When Pip Wedge was a child, his parents never worried that he was watching too much television, because there wasn’t any.

Instead, Wedge – christened Philip by his parents so that he might be named Pip, after the Charles Dickens character in Great Expectations – first watched television at his aunt’s house just after World War II.

But he would go on to play no small part in shaping the evolving British and Canadian broadcast sectors.

Now Wedge is retiring after 28 years with the CTV Television Network and more than four decades in broadcasting. For many of those years, he was responsible for buying ctv’s foreign programming – mostly u.s. network fare made in Hollywood – and managing the network’s inventory.

Of course, asking Wedge to describe the secret of successful programming is like having a surfer describe a wave. ‘It’s really an inexact science,’ he shrugs. ‘The reality is, if you bat .500, you’re doing remarkably well.’

Superb administrator

Arthur Weinthal, vice-president of entertainment at ctv, who originally hired Wedge in 1965, insists his longtime colleague is, and has always been, a superb administrator. ‘You can give Pip an assignment and sleep soundly that night, knowing that he will get the job done.’

For the record, Wedge’s path into television began 55 years ago, in his native Britain, under a billiard table. It was September 1940, the war with Nazi Germany had just begun in earnest, and young Wedge had been shipped out to the provinces away from his family home in Forest Hill, southeast London.

Wedge stayed in a local inn, sleeping under a billiard table to protect him against Hitler’s planes and pilots dropping bombs from overhead.

Besides the immediate danger, the war meant Wedge’s schooling ground to a near halt.

University

Had there been no war, Wedge the scholar believes he would have gone on to university and become a teacher.

Instead, returning to London in 1941, he attended an emergency secondary school, learning amid constant air raids and sirens.

The lingering image Wedge has of that time is writing his final school-leaving exams in 1944 as the Germans dropped B-1 – ‘doodle-bug’ – bombs from overhead.

‘These bombs sounded like a motorbike engine. When they came over our classroom, the teacher would announce, `Everyone down!’ and we would crawl under our desks.’ Their fear was that when the bomb’s engines stopped whirling, they would indiscriminately fall from the sky on anyone and anything below. ‘So we prayed each bomb would carry on and hit somewhere else.’

When danger had passed, the teacher would give the all-clear and Wedge and fellow students would rise from under their desks to continue their exams.

By the end of 1944, Wedge had resumed his normal high school studies and then manned a small boat in Portsmouth Harbor alongside his father, ferrying naval personnel and their supplies to their ships.

He next took a job as a clerk in a fashionable London advertising agency, working the switchboard, before volunteering for the Navy in May 1946.

Monitored airwaves

There he was trained as a telegraph operator. Wedge monitored the airwaves each night around Glasgow Harbor aboard his assigned ship. But he also recalls keeping one ear pinned on the American Forces Network radio station. For in the fresh air of change brought about by the war years, the sound of American pop artists like Jo Stafford, Johnny Ray and Doris Day poured into Europe.

Whether it was buying new record lps with friends on Saturday morning or reading the Musical Express cover to cover – then the bible of the music industry – Wedge indulged his fancy for pop music.

One writer in the Musical Express, Steve Race, caught Wedge’s eye, and the young man resolved one day to summon up his courage and meet with this talented man.

That chance came when Race raved in one of his articles about a six-lp set of Stan Kenton Orchestra albums, not for sale in England, which he owned. Wedge wrote him asking if he might borrow them. To which the writer, eight years older than Wedge, said yes.

The rub was Race lived in Wembley, North London, and Wedge lived a long way off in southeast London. So he boarded a train and spent an evening with Race and his wife talking about music and other interests.

Wedge recalls: ‘Steve was entirely charming. We had a delightful evening and I left with his records.’

That night he learnt that Race was a classical pianist besides being a pop music aficionado and a writer. He had been in the Air Force and did stints conducting the Halle orchestra.

It was, Wedge believes with hindsight, by divine intervention that he had met Steve Race. For, a few months later, he had to return the records. So Wedge asked a colleague who also lived in Wembley to bring the records back to Race.

‘If he had taken the records back, I wouldn’t be sitting here,’ Wedge says, tapping his desk at ctv. ‘I would never have maintained my contact with Race.’

By good fortune, Wedge took the records to Race, and received more than dinner and conversation for his effort. A job offer was in the works.

‘We really got on’

‘During our second meeting, Steve was writing his Musical Express column, so I looked over his shoulder, made some comments, which he put into the article. We really got on.’

