“Are you the Phil Franz-Warkentin from the radio?”
Many people have asked me that question over the past 22 years, and the answer’s always “yes.”
If listening to an AM station (and even a few FM stations) playing country music across the Prairies, it was often me they heard rattling off futures prices and trying to explain why they went up or down on any given day.
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Don Bousquet began broadcasting market reports live from the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange more than 50 years ago. When I started in 2003, Don was the voice of the show, and I was the backup to the backup — more often working the controls in the off-site recording booth than on the mic.
At that time, there was still an active trading floor in Winnipeg, where men (and it was 99 per cent men) in colourful jackets waved their hands and yelled while trading futures.
We had a tiny cubicle on the edge of the action and called in the reports by phone to the office recording studio.
The show, complete with the authentic hum of trade, was recorded to cassette tape and to a state-of-the-art for the time digital answering machine. Radio stations across the Prairies would dial in and re-record the show off the machine.
The trading floor was shuttered in December 2004 as the market moved to an electronic platform, but the radio reports went on — now relying on the internet and phone calls to get the news. Eventually the answering machine/cassette tape system was mothballed in favour of uploading MP3s online.
Bousquet passed away in 2010, but the radio reports continued with a new cast of voices and technologies.
The prominence of broadcast radio has faded over the years, and the reports that brought me that slight sliver of Prairie fame are getting harder to find on the radio dial. However, the information in those reports remains as essential as ever.
When I started on the radio, I heard stories of my grandpa back in the day pulling his pickup to the side of the road when the market report came on to jot down the daily prices.
If he were still alive and farming today, he could find the price of anything at anytime in (almost) any place with the push of a smartphone button. He could watch me on YouTube, visit the Western Producer Markets Desk online or read an emailed newsletter while sitting at the coffee shop.
And who knows, maybe someday I’ll even be asked if I’m the Phil Franz-Warkentin from TikTok.
