In this conversational video, Tod Maffin recounts the path that led to his own CBC radio program. He begins by describing his childhood fascination with radio, even building a makeshift station under his stairs. In his mid‑20s, as internet audio services emerged during the Napster era, he created three bootleg online stations—one streaming Canadian comedy, another Canadian symphony, and a third called “Tod Radio” featuring contemporary Canadian music with occasional spoken drop‑ins. The novelty of his DIY streaming caught the attention of a CBC executive, who invited him to present a talk on the new technology to CBC leadership. After a Q&A, a senior CBC figure asked what job he would want at the corporation; Tod impulsively expressed a desire to host a live show about technology’s role in Canadian society. The idea resonated, and a week later producer Anne contacted him to develop a pilot. The pilot led to the launch of his live technology‑focused CBC show, and Tod hints at a humorous story about how he later found his co‑host.
Chapters
Hey, so lots of you seemed to like my CBC story last night, so here is another one. This is the story of how I got my radio show. So I had always as a kid wanted to do something on the radio. I had a little radio station under the stairs. I was like the Harry Potter of radio. I used to listen to AM radio when I was like going to sleep at night. And right around like my mid-20s or so, this is when internet audio just started to become a thing. And I— there were services, they were all free back then, where you could give it like a bunch of music in the form of MP3 files and it would turn that into a radio station that would stream on the internet and other people could go and listen to this music. All of it illegal, of course, back in the day, right? That's the way it was. Wild. It was like Napster times. So I did that and I did that for— I made 3 radio stations. One streamed nonstop Canadian comedy. One streamed non-stop Canadian symphony, I think, and the other one that I called Tod Radio streamed like contemporary Canadian music, and I had like little drop-ins of me talking. It was a little radio station, basically. Anyway, someone at the CBC got wind of it and invited me to give a speech to the CBC, because I was giving a lot of speeches back then, to the leadership of the CBC about this new technology, because they were always wanting to sort of keep up on trends. So I explained what I was doing and why I enjoyed it. I was like, "I've got this little bootleg thing that I call Tod Radio and sometimes I'm in there live and sometimes I'm not." About a week— no, actually at the end of that session they did a Q&A session with me and one of the questions came from a fairly senior person at CBC who said, "If you could have any job at the CBC, what would you want?" And something in my head— usually I just like blow those kinds of questions off like a joke— but something in my head said, "This might be one of those moments in a life where something changes." So I said, "Honestly, I would love to host a radio show about technology and how it's used in Canadian society, but I would want it to be live." And they all nodded their head and then they asked me other questions. And a week later I got a call from a producer at CBC saying, "Hi, my name is Anne and I've been assigned to be your producer for your show. So would you like to do a pilot?" Did you not know that? I did. Yeah.
I'm just like imagining how amazing that must have been. It was amazing.
So she's like, "So I've been asked to have a pilot and make a pilot with you." And the show went. And I have a funny story about how we got our co-host as well. So if you want to hear that one, let me know.
