He’s been in the broadcasting business for 70 years and he’s not done yet. 630 CHED’s Bryan Hall is changing roles at the station.
Hallsy, as he’s affectionately known, will move from daily to weekly contributions on CHED’s new morning show, This Morning with J’lyn Nye and Daryl McIntyre. He will also continue in his role as a station ambassador at Edmonton Elks games.
Friends and colleagues of Hall offered their congratulations on a long and influential career.
Bob Layton, a former news director at 630 CHED, said Hall always took time to mentor young reporters.
“(Hall) always had time for the young ones, the beginning broadcasters who had just come in,” said Layton.
“He would take them in his office, sit them down and explain how to make their mark when it came to doing sports.”
Former Edmonton football player and longtime broadcast partner John Farlinger said Hall was a great spokesperson for the local sports clubs, including the university teams.
“He worked hard — he wanted to put a good product together all the time,” said Farlinger.
“He brought energy, passion and enthusiasm.”
Troy Reeb, the executive vice-president of broadcast networks at Corus Entertainment, the parent company of 630 CHED and Global News, said when he was growing up, Hall was one of the people he looked up to when dreaming of one day entering the broadcasting business.
“The incredible connection that he has developed with the audience is something that I’ve often pointed to when I talk to students and other employees about how to be a successful broadcaster,” said Reeb.
Hall got his start in broadcasting in 1953 at the radio station CKUA. He started in news and also hosted a Saturday jazz show called Music for Moderns.
Hallsy didn’t start in sports until later when he filled in for CKUA’s sportscaster Art Ford, who called Edmonton Flyers games in the WHL. Series would be played in their entirety in one city, so Ford had to go to what was then known as Shawinigan Falls, Que. While he was gone, Hall was asked to cover sports.
When Ford got back, the station was so impressed with how Hall handled sports, they asked him to work with Ford, launching Hallsy’s sports broadcasting career.
In 1954, a new station, CHED 1080, got a licence to operate in Edmonton.
Hallsy remembers being at an Edmonton Eskimos game when Jim Brook, a columnist for the Edmonton Journal at the time, asked Hall if he was going to apply to work at the new station.
In early 1955, Hallsy began his first tenure in sports at CHED 1080, staying for seven years before moving to Toronto to cover the Argonauts and Maple Leafs, including three consecutive Stanley Cup wins.
After that, he decided it was time to return to CHED and for the next six months, Hallsy worked only in sales – the only period in his entire career he wasn’t on air – before returning to the sports desk.
But another move was on the horizon when his friend Walt Rutherford over at CJCA called him to the station for a visit.
While there, Hall says program director Dalt Elton approached him and asked if he could call a football game. In 1965, Hall called his first Edmonton Eskimos game and stayed with CJCA until 1993, when returned to CHED, where he’s worked in the sports department ever since.
Hallsy was inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 1989 and the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame in 2004.
Fans will still be able to hear Hallsy weekly on 630 CHED.
— With files from Kirby Bourne, 630 CHED