'The first reality show'? Lloyd Colbourne says his TV program blazed new trails
He spent years bringing tales of the Newfoundland wilderness to CBC TV viewers, and now Lloyd Colbourne is telling the behind-the-scenes story of a beloved television program in a new book.
Colbourne was the producer, writer, director and host of Newfoundland Outdoors, an iconic program that aired in prime time on CBC from 1979 to 1995.
His book by the same name is now available for purchase.
Colbourne said the book chronicles the hilarity but also the risk of traipsing through the bush with his sidekick, Bryce Walsh.
"It would just sort of let everybody know that it wasn't all fun. It was fun in a way, but it was more of an adventure," said Colbourne.
"Every film I did was an adventure, because there was some element of danger in most of them."
On the hunt for a popular show
Colbourne said Newfoundland Outdoors started in the late '70s after he did a single Land & Sea episode for CBC Television.
His private film and video production company had been doing commercials for companies like Toyota, Ford and Newfoundland Power at the time,
After his company produced the episode for Land & Sea, CBC producers hired him on a contract to do a full year of shows on different aspects of Newfoundland outdoor life.
It was really the first reality show. - Lloyd Colbourne
Newfoundland Outdoors became hugely popular, to the point that Colbourne recalls that fish plant schedules and town council meetings were rescheduled or cut short to allow people to get home in time for the show's 8 o'clock time-slot.
"Several fish plants let the staff off a few minutes early, quarter to eight or something, 10 to eight, so they could go home and watch Newfoundland Outdoors," said Colbourne.
Doesn't get more real than this
Reflecting back on all those years of popularity, Colbourne said he believes the appeal of Newfoundland Outdoors was that viewers never knew what was going to happen.
Colbourne said he and Walsh often didn't know either.
"It was fly-by-the-seat sort of stuff, that we just went off with our cameras. We might go to do a moose hunt and end up not seeing a moose, and might be enthralled and wrapped up in a family of beaver," said Colbourne.
"It was really the first reality show, because whatever happened we took advantage of it."
But Colbourne said it wasn't easy to take six or seven days in the woods and edit it down for a half-hour television show, and he was often nervous about how it turned out.
"I could see every bad edit, every bad splice," he told CBC Radio's Newfoundland Morning.
"But now, 30 years later, they're still going, so I must have done something right. But at the time, I couldn't bear to look at them."
Fishing for new fans
Newfoundland Outdoors: The Story is Colbourne's fourth publication, with previous books focused on his early life growing up in Twillingate, finding his way in the world, and his years of guiding.
He said the timing for this new book couldn't be better, because it comes at a time when a whole new generation of viewers are discovering Newfoundland Outdoors.
At the age of 86, Colbourne produces and sells DVDs of the show's 72 episodes from his production company in St. John's.
"I have a completely new crowd of interested people now with children that never seen the show," said Colbourne.
"There's a whole new crowd that never ever seen the original shows and they're now watching me on DVD."
Sadly, the co-star of Newfoundland Outdoors didn't live to see the revival of interest in the show. Bryce Walsh died in 2004 at the age of 59.
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