Geoff Stirling
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Geoffrey William Stirling (born St. John's, 1921) is the owner of a number of media outlets in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador – specifically CJON-TV, the province's dominant television station; radio station CHOZ-FM; and The Newfoundland Herald, a weekly news and TV listings magazine.
In some circles, Stirling is regarded as an eccentric for the way in which he has used his media outlets to promote a variety of personal interests such as eastern mysticism and intestinal health. For example, he devoted many hours of, often unscheduled, broadcast time to conversations with gurus such as Ram Dass and Swami Shyam and to a variety of esoteric subjects ranging from pyramids to unidentified flying objects. When he watched his own television station he would sometimes phone Master Control to order that a favorite tape immediately preempt the current broadcast or that the technician apply a particular effect to the screen. One widely repeated story holds that Stirling once called the station during the NTV Evening News and demanded that they broadcast Inspector Gadget immediately, prompting them to play the cartoon in the corner of the screen throughout the remainder of the program.
Stirling appeared in the 1974 documentary film Waiting for Fidel about a trip he made to Cuba along with former Newfoundland premier Joey Smallwood and director Michael Rubbo.
Geoff Stirling supervised the creation of the graphic novel Atlantis, featuring the superheroes Captain Atlantis (a.k.a. Captain Newfoundland) and Captain Canada, and drawing on elements of Canadian history as well as New Age philosophy.
In 2001, Stirling was inducted into the CAB Broadcast Hall of Fame. He currently splits his time between Torbay, Newfoundland and Wickenburg, Arizona.