Not long after, Race offered Wedge a job as his secretary – someone to book his orchestras, pay them, answer the telephone, look after fan mail.

So in June 1950, Wedge went to work for Race. Along the way, he got through the door at the Musical Express and contributed a few concert reviews. In June 1952, when the Musical Express was looking for a reporter, Wedge became a natural candidate.

While on the music publication, Wedge reviewed concerts, interviewed stars and mined sources among London talent agents. ‘If Hambros had stolen Geraldo’s entire brass section, that was a big story.’

Wedge next, in January 1953, became a publicist for Phillips, then launching itself in the British record-making market. But, as ever, he became restless. ‘I enjoyed what I did, but always wanted to be doing something else.’

Then came television. Wedge essentially bumped into Race one night during the interval of an Ella Fitzgerald concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

Race asked at once whether Wedge was happy in his current job and would he be interested in a career move.

Wedge answered yes to both questions.

Race, smiling, let out that he was involved in a consortium applying for Britain’s first commercial tv licence. Until 1952, the bbc ruled the roost in British television. But that year, the British television authority decided that the time for commercial television was ripe, and in late 1954 called for applications.

Now, in the spring of 1955, Race and his business colleagues were two months away from receiving word on their own licence application.

The new commercial tv networks were to have a noble calling. Their mandate, according to the newly created Independent Television Authority, was to provide a ‘high standard of programs and a wide range of subjects.’

So Associated-Rediffusion included in its application the promise of classical concerts from Sir John Barbirolli, the famed conductor of the Halle orchestra in Manchester, and popular music arranged by Race.

That’s where Wedge came in. Race knew him as a skilled impresario, so he was to be general manager of Musical Facilities, a subcontracting company arranging the music for Associated-Rediffusion’s new channel – buying the pianos, arranging original music, supervising recording sessions, forming a music library.

Wedge liked the offer, and joined the consortium, which eventually won the licence to provide weekday programming for a London area audience.

Suddenly, Wedge was walking in the shadow of formidable British figures like Barbirolli and Arnold (later Lord) Goodman. ‘You are star-struck when you are distant from them, but when you meet them, you find they are just human beings.’ Barbirolli, of Italian-French parentage, in fact liked to cook as much as he liked cricket, and served Wedge and his colleagues a delicious spaghetti al dente from time to time.

Turned a profit

He might well have, for Associated-Rediffusion lost £3.5 million sterling in its first year of operation, but made £7 million sterling in its second.

And the money kept pouring in.

How did producers do business during tv’s halcyon days? ‘Typically, you solved every problem by throwing money at it.’

In December 1957, Wedge joined Rediffusion after the company folded Musical Facilities into its network operation. Before long, David Dearlove, manager of Rediffusion’s music copyright department, hired Wedge to find the right music for producers putting together programs.

But, as assistant head of light entertainment, Wedge encountered fierce office politics. ‘I was regarded as ambitious, a bit pushy, and was thereby a threat.’ In short, many feared Wedge was after their jobs.

So Wedge was pushed into becoming manager of quiz programs at Rediffusion. Not a bad career move, because here he helped produce two of commercial television’s most popular programs, Double Your Money and Take Your Pick.

Quiz shows

Double Your Money was hosted by Hughie Green, a Canadian, and had a Groucho Marx, You Bet Your Life program style. The average contestant answered questions beginning at £1 sterling doubling up to £32 sterling. Then more skilled contestants were challenged with questions on specialist subjects like math, history, geography.

Take your Pick, hosted by Michael Miles, featured a signature yes/no question interlude in which contestants answered rapid-fire questions over a 60-second period to earn money.

Wedge had a twofold responsibility: Take Your Pick was packaged for Rediffusion by Miles and his company, so he had to attend the show’s tapings and screenings of the rushes to ensure the game was played above board. ‘I was the company spy, so I was persona not particularly grata.’

And he had to find contestants. Some he pulled out of the audience to answer general knowledge questions. But he also travelled the length and breadth of Britain to find specialists to compete in the skill-testing section of the program.

He sought a mixture of contestants: quirky characters lent comedy to the program, but he also had to find specialists. For the greater amount of money at stake in quiz programs, the greater the suspense. So it was to Wedge’s advantage that Double Your Money contestants go on to challenge the Treasure Trail, where they competed for the top prize of £1000.

