Early Life and Career
Roberts was born in Toronto, Ontario and grew up in Mississauga, Ontario. He attended both Lorne Park Secondary School and Erindale Secondary School and later the University of Toronto at Mississauga, and worked for many years in Canadian media before joining CBS News in 1992.
Roberts first started working in radio at the local college station, CFRE-FM in Mississauga. He briefly worked on-air on radio station CJBK in London, Ontario in 1977, before moving back to Toronto to join top-40 powerhouse CHUM later that year as a weekday evening disc jockey. Roberts also worked briefly with CFOS in Owen Sound, Ontario in the 1980s.
In 1979, he branched out from his music personality work to function as an entertainment reporter and co-host with Jeanne Beker of the music newsmagazine The NewMusic on CITY-TV until 1985. He was a video jockey as fill-in host of CITY-TV's local music video show Toronto Rocks, and later on co-owned MuchMusic, a music video channel under the name J.D. Roberts. At MuchMusic he and Christopher Ward appeared as the first on-air personalities when the network launched in 1984. At MuchMusic he also hosted a one hour Heavy Metal video show called "The Power Hour."
He also served as an entertainment reporter and anchor on CITY-TV's CityPulse, and became anchor of CityPulse Tonight in 1987 when Anne Mroczkowski moved from anchoring that newscast to join Gord Martineau on the 6 pm edition.
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