PLUME: Was there a perception that in order to make it in a certain arena, you had to make it outside of Canada?

MORANIS: I think it got to a point where one understood that it wasn’t the limitations of the border or any sort of Canadian domestic cultural identity or the lack of it that determined that, but the realization that in order to make it one had to be in the largest market, and one had to be around the people that were also making it. And no different than a kid that would come out of Idaho or Texas or Philadelphia. Whether you were in Vancouver or Toronto or in rural Alberta, if you wanted to be on the stage you wanted to go to New York, and if you wanted to be in television, you wanted to go to Los Angeles.

PLUME: And if you wanted to be in radio where did you go?

MORANIS: In radio you could go down the street probably, and if you were good you’d probably get offers from bigger markets and you’d work your way up.

PLUME: What was your personal journey? What radio station did you start at?

MORANIS: Well, my personal journey was an accident that started with a cousin of mine at the age of 15. We were both 15. He heard a deejay on the radio late at night make a mistake about… something about cars. And my cousin knew a lot about cars. So he called up the deejay to correct him and the deejay invited him downtown to the station to take a look, and ultimately he trained him to spin records. I would later find out that at that radio station they had what they called operators. They’re the producers or the engineers, but they call them operators so they don’t have to pay them a lot. And they spin the records for the announcer in the booth. Well, the guy that worked from midnight ’til six in the morning didn’t have an operator. He had to do it all himself. Which meant running to the library and picking the records, picking the cartridges with the commercials, keeping the log, filing all that stuff. Setting up, cueing. All of the stuff required… All of the technical stuff. And he just wanted to be like the guys during the day where he could sit in the booth, drink coffee and read the paper, and talk on the phone and feel like a big cheese. So he invited my cousin down so he would teach him, teach my cousin, how to do all that work. And subsequently a year or two later when I became an all-night man, I did the same thing. I trained a whole bunch of kids on the all-night show. So I got to pretend that I was a big cheese sitting in a booth. My cousin got the job, and worked there for about a year. I came back from summer camp in 1970 and he said to me, “Do you want to work here?” and I said, “Do you think I’d know… I could do that?” and he said, “Sure, I could teach you how to do it.” Within a few months the two of us were basically running the station. We held down all the weekend shifts and filled in for guys during the weekdays. Somehow, I managed to keep up my school work. And then I discovered that when I would tell the announcer -or make a suggestion to the announcer – as to what to say over the front of the record or in between records based on the name of the song or what was happening in the news, that that was called writing. And I got a little bit of a reputation for having a decent sense of humor, and they asked me if I wanted to go on the air. So, that’s how I got my first on-air job.

PLUME: Did you have an appreciation of what you were doing at the time?

MORANIS: I was having so much fun, and I could see that the announcers that I was working with were also having fun, and that was coming across on the air. And I think one of the first great compliments I ever had paid to me in the wide world of show business was when the program director of the radio station said to me that he could tell when I was on the board. That was the technical term for operating or producing a show. He could tell when I was on the board because the station sounded different.

PLUME: Did he describe what the difference was?

MORANIS: I knew what the difference was. Not only was I running a tight show, but the announcer sounded better because I knew how to produce them. I knew how to get the best out of them. I knew how to make them feel good about themselves. How to get their voice sounding right for the radio. How to give them material that they could work with. And it was very satisfying.

PLUME: Was there a perception beyond that satisfaction that a better satisfaction would actually come from being on that mic yourself?

MORANIS: It never occurred to me at the time, I don’t think.

PLUME: At what point was that threshold crossed?

MORANIS: The realization?

PLUME: The realization that you got a bigger kick out of actually being the on-air performer.

MORANIS: It took a while for me to feel that kick because I didn’t have any professional performance experience. It was already a major market. This was Toronto we were talking about. The guys I was spinning records for were all in their 30’s and 40’s and I was 19 or 18. And I hadn’t worked my way up from any small markets. So when he offered me the all-night show, I had to take the opportunity because it was just too challenging. But it took me a long time to get really comfortable and free enough to begin to tap into what my skills and talents might ultimately turn out to be.

PLUME: How would your discomfort exhibit itself at that point?

MORANIS: I think my voice might have been up a little. Half an octave higher than it probably needed to be. I think I was stiff and really couldn’t find the same kind of material that I was able to create for announcers that I was operating for until I got very comfortable performing myself.

PLUME: How long would you say that period took?

MORANIS: I can’t remember. It also was during that whole period when I was spinning records, it was much more of a middle-of-the-road kind of format and what coincided with my transition on air was a trend in broadcasting that… at that time, which lasted a little while, in the 70s, which tightened up the musical aspect of the format and took out more and more of the personality. So much of what fell into the responsibility of the announcer was actually a very repetitive, call letter, buzzword promotion lines, contests, promos, as well as the requisite song titles and such. It was pretty tight stuff.

PLUME: Was this the beginning of the rise of playlists on these stations?

MORANIS: I think playlists had preexisted that, but it was the beginning of the rise of very, very tight AM programming, as FM was starting to come into play and offer an alternative to it, and ultimately led to the demise of AM radio because it took away all of the personality as the personality was showing up on FM.

PLUME: Did you sense that process happening?

MORANIS: Oh, sure. It was right in front of us, because we had a sister FM station and we saw it happening.

PLUME: Was there a perception that you eventually had to jump out of that and head to FM?

MORANIS: No, because at that time I was still finishing high school and on my way to college. So I didn’t even see broadcasting as a career choice.

PLUME: What did you see as a career choice?

MORANIS: I didn’t know. I grew up in a culture, in a household, in an environment where I was under the impression that I would have to do something professional and in the words of my parents, “legitimate.”

PLUME: Was there ever a perception of what exactly fell into legitimate?

MORANIS: No, but I remember my father saying, “You can be absolutely anything you want. A doctor, a lawyer, or an accountant.”

PLUME: Well at least they gave you three options…

MORANIS: Right.

Continued below…

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