'Winnipeg television history': Kern-Hill Furniture commercials now digitized at U of W Archives

Kern-Hill Furniture's commercials from the 1980s, 90s and 2000s are getting new life thanks to a professor at the University of Winnipeg.

Andrew Burke is a professor in the department of English, and specializes in film and television, cultural and popular music studies.

He had heard a collection of the commercials had been acquired by the U of W Archives and he applied to digitize them.

They are officially available for everyone to see and Winnipeggers can forever hear Nick Hill – one of the founders of Kern-Hill Furniture – say "C'mon down".

"These are commercials that anyone who grew up watching TV in Winnipeg in the 80s, 90s, even into the 2000s, are going to remember and probably remember fondly," said Burke. "For Winnipeggers, Nick Hill is an icon."

The commercials have been digitized and are accessible to the public via the school archives' YouTube page. Burke said these are also available for researchers and students and he plans to use them in some of his classes.

"The Kern-Hill collection and these commercials come from an era where there was a greater density and proportion of local ads on television. It is really an era, to some degree, that has passed."

Before being digitized, the commercial collection was preserved on cassettes and there was a risk of degradation and decay.

"If we don't preserve these, we are going to lose these," said Burke. "This was such an essential part of Winnipeg television history, Winnipeg media history, that it seems important to keep a record of them, to understand a different kind of television existed then."

Burke said these commercials can be useful for researchers in many different ways, from those studying business and retail history to people studying local and social history.

"The Kern-Hill Furniture Co-op was a large part and a significant part of the community for a long time."

Looking at the commercials, Burke said they were the gold standard for local commercials and Nick Hill was more than just a local icon.

"What marks the commercials is Hill was absolutely charismatic and absolutely creative. He was obviously very interested in seeing how far he could push the commercial form," said Burke. "I think it's kind of interesting too – just thinking about him, not simply as a local icon and an important figure within retail history in Winnipeg, but also, strangely, as a kind of video artist himself."

The entire video collection can be viewed online.