By Ruby Pratka
HAMILTON – Every weekday for the past 20 years, Bob Cowan’s alarm has rung at 2:30 in the morning.
Cowan is the longest-serving anchor of CHCH Morning Live in Hamilton, Ont. The morning show, which serves Hamilton, Halton, Niagara and the surrounding areas, celebrated the start of its third decade on February 12.
Cowan says he enjoys the variety of the popular morning show. “Morning shows are kind of a unique animal in that there’s no specific audience demographic – you’re dealing with viewers from [ages] 9-90. You have to paint with a wide brush to get them all the information they need – news, weather, traffic and interviews.” Virtual Music Fridays and regular “feel-good time” segments have also taken off in recent months.
Cowan, co-host Annette Hamm, producer Don Jonescu and a core group of writers and field producers are at work in the station’s Hamilton studios each day at around 3:30 a.m. Blizzards, summer storms and a pandemic haven’t stopped them. On the day she spoke with Cartt.ca, Hamm had driven to work through one of the worst snow storms of the year. “I was talking to my mother on the phone, and she asked me why I had to drive into work through a blizzard to tell people to stay home!” she said.
The early mornings are perhaps the only constant in the team’s busy days. “There’s really no such thing as a normal day on set, because things are ever-changing and we have to adapt quickly,” says Cowan. “We’re in at 3:30, we start writing, and we have a few short hours to put the whole thing together.” They’re on air from 6 to 10 a.m., and after they say goodbye to viewers, they hit the phones, booking guests for the next days’ shows. “At first, I wasn’t sure I wanted to do another morning show, but then I thought, ‘this is so much fun!’” says Hamm, who hosted an early-morning business show before joining the Morning Live team. “You’re always playing catchup to the clock, and then it’s over and you realize, ‘whew, that was busy!’ The time never drags.”
Hamm and her colleagues enjoy the adrenaline-rush aspect of a fast-paced morning program, as well as the show’s unique rapport with viewers. “We’re all very involved in the community; we’re there for viewers and we do hear back from them about what we’re doing,” says Hamm. Sometimes audience feedback is built into the team’s journalism; a regular segment involving interviews with regional mayors was paused and then brought back due to audience feedback; a recent interview with Ontario Premier Doug Ford included some crowd-sourced questions.
“I really appreciate the personal interactions with viewers; you get the sense that we are part of the furniture because people have had us on in the morning for so long. Longevity helps!” – Bob Cowan, CHCH Morning Live
“We [solicit questions from the audience] quite routinely; it taps into what’s important to the viewers and we know we hit the right notes,” says Cowan. “I really appreciate the personal interactions with viewers; you get the sense that we are part of the furniture because people have had us on in the morning for so long. Longevity helps!”
Recently, Cowan and his team sorted through stacks of VHS tapes and ransacked their memories to present a retrospective of the show’s highlights
for its 20th anniversary. Interviews with comedian Martin Short, astronaut Dave Williams and actress Dawn Wells (best known as Mary Ann on Gilligan’s Island) were among the treasures they unearthed.
Cowan took the opportunity to reflect on the first show. “You never forget Day One,” he says (pictured at right in a promo poster from its first year with then co-anchor Cathy Wegner). “It was a big part of the station’s identity. We had a big party the night before and then went on air the next morning with everyone from head office watching – it was kind of nerve-wracking!” Since then, the show has evolved and gotten more fast-paced – and since the pandemic began, guests appear on the show via Skype while Cowan and Hamm find themselves providing more public health content sprinkled with feel-good content to briefly take viewers’ minds off the crisis.
“We are very, very fortunate that the show has survived all the cuts in the industry,” adds Cowan, “and the fact that it has survived 20 years just shows that we’re delivering something of worth.”