Indeed, host Hughie Green fumed at Wedge – always standing in the wings during tapings with fingers crossed – should contestants fail to reach the Treasure Trail. Once, Wedge recalls, an organist fell out at the £500 stage. This, when Green had anticipated that he would return the next week for the final £1,000 challenge, held during Christmas week, and play carols for the audience!

‘I was in Hughie’s eye-line off-stage, and I could see him glaring at me – I was dead!’ Wedge remembers.

Green was, in fact, as inventive as he was demanding. One day, he asked Wedge to find an elephant trainer. That way, they could put the trainer in one soundproof booth and his elephant in an adjoining larger booth.

After doing the rounds of local circuses, Wedge found an elephant trainer. The chap never made it to the Treasure Trail, but the stunt did earn the program immense publicity.

Kids’ programming

Wedge tired of juggling the huge and demanding egos belonging to Green and Miles, and in September 1958 became the manager of children’s programming. But before long, he was asked by Miles and Green to return to quiz programming.

‘They knew they were stars, so they were troublemakers,’ Wedge recalls. ‘They raged if they didn’t get the same camera crew or floor manager each week. We were trying to destroy them, of course,’ he adds with a shrug and then a wink.

Wedge continued for another two years. By spring ’62, he was keen to exit quiz programming. But his path to advancement was blocked.

One supervisor at this time took Wedge aside and complained that he was too flippant, did not take his job seriously enough. Wedge shot back that he liked to have fun on the job. Today he agrees with the supervisor: ‘I might have risen to greater heights had I been more serious.’

‘I plateaued and had little hope of breaking through,’ he recalls of that unhappy time.

But a break did come. Green asked him to help set up Double Your Money pilots in Toronto and Sydney, Australia. As part of an advance party, Wedge arranged studio space at cfto-tv in Toronto and travelled across Canada interviewing suitable contestants.

He repeated the same exercise in Australia.

Then, beginning in February 1964, Carnation Milk sponsored two months shooting in Toronto to complete the quiz show pilot. Eventually, the food manufacturer backed out, leaving the way open for soft drink maker 7-Up to sponsor Double Your Money on the ctv network – 42 original half-hour programs in all – over the 1964/65 season. The shows were taped in Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver before Wedge moved his crew on to Winnipeg, Montreal and Edmonton.

After shooting, Wedge edited the shows at a studio on Yorkville Avenue in Toronto.

A novelty

Spending so much time in Canada was a novelty for Wedge. He had previously done only a few short jaunts onto the European continent.

But what must have looked to many of his colleagues back in London like a bonehead move to a far-flung corner of the Empire, in fact led to a job offer at ctv.

Canada’s largest commercial network began operations in October 1961, offering a network program service of 10 hours each week to its eight privately owned and operated founding affiliates.

Three more affiliated stations joined the network in 1964. A year later, Arthur Weinthal, then executive producer at ctv, was shuttling back and forth between Toronto and Montreal, supervising production in both cities.

Weinthal was looking for someone to oversee production in Montreal, leaving him to do the job in Toronto.

Meanwhile, 7-Up had decided not to renew sponsorship of Double Your Money for the 1965/66 season.

So Wedge became a free agent, and Weinthal and Michael Hindsmith, vice-president of programming at ctv, offered him a job. ‘I had seen him work on Double Your Money and he was very competent and very skilled. He seemed to be a good choice,’ says Weinthal.

Wedge recalls telling Weinthal and Hindsmith: ‘I love the country and if there is an opportunity for a job, I would jump at it.’

ctv offered Wedge $9,000 a year to start, but he asked for, and was given, $10,000. Finally, Wedge rang Elisabeth Kingdom, Miles’ secretary in London, whom he had been dating for a time. Would she marry him, he asked, and move to Montreal?

Off to Montreal

Yes, was the answer, and before long the newlyweds were on their way to Montreal where Wedge joined the network in August 1965. In time, he was promoted to executive producer. Then, in May 1966, the stations took over the ctv network, and looked to cut down on overhead. That meant Wedge was out of a job in Montreal. He was moved to Toronto where he supervised Canadian variety and daytime programming and developed specials.

Also at this time, Hindsmith had gone, and Weinthal had become programming chief. What is more, Murray Chercover was now executive vice-president of the network. So Wedge went to work as executive producer under Weinthal.

It was at this point that Wedge, for the first time in his career, felt uneasy about where he was going. But a door did open to him when ctv was working on a major promotional campaign that had encountered snags.

