International headlines dominated the news on June 4, 1989; a day that otherwise could have been just another sleepy Sunday. The Ayatollah Khomeini was dead in Iran and a massacre had begun in Beijing. In Canada it was a day to celebrate as Toronto's SkyDome officially opened its famous retractable roof.
The CBC's TV schedule below is drawn from the TV Guide for June 4-11, 1989. The radio schedule originally ran in the CBC Radio Guide for June 1989.
CBC Classics are those CBC programs that have remained in the Canadian memory due to their popularity, quality and sheer longevity.
The CBC in 1989
In 1989 the CBC made its foray into the ever-expanding "500-channel universe" with Canada's first 24-hour cable news channel: Newsworld. It was the world's second all-news channel after CNN in the United States. Unlike the main CBC network, Newsworld was funded not with public money but through commercial revenues and cable subscriber fees.
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The year kicked off with Patrick Watson's TV series The Struggle for Democracy. The program took Watson around the globe to explore the origins of democracy, its pros and cons, its present-day condition and its future prospects.
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With the launch of the 1989-90 TV season, the CBC's vice president of English Television, Denis Harvey, announced that efforts to "Canadianize" the prime time schedule were continuing. To that end, the CBC introduced The Kids in the Hall and brought back popular programs such as the comedy Codco, the drama Street Legal and the cartoon The Raccoons.
LINKS
Topic from Les Archives de Radio-Canada on the same subject
CBC Classics are those CBC programs that have remained in the Canadian memory due to their popularity, quality and sheer longevity.
