Take a spin around 1975 downtown London in this rare footage from CBC's archives
Footage filmed for CBC's Dollars and Sense also shows inside CFPL-TV
It's March 1975, the Eagles are topping the Canadian charts with Best of My Love, and a CBC film crew is following around the staff of London's TV station for a documentary about the business of television news.
Rare footage from CBC's archives, filmed by Rudolph Kovanic for the series Dollars and Sense, provides a glimpse at downtown in the mid-1970s, and the inner workings of CFPL-TV, Canada's second commercial TV station, as it prepares the daily news.
Now known as CTV 2, CFPL-TV was a CBC affiliate from its founding by London Free Press owner Walter Blackburn in 1953, until the late 1980s.
The silent footage, edited into a piece broadcast on March 30, 1975, begins with CFPL-TV photographer Bill Young pulling away from City Centre towers at Dundas and Wellington streets, and heading west.
This provides a view of a number of businesses and buildings that no longer exist, including what occupied the current home of the London Public Library and CBC London's studio.
Young swings north on Talbot Street, turns east and south on Fullarton and Richmond streets, and then parks on Dundas to shoot B-Roll of businesses.
Later, reporter Tim Laing and photographer Jack Schenck arrive to grab the opinions of passersby at Dundas and Richmond streets.
The remainder of the footage shows the large-scale efforts involved in putting on a daily news broadcast in the 1970s, from processing film, crafting on-screen graphics by hand, and typing up scripts for anchor Jack Burghardt.
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