CBC host David Common will step away from the microphone of Toronto’s top-rated morning radio show on Jan. 16.Supplied
CBC has found a proven morning person to take over from Morning Live host Heather Hiscox, who retired on Thursday after fronting the CBC News Network program for 20 years.
David Common, who has been full-time host of Metro Morning on Radio One since 2023, will step away from the microphone of Toronto’s top-rated morning radio show on Jan. 16 to get ready for close-ups on the national morning television show starting Feb. 2.
It’s a return to the small screen for the veteran broadcaster from Winnipeg, who also has held the dual roles of co-host of Marketplace and correspondent for CBC News on camera.
Common spoke to The Globe and Mail on a video call from his car ahead of the announcement of his new gig.
Metro Morning is a plum hosting gig. Usually people leave because they’re tired of getting up early in the morning, but I guess that’s not why you’re leaving.
Metro Morning is a very hard job to leave, there’s no question about it. At the end of the day, I really have a journalistic affinity for national and international news. And that is part of what’s drawn me back to television, where I’ve spent most of my career.
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As you know, the lines are blurring between all sorts of things right now and what we put on conventional TV is just as likely to end up on a social feed, and vice versa. But I’m going home in a way.
What excites you about Morning Live as a format?
I love the fact that it is live, that you are helping people at a point at which we’ve all been, for the most part, asleep. Things have developed around the world and you get to be the first up to tell people about it.
Heather Hiscox has been in that slot for a very long time now. What is it that you’ve admired about how she did that job?
These are extremely big shoes to fill and also very fashionable shoes. Heather defines the word dedication and the word preparation. She intimately understands the news and the context of it. Before she goes on the air, after she goes on the air, she consumes information and so that is absolutely a point of admiration and almost intimidation.
What are your ideas for the show – different from what’s being done right now?
So to be just blunt, I just got this job and we have not had a second to sit down and talk about what we actually may make it look like. But I think we’re really gonna try to play with personalities that we have – and have more chemistry, more interaction, more fun between people. That may change some of the geography of the set. I think you’ll see more people that you are accustomed to hearing from also on the broadcast.
What does that mean?
I’ll give you an example: 7:30 a.m., every day on Metro Morning, I have Marcia Young or John Northcott, the hosts of World Report, in my studio. We have just a bit of fun. It’s family around a kitchen table in the morning. That kind of mentality is what I’d like to see at Morning Live as well. John and Marcia already do appear from time to time on News Network, and I think we would look to capitalize on that.
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We will take this show, as it has been recently, on the road across the country. We’ll also be doing that at times to news events. I have experience in conflict environments. Unfortunately we have a lot of conflict in the world today. We may be taking the show into those kinds of environments.
So you might do a week from Kyiv or something like that?
We could conceivably do that, yeah. My bosses may be finding out about those desires through this interview, but yes, we have the capacity to do that much as our chief correspondent Adrienne Arsenault does that from time to time, right?
Metro Morning’s the number one morning radio show in the GTA. How do people feel internally about the ratings of Morning Live on CBC News Network – and is it something that you’re looking to make more robust?
We always want to have better ratings and News Network broadly has seen an increase in ratings recently. But there are realities about conventional television. There are demographic realities and there are numbers realities. This is not just about the news space and it’s not even just about Canada. And so anything at CBC has to live in more than one place; the product that we package for a live audience on News Network, it’s a very important audience, but what we put there has to live in other places as well.
Can you tell me what kind of car you drive? What am I looking at here?
I’m in a Hyundai electric vehicle, Ioniq 5. I bought it used. We really debated whether or not to do it – and then it was like a really good deal.
When you say we – that’s your family, your wife and two daughters?
Yeah.
How does your family feel about the fact that, once again, you’ve got a crazy job that probably means you wake up at three in the morning or something?
I wake up right now at 4:30 a.m. and I’m on the air at 5:30 a.m. I won’t be able to do that with television because I gotta put a TV face on, but I leave the house eight minutes after I wake up. I plan to continue leaving the house eight minutes after I wake up. I wake up and I’m on.
This interview has been edited and condensed.