Earl Cameron was English Canada’s first noteworthy TV news anchor, once known as “Mr. CBC News.” Unlike his successors, however, Cameron was a presenter in the British tradition, not a journalist in the American tradition, and he fell victim to the professionalization of television news during the 1960s.

The news service of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was created in the early years of World War II and modeled on the style of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The key figure was Dan McArthur, the first chief news editor, who believed that broadcast news should be delivered in a calm, neutral fashion, free of any showmanship or editorializing. McArthur wanted the news to appear “authoritative”—meaning the news reader must act as an impersonal presenter of the news text.

Cameron was trained in this tradition. He had begun to deliver the National News Bulletin in 1944, the year he joined the CBC, and remained a top CBC radio announcer throughout the 1950s. Although he had little or no experience in television, he succeeded to the job of reading the nightly 11:00 P.M. TV news in 1959, probably because of his reputation as a top announcer.

For the next seven years, Cameron was almost unchallenged as the voice of the news, since the rival CTV News, born in 1962, lacked the resources to match the quality of CBC’s The National (then called CBC Television News). He obeyed the rules laid down long ago by McArthur—he appeared solid, even bland, and spoke in measured, careful tones that avoided all hint of emotion or bias. “No matter what Earl Cameron reads,” noted one critic, “he makes it sound less alarming than it sounds coming from someone else.” Within a few years, The National had earned a reputation as more being reliable and believable than newspapers and radio.

As the 1960s progressed, however, Cameron looked increasingly outdated. He was not, in any sense of the word, a journalist: “I just read the words,” he once told Knowlton Nash, who would later anchor The National. Such an attitude did not sit well with the new people who had entered the ranks of CBC News. First, Cameron was prohibited from narrating commercials, a task that had been common amongst staff announcers as a source of extra revenue. His participation in such a crass business as selling toothpaste apparently undermined the credibility of the news. Then Bill Cunningham, the executive producer of news and an admirer of Walter Cronkite, proposed a sweeping change in the character of the CBC news service along the lines common in the United States. He urged a longer newscast, 18 minutes instead of 13 during the week, more pictures and fewer talking heads, more coverage across Canada (rather than just Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto), and, above all, more “pizzazz.” The changes would require that The National be delivered by a newsperson: only a journalist could properly convey the significance of the news to the viewing audience.

The argument was not wholly specious: it was true that viewers expected the anchor to understand the news. However, the key was the performance of the anchor, his or her ability to act as a storyteller, to present the news items in a coherent and organized fashion that would serve to make clear what happened. An announcer could carry out this crucial task as well as, or better than, a journalist. Whatever the merits of Cunningham’s argument, it apparently swayed CBC management. Cameron was replaced in 1966 by an actual journalist. Ironically, union regulations prevented his frustrated successor from writing or editing The National, a situation that was not remedied until many years later. Only a few of the recommendations of Cunningham’s report were effectively implemented, and he himself was soon removed as executive producer.

Cameron did not immediately disappear from Canadian screens. He became the host of Viewpoint, a talking-head program that ran for about five minutes after The National as a vehicle for individual opinions on public issues. But, according to one of his compatriots, Cameron remained unhappy over his treatment and eventually took early retirement from the CBC, a victim of changing fashions.