Wedge stepped into the breach with his writing, production and music skills.

He performed so well that he became promotions manager at the network in September 1968, responsible for all press and public relations activity and all on-air and sales promotion.

No pigeonholing

What impressed Wedge at the time was the way Weinthal and Chercover did not peg him as a music man, or a producer. ‘They merely said, this guy has the qualifications: offer him the job.’

‘This was a much more democratic environment than what I’d known in London. They took me at face value. They knew what I did, and none of my background mattered. This was a key element in my being happy with ctv.’

Within a year, Wedge was promoted to director of development at ctv, working alongside Chercover. This, when the ctv affiliates had now assumed control of the network. Wedge essentially became responsible for overseas sales of network programs, supervising individual programs in development and production.

What is more, Wedge oversaw the network’s development of new activity in international coproductions, especially with American syndication partners Burt Rosen and David Winters. Variety shows featuring, among others, Barbara McNair, Sonny and Cher, Kenny Rogers and George Kirby were produced in Toronto and run in the u.s.

At this time, ctv was also buying more u.s. programming and distributing it to network affiliates. And Weinthal’s plate overflowed with development of new Canadian productions.

So, in May 1973, Chercover made Weinthal vice-president, entertainment programming, responsible for all Canadian production except news and sports.

Wedge, on the other hand, was made responsible for programming and scheduling all u.s. programming alongside the Canadian content.

Just months earlier, in January 1973, Global Television entered the broadcast sector. ‘They saw me coming,’ Wedge quips.

Global added to the competitive nature of the market, although there was little competition between broadcasters at that time, compared with today.

Put simply, cbc, with deep pockets filled with public funds, could buy what it wanted from the u.s. networks. Then ctv bought whatever the cbc did not want. And chch-tv in Hamilton, Ont., the only other major player in the market, bought what was left over.

So, for example, Aaron Spelling hits like The Love Boat and Charlie’s Angels started out on chch before becoming hits and graduating on to ctv and cbc, which offered national rights in succeeding years.

Wedge was similarly unimpressed at first with Hill Street Blues – ‘The demo featured some comedy between cops and suddenly one of them was shot dead!’ – and it too began on chch.

The ctv programmer had a significant comfort level in those years because the broadcast sector was a healthy one. ‘People were used to making money in those days, lots of money. And program costs were lower than they are today,’ Wedge says.

Memorable shows that Wedge purchased over the years for ctv include Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In and Soap, the first primetime soap opera. ‘We paid more for Soap than we had ever paid for anything else.’ The reason: the network paid a premium to the distributor to sell Soap to ctv rather than shop the program around, especially to the cbc.

Such rivalries among Canadian broadcasters naturally drove up purchase prices, especially after Global Television became a major player in the industry during the late 1970s.

Then there were the shows that got away from Wedge, or fell into his lap. In 1978, for example, the cbc dropped the Carol Burnett variety hour from its schedule, and ctv picked it up and made it a hit in Canada. Miffed, the cbc the next year bid higher than ctv for the variety series and got it back.

Programming

When Wedge first became ctv’s programmer, the network had around 65 hours of programming to fill each week that was not left in the hands of affiliates. The network today fills 40 hours each week. Besides primetime viewing, there were soap operas in the afternoon, all narrowly targetted demographically and owned and supplied by Procter and Gamble.

To balance out the network’s Cancon obligation, ctv had a two-hour block in the afternoon to fill for affiliates – 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. at one time, and now 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

The job of acquiring u.s. programming is done each May when Wedge, ctv presidents Chercover and now John Cassaday lead a team to Los Angeles to watch industry screenings of their all-important fall schedules.

The point to remember, Wedge cautions, is ctv has a limited amount of airtime for programming. Out of an available 168 hours a week in airtime, ctv affiliates today feature only 40 guaranteed hours of network programming. And much of that is news and sports: 28 hours on average. Now, only 12 hours of primetime programming – 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. – is there for Wedge and company to supply. Of that, eight hours is u.s. programming, half of which is tv movies.

That leaves only four hours of network serials that are owned and sold by the network.

Getting the right mix in new programming for those four hours is problematic. American distributors have so much individually to make available that they will look to sell a package of programs – possible 40-share hits and also-rans alike.

