Byron MacGregor (March 3, 1948 – January 3, 1995) was a
Canadian
Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...
news anchor and news director.
Career
Born Gary Lachlan Mack in
Calgary
Calgary ( ) is the largest city in the western Canadian province of Alberta and the largest metro area of the three Prairie Provinces. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806, makin ...
,
Alberta
Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...
, he became, on his twenty-second birthday, the youngest news director at
AM radio
AM broadcasting is radio broadcasting using amplitude modulation (AM) transmissions. It was the first method developed for making audio radio transmissions, and is still used worldwide, primarily for medium wave (also known as "AM band") transm ...
station CKLW
CKLW (800 AM) is a commercial radio station in Windsor, Ontario, serving Southwestern Ontario and Metro Detroit. CKLW has a news/talk format. It features local hosts in morning and afternoon drive times, with syndicated Canadian hosts in midd ...
in
Windsor
Windsor may refer to:
Places Australia
* Windsor, New South Wales
** Municipality of Windsor, a former local government area
* Windsor, Queensland, a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland
**Shire of Windsor, a former local government authority around Wi ...
,
Ontario
Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...
, which also served
Detroit
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...
,
Michigan
Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...
, as well as
Toledo and
Cleveland
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...
in
Ohio
Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...
and covered twenty-eight states and six provinces. This was during its "Big 8/20-20 News" period, and also around the time American company
RKO General
RKO General, Inc. (previously General Teleradio, RKO Teleradio Pictures, and RKO Teleradio) was, from 1952 through 1991, the main holding company for the noncore businesses of the General Tire, General Tire and Rubber Company and, after General Ti ...
was forced to sell the station, due to a change in Canadian ownership rules that prohibited foreign firms from controlling Canadian licensed stations.
In 1973, he read a Toronto newspaper editorial written by
Gordon Sinclair
Allan Gordon Sinclair, OC, FRGS (June 3, 1900 – May 17, 1984) was a Canadian journalist, writer and commentator.
Early life
Sinclair was born in the Cabbagetown neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario, the son of George Alexander and Bessie Gol ...
of
CFRB
CFRB (1010 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is owned by Bell Media and carries a News/Talk radio format. Its studios and offices are in the Entertainment District at 250 Richmond Street West.
CFRB is a clea ...
in
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
, a
commentary about America. MacGregor then read the patriotic commentary on CKLW Radio as part of a public affairs program and, due to the huge response, he was asked to record "The Americans" with "
America the Beautiful
"America the Beautiful" is a patriotic American song. Its lyrics were written by Katharine Lee Bates and its music was composed by church organist and choirmaster Samuel A. Ward at Grace Episcopal Church in Newark, New Jersey. The two never m ...
" performed by The
Detroit Symphony Orchestra
The Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) is an American orchestra based in Detroit, Michigan. Its primary performance venue is Orchestra Hall at the Max M. Fisher Music Center in Detroit's Midtown neighborhood. Jader Bignamini is the current music d ...
as the background music. Both MacGregor and Sinclair released recorded versions of the commentary. MacGregor's version of the record (released on Detroit-based
Westbound Records
Westbound Records was a Detroit-based record label founded by Armen Boladian in 1968. It had a distribution deal with Janus Records from 1970 to 1975, but then it switched distribution to 20th Century Records during 1975 and 1976, but again switc ...
) became a bigger hit than Sinclair's in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, reaching #4 on the ''
Billboard
A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...
''
Hot 100
The ''Billboard'' Hot 100 is the music industry standard record chart in the United States for songs, published weekly by '' Billboard'' magazine. Chart rankings are based on sales (physical and digital), radio play, and online streaming ...
chart
A chart (sometimes known as a graph) is a graphical representation for data visualization, in which "the data is represented by symbols, such as bars in a bar chart, lines in a line chart, or slices in a pie chart". A chart can represent tabu ...
the week of February 9, 1974. It became a
gold record
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile meta ...
. In Canada, MacGregor's version hit #42, while Sinclair's hit #30. His recording has sold over three-and-a-half-million copies,
and all of his proceeds have been donated to the
American Red Cross
The American Red Cross (ARC), also known as the American National Red Cross, is a non-profit humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief, and disaster preparedness education in the United States. It is the desi ...
. MacGregor was honored with the "National Americanism Award".
MacGregor was known for his deep voice and high-energy announcing style at CKLW, and for writing copy in a manner that was compared to that of sensational tabloid newspapers. He later made the transition to a more traditional anchoring and interviewing style when he moved to
WWJ Newsradio 950, the
CBS Radio
CBS Radio was a radio broadcasting company and radio network operator owned by CBS Corporation and founded in 1928, with consolidated radio station groups owned by CBS and Westinghouse Broadcasting/Group W since the 1920s, and Infinity Broadc ...
all-news station in Detroit, where he served as both morning and afternoon drive anchor during his thirteen-year occupancy. MacGregor also became the first newsman in Detroit to simultaneously anchor prime-time newscasts on both radio (WWJ) and television (
WKBD-TV
WKBD-TV (channel 50) is a television station in Detroit, Michigan, United States, affiliated with The CW. It is owned by the CBS News and Stations group alongside CBS owned-and-operated station WWJ-TV (channel 62). Both stations share studios on ...
50).
By the mid-1980s, MacGregor held dual citizenships in Canada and the United States. He died on January 3, 1995, from
pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severity ...
. His funeral took place at the McCabe Funeral Home in
Farmington Hills, Michigan
Farmington Hills is a city in Oakland County in the U.S. state of Michigan. Part of the affluent suburbs northwest of Detroit, Farmington Hills is the second most-populated city in Oakland County, after Troy, with a population of 83,986 at the 20 ...
, and at the
Shrine of the Little Flower Catholic Church in
Royal Oak, Michigan
Royal Oak is a city in Oakland County in the U.S. state of Michigan. An inner-ring suburb of Detroit, Royal Oak is about north of Detroit's city limits. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 57,236.
Royal Oak is located along th ...
.
Having died two months short of his 47th birthday, he was survived by his wife of nineteen years, Jo-Jo Shutty-MacGregor. She was the first female helicopter news and traffic reporter in
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
, and today works for WWJ and
WOMC
WOMC (104.3 FM, "104.3 WOMC") is a commercial radio station in Detroit, Michigan. It airs a classic hits radio format and is owned by Audacy, Inc. The transmitter and studios are both located on American Drive off 11 Mile Road in Southfield, Mi ...
and the Metro News Networks. MacGregor was also survived by his sister, Leilani Harvie; by his mother, Murdena MacGregor Mack; and by his brother,
Hudson Mack, who was news anchor at
CIVI-TV
CIVI-DT (channel 53) is a television station in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, part of the CTV 2 system. It is owned and operated by Bell Media alongside Vancouver-based CTV station CIVT-DT, channel 32 (although the two stations maintain s ...
in
Victoria, British Columbia
Victoria is the capital city of the Canadian province of British Columbia, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of 91,867, and the Greater Victoria area has a population of 397,237. Th ...
.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Macgregor, Byron
1948 births
1995 deaths
People from Calgary
Canadian radio personalities
Radio personalities from Detroit