Harvey Popowich

When I worked for CITV in Edmonton from 1974 to 1977, there was a sound technician by the name of Harvey Popowich. He was considered to be one of the top, if not the top, person in the country at his trade.

He was able to show what he was made from with the In Concert series that CITV did with the top artists of the day. They would come to Edmonton and go through their repertoire accompanied by the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. People like Neil Sedaka, Roger Whittaker, Charlie Pride and Tom Jones made appearances.

I feel that proper credit was not being given. Here was an independent television station in Alberta that was producing programming that was top-notch and being sold around the world. In fact, one year it won an award for the best musical series on television, I believe, at Cannes. CITV won this award competing against the world.

The concert was recorded in 16-track sound and mixed by Harvey Popowich back at the station.

What was quite innovative for its time was the fact that when the program went to air on television, the stereo audio feed was fed to a local FM station. You could watch the transmission and hear it in beautiful stereo at home.

Harvey did a lot of his sound mixing at night. During the day the station was pumping out various commercials and doing things like a live daily women’s show.

I remember one day Harvey had just finished the final mix. The audio room was furnished with the finest sound equipment in its day. The speakers were huge and the sound that came from them was pure and clear.

Harvey wasn’t listening to the final mix on these beautiful speakers, though. He was listening to it on a cheap speaker with about six inches in diameter.

I asked him why, after spending so much time mixing the sound so it was so beautiful, was he listening to the final version on such a poor speaker.

Harvey told me that he already know that it sounded great on the finest sound equipment in the world. Most of the people who would watch the concert didn’t own the finest sound equipment in the world. They watched on their televisions, and this speaker came from a typical television of the day.

It immediately struck me that he was absolutely right. It got me thinking. I often have something I want to say. How often do I prepare my message for the few who have deluxe equipment without realizing that few will appreciate it unless I check it out on what most of the people possess? How often have I tried to communicate something that might have been true, but it just didn’t sound good to the common person? And why? I was more worried about how good it would sound to me to my beautiful ears. I hadn’t taken the time to check on how others might hear it.