For only the second time in 54 years, Sunday’s Super Bowl LIV falls on Ground Hog Day. An account executive at Chicago-based Highdive, the ad agency repping Fiat Chrysler, saw an opportunity. The agency seized the day, literally, and came up what will surely be the most memorable Super Bowl ad of 02/02 2020: Bill
By the time I started covering television in the mid-’80s, one of the titans of the industry was already switching sides — Fred Silverman. The native New Yorker, who passed away Thursday at 82, did what nobody before or since has ever accomplished — he was the top programming exec at each one of the
In recent years, American networks have revived such classic TV games shows as Pyramid, Card Sharks and To Tell the Truth. Jeopardy! remains one of the hottest draws in supper hour television. Even CBC are in on the games revival with the launch of Family Feud Canada. So how come there hasn’t been a reboot
Still watching broadcast television? Starting to notice that every second 30-second commercial is aimed at the elderly? Supper hour newscasts are the worst. Between reports of the latest atrocities from the floor of the U.S. senate there are ads for miracle cures with side effects that could kill you. They generally show images of robust
I’m not going to pretend I watched a minute of The 62nd Annual Grammy Awards but a lot of other people did. In Canada, an overnight, estimated 1,790,000 tuned in to the music industry salute on Citytv. In the U.S., despite controversies leading up to the telecast, 16.5 million-plus watched on CBS in initial estimates
Canadian viewers who watched the premiere of Star Trek: Picard on CTV Sci-fi last Thursday sent the premiere ratings into orbit. Overnight estimates show the series drew 1,128,000 viewers coast to coast in Canada.That made it the third most-watched broadcast network or specialty channel offering of the night. The total doesn’t even include viewers who
I watched the first three episodes of Star