John Ross Bio

John worked as a radio transmitter operator at age 14, built his first TV at age 17, and started in the television broadcast industry as a transmitter operator when he was 19.

John was a member of the original "sign on" staff of CBWT-TV in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in 1954. Most of the time he was much more interested in learning the fine details of how TV worked and how it could be improved than in doing his normal job. 

This distraction caused him to mess up many a program, resulting in great  frustration for his employer.   Fortunately for him, in management's search for a useful occupation for him, he was allowed to try his hand at every technical job at CBWT, other than Transmitter operator. His favourite jobs at CBWT were operating the studio production switcher and maintenance.  The unusual breadth of experience gained at CBWT was to influence him throughout his entire career.

John's first experiments in with colour TV in 1954 took place in studio 12 and used a partly mechanical system of colour filters and motors.  The results were mostly unsuccessful but interesting.

When the microwave network arrived in 1956, this gave John access to colour programs from NBC in New York. Unfortunately, a key signal component, the colour burst, was absent, having been removed along the way by passing through the monochrome equipment in CBC Toronto. John constructed a colour receiver using a large plastic spinning disc having colour filters, which passed in front of a monochrome TV tube.  He then devised an ingenious circuit to compensate for the missing burst.  With this he achieved excellent colour reception at home in Transcona.  Many of his friends and the press were able to see such programs as The Perry Como Show and Bonanza in living colour.  This is very historic as his was the very first house in all of Canada to have colour TV, received from a Canadian TV station.  John later bought a 21-inch RCA TV, added the same modification and enjoyed colour TV for more than 10 years before anyone else in Canada had Canadian colour TV.

John also designed equipment to do electronic special effects. This allowed CBWT to do wipes and title keying in Studio 41.  This was the first such equipment to be used in Canada, much to the envy of CBC Toronto. Unknown to John at the time, it was also the first effect equipment in North America to be designed to work with composite video signals. After being in use in CBWT for almost 15 years, the equipment was given to Red River College.  Up to this point, John had never had any formal technical education.

He owes a great debt to Al Fawcett of CBWT and Gordon Waters of CBC EHQ who respectively encouraged him to obtain his engineering degree at the University of Manitoba and made it financially possible.  During university summers and after graduation, John did TV studio design at the CBC engineering headquarters in Montreal. 

He left them in 1963 to establish the broadcast equipment group in Central Dynamics in Montreal, designing and manufacturing TV equipment.  While at CDL where he was Vice President, he headed a group that achieved many world technical "firsts" especially in the design of program production switchers, master control automation and tape editing. 

In 1973 he started his own company Ross Video Limited that has continued the tradition of being a world leader in TV production and distribution equipment.

Today, John has retired to a role of Director on the board of Ross Video. John now primarily enjoys spending time with family and friends, flying or rebuilding one of his planes or managing the local airport.

His son David, who has achieved many of his own equipment design "firsts", now is CEO and daughter Diane is a valued Director of Ross Video.