Vancouver Sun, 8 August 1967
Denis Braithwaite
Toronto (special) – The most interesting name that has come up in all the speculation about a new CBC president is Sydney Newman’s – can’t understand why I didn’t think of him.
Newman, a Torontonian who heads BBC Drama, was in Ottawa last week on a private visit, but though he talked to old friend Judy Lamarsh he insists that he wasn’t offered the job.
Would he accept, if it were offered?
“Yes,” Newman said. “I couldn’t turn my back on it. I am happy in England, but I would certainly want to try this.”
Newman’s qualifications are impressive. Before going to the BBC, where he administers a $20-million operation, he was drama boss for Britain’s ABC-TV network; before that he was with NBC for a year in New York and before that headed the CBC’s drama department.
But his background consists of more than credentials and titles; in Britain he has helped shape the development of TV drama into a recognized artistic force in the country.
It goes without saying that he is pre-eminently the man who understands and knows how to deal with creative people, which in our current folklore has become the touchstone of executive competence for the national system.
“I have trod the boards,” Capt Briggs used to boast. But he was talking about radio plays and little theatre.
Newman plans, commissions and directs drama on a mammoth scale.
Besides his professional credits, Newman has another thing going for him; he has been out of the country for seven years, and therefore can have few enemies, perhaps none at all lurking within the thickets of the CBC establishment.
Despite all these good things, I don’t think there is a chance that Newman will get the job.
It happens that he is not bilingual – which gives me an opportunity, right here, to tell you a bilingual joke I heard recently but haven’t an excuse to drag into this space, try as I might.
This happened at Expo.
A 2-year-old child fell into one of those canals that wind through the grounds.
There was a big hysterical scene before a teenager managed to pull the kid out.
After it was over, the mother noticed a lifeguard standing nearby, looking interested.
“Why didn’t you rescue my child?” she demanded.
“I can’t swim,” the lifeguard replied.
“Then how did you ever get this job?”
“I speak four languages.”
That’s the way it goes in this our dear land.
Sydney Newman’s case is the same thing in reverse.
Indeed, a man who is getting the CBC’s top job is Jules Leger, our ambassador to France. I wonder what his TV background is?
(True, they want him as chairman, not president; but is a career diplomat from external affairs the right man to run the CBC?)
Have a nice trip back to England, Sydney.