they were only a day late.
I looked at those two broken machines and did what technicians do. I got them back online. Then I’d fast-forward the tape, find a commercial near the end, and switch players without interrupting the program.
No more test patterns. No more dead air. No more blue movies to shield the kids’ eyes from.
I patted myself on the back. I was pretty proud of myself.
What did the customers say?
In a moment of perfect Clamshell Economics, the calls that came in weren’t thank-yous. Nobody called to say what a great thing it was — no long delays in the middle of the program. They were complaints.
“If you can run the Summit Series live, why can’t you run everything live?”
Before I ever held a service ticket, I learned the first rule of technician life: fix one thing, and someone will ask why you didn’t fix everything.
That was the day I learned the gap between technician effort and customer expectation is wider than northern Manitoba in January.