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AT night, Dan Russell
can gaze across Burrard
Inlet from his 21st
floor studio in down-
town Vancouver’s TD
Bank Building and see
the string of lights that
is Lonsdale Avenue.

At 23rd and Lonsdale is
the arena where Russell
worked on Cablevision’s
black-and-white junior hockey
telecasts during the mid-’70s.

“It was the fast community
channel to have black and
white cameras,” he recalls
fondly.

Now it’s the end of the
90s and Russell is celebrating a decade-and-a-half as host of
Canada’s longest-running sports talk radio show.

It will be a special moment tonight at 10:10 p.m. when he'll
offer his familiar “pleasant good evening” to listeners around the
province via the WIC Radio Network and around the world via
the Internet.

On Oct. 15, 1984, Russell debuted SportsTalk on COR AM

600 with shortlived Cariucks’ head coach Bill LaForge as the first
guest. It wasn’t long before LaForge was the Canucks’ ex-coach
and headed for hockey oblivion. Tony Muser, the second guest,
was carly in his rise through bascball’s ranks. The Canadians’
manager in those days is now ficld boss of the Kansas City
Royals.
In the past 780 weeks, Russell has switched radio stations
three times, followed the Canucks to the Stanley Cup final in
1994 and Japan in 1997, launched his own charity golf tourna-
ment and cultivated regular callers with nicknames like the Poet
and the Pauser. One dedicated listener couldn’t resist joining the
nightly hotline segment, so he had to phone while transporting
his expectant wife to a maternity ward.

“That’s the fun of being the host,” Russell says. “The listen-
er never knows what the next caller is going to bring up. They

know Dan’s going to be on at 10:10, but they don’t know quite |
» they're home already.”

what's going to happen when he’s on.”

Russell’s father built him a toy studio where he pretended to
be a disc jockey as a child. In high school, the Richmond resident
volunteered for Cablevision. He graduated to BCIT’s broadcast

NEWS photo Bob Meckin

SPORTSTALK host Dan Russell behind the mic at CKNW's dowr:town studio on
the 21st floor of the TD Bank Bullding. The show turns 15 tonight at 10:10 p.m.

journalism program and was hired during his first year to work
parttime, off-air, at CJOR. The home of broadcasting legends
ike late, great North Shore residents Pat Burns and Jack Webster
was the smoke-filled basement of the late Grosvenor Hotel on
Howe Street.

“I miss that whole environment,” says Russell. “You don’t see
radio stations like that anymore, that was just great.”

It got even better when Russell scored a regular on-air DJ gig
from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m, Saturday mornings.

Russell moved with CJOR in 1982 to Fairview Slopes. In the |
fall of 1984, CJOR had a hole to fill from 11 p.m. to midnight
between Burns’ live hotline show and re-runs of ex-premier Dave
Barrett’s morning program. .

Russeil’s proposed sports talk show was the answer. It worked -
so well, it expanded to 90 minutes, then two hours and finally -_
three hours. When CJOR switched from all-talk to classic rock,
Russell was out of a job. He quickly received four job offers. He
opted to move to CKWX for a year and then made a potentially *
risky move to the FM dial on CFMI in 1989. . :

“Most people had serious doubts whether a talk show could” -
work on FM, it just wasn’t done,” he says. “I remember people
saying to me a lot of people don’t have FMs in their car yet. My -
counterpoint was most of our listeners don’t listen in their car,

The doubters were silenced. SportsTalk dominated the 10 we

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