‘They sound us out’

As Wedge puts it: ‘Basically, once the screenings are over, they ask what you are interested in. They sound us out, then others. Finally, they see what is the best deal they, the distributors, can swing.’

Once this accounting is done, the real bargaining begins. It’s basically a game of chicken between buyers and sellers.

‘You may have to take a show you don’t want to get the one you do want,’ Wedge says. The preferred show may triumph in the ratings, while the second show will predictably fail. ‘Then people will say, `Why did you take that one?’ We had to, as part of the package.’

Wedge adds that he picked up much about negotiating skills from Chercover, himself a programmer.

‘You always have a good sense about what programming you want before the screenings end,’ he says, adding three or four sure winners always stick out each year.

‘But then it is the art of how you get the programs, and what you do with them after they are bought. And I did not know much about either when I first came to the ctv, and learned much from Murray,’ Wedge recalls.

He smiles when remembering the early thrill of travelling as a young executive to New York and Los Angeles – both meccas for the British music and theater businesses that Wedge had cut his teeth on – all on behalf of ctv.

‘It was like going to heaven. Going to Los Angeles, staying in the Beverly Hills Hotel, drinking in the Polo Lounge, this place of legend. I had often to remind myself that I was, after all, Pip Wedge, born in Forest Hill, southeast London, in 1928. North America was a million miles away.’

He adds that the freewheeling business climate of l.a. was one he took to easily. Wedge, after all, had often been regarded as flippant and frivolous in stodgy, stuffy England. ‘Basically, I believed in enjoying what you were doing and getting on with it. I did not mess around with some of the niceties that some people may have expected.

‘So I was probably more ready for the North American environment than the average Englishman.’

Of course, American programming has long been a cash cow for ctv, the profits of which allow the network to subsidize the production of Canadian series and specials.

That makes it crucial that American programs bought each May conform to what Canadian advertisers are looking for.

Indeed, it is no coincidence that Wedge has just been replaced at ctv by Paul Robertson, who came up through the network’s marketing department to now assume the title of senior vice-president, programming and marketing.

For Robertson brings with him a keen sense of demographics – and the bottom line – to the programming role.

Demographic sense

Not that Wedge has no similar sense. He does, intrinsically. But time was ctv would purchase u.s. programs and supply them to affiliates, who were billed whether or not they put shows on air.

Wedge originally bought the programming each May in l.a., then let the network’s advertising department get on with selling airtime to advertisers.

In time, a subcommittee comprising four station representatives, Wedge and Chercover would decide what u.s. programming to purchase. The need for speed came as fears grew that Global or chch in Hamilton – both began to gather stature in the industry in the 1980s – would buy programming before ctv.

But today, the affiliates have far more pull. The revised 1992 affiliation agreement at ctv – in which Baton began a high-profile solo flight – ended the subcommittee and network purchases of programming on behalf of the stations. Instead, the affiliates buy their own programming, competing with the network.

One result: Wedge and colleagues now do a profit and loss measurement on all foreign programming – excepting regular tv series – before it is bought to see whether it will indeed benefit the network and its shareholders. ‘We want to know where the program will be scheduled, what it will pre-empt.’

This measure was decided upon by Wedge, Cassaday and Paul Robertson, then vice-president of sales, last May in the president’s suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel during spring screening season.

Over many years of May screenings, Fred Silverman and Brandon Tartikoff have been among the big American network programmers fielding new series for buyers.

In Canada, his programming rivals at the cbc over the years included, early on, Don Nixon and Bruce Raymond, then Tom Benson and Jack Crane, and finally, Trina McQueen and most recently Ivan Fecan.

Wedge recalls raising eyebrows among fellow buyers after having a tete-a-tete with McQueen at the Polo Lounge during spring screenings. ‘People thought we were carving up programs and holding down prices. But we were talking about nothing in particular, just chatting.

Have to talk

‘It’s too small a business in Canada not to talk to each other,’ he adds. ‘The Americans never talk to each other as they are paralytic about anti-trust charges.’

As for charges that the cbc has become too commercial in recent years, Wedge says the public network always sought out shows that brought in the highest number of viewers. ‘They were never averse to buying shows like Empty Nest and Golden Girls. They would like to have shows that we got, and we would have liked to have shows they got.’

As for the cbc being subsidized in part by taxpayer money, Wedge says the corporation always looked to those within ctv headquarters in Toronto as ‘a bit pregnant.’

‘It was an unfair situation for us, but you can say that until you are blue in the face and it does not do anything,’ he adds. ‘Perhaps other private broadcasters were more frustrated with the situation than I was. I felt one could not do anything about it. Whether some of them felt that the constant dripping of water would finally wear away the stone, it seemed a pretty solid stone to me.’

Besides purchasing foreign programming, managing the program inventory has been a key part of Wedge’s responsibility at ctv. For example, when President Clinton delivered his State of the Union address on Jan. 25, the u.s. networks adjusted their primetime programming accordingly.

This in turn played havoc with ctv’s primetime schedule on Jan. 25 as it looks to simulcast alongside the u.s. network schedule.

So Wedge now had to know all three u.s. networks’ intentions, and communicate these to ctv’s affiliates.

‘Knowing what the American networks are doing, and therefore what you want to buy, where you will put it and best handle it, is part of the programming art,’ Wedge cautions.

Much has been made about the American networks slowly waking up during the ’80s to new competitive threats in their industry, not least from cable tv, videocassette recorders and syndicated programming. Network audience figures tumbled, programming costs soared, advertisers ran for cover amid a fragmenting market, and corporate ownership of the networks changed radically.

Wedge says the Canadian scenario, while similar in parts, was not nearly as dramatic. ‘We never regarded the vcr as a threat. People did rent movies, but much of the use of the machines was time-shifting programs to times that were more convenient for viewing.’

He adds there was never a moment when alarm bells rang at ctv headquarters because viewer figures were plunging. So much was going on during the ’80s in terms of new channel offerings, specialty channels, pay-tv, that fragmentation of the market was inevitable and erosion of ctv’s audience was only slight.

The advent of cable was a major turning point for the Canadian broadcast industry, Wedge allows. But it too had a slow roll-out. ‘Throughout the years of vcr use, and channel fragmentation, our audience has not so much shrunk as not grown.’

But with audience growth not keeping pace with escalating program costs during the 1980s, it was inevitable that radical change would befall ctv.

The first inkling of such change came in 1989 when Chercover announced he was resigning. A year later, John Cassaday, a marketing whiz, came aboard as ctv president. His mission: switch trend lines at the network so that audience numbers would grow as program costs began coming down.

Cassaday, plucked from The Campbell Soup Co. and parachuted into ctv, was no broadcaster. But Wedge points out that he knew tv and what it could do for an advertiser. He was, moreover, a quick study. ‘John quizzed everyone to see what they did, and how.’

Sometimes the process could be challenging indeed. A couple of days after his arrival, Cassaday flew to Los Angeles with Wedge to meet some network people. ‘We hadn’t been on the airplane for five minutes and John says, `What have you done about succession?’ ‘

‘A little early’

Wedge recalls with laughter, ‘I thought, whoops, a little early to talk about that. What do you have in mind?’ Cassaday pointed out that the ctv had never really developed a second-tier of management to take over after the head honchos at the network retired, and that one might be necessary.

A management committee was quickly formed so everyone could work around Cassaday, and the president could learn still more about how top management worked at the network.

Of course, Cassaday became ctv president as the perennial outsider. But Wedge recalls after one year feeling that he had succeeded in creating a new, cohesive team that was controlling costs and raising profits. ‘Television has its own cycle, and once we had been through everything during the first year once, and we were repeating the things that normally happen in the second year – going to California for the second time, wrapping up budgets, finishing the strategic plan – I could judge what had remained the same at the network and what had changed.’

Then, last January, Wedge was asked to take normal retirement at age 65. He agreed, and received as a bonus a six-month consultancy to run until this June. ‘No matter how good I am, John has to give someone younger a chance to get into the network. And if my leaving saves the company money, great.’

Today, as he looks back on a career in tv stretching back nearly four decades, he still pinches himself. In a broadcast business typified by young, go-getting blood, in which careers are made and dashed overnight, Wedge has survived and thrived for 28 years at ctv with the stamina of the Energizer bunny.

‘I still cannot quite believe my good fortune: I backed into everything I got into,’ he says.

Just last month, he delivered a speech to a farewell dinner thrown for him by industry distributors. Looking over the room, he recalls seeing many young faces, and scanning the head table to see men his own age that he now calls friends.

Suddenly, in his mind, he could see his career rewinding, very fast.

‘I just told them that the thing I’m most happy about is that the business is in such good hands. There are good, strong people coming up in all areas of the business, ready to take over.

‘I just said I felt terribly lucky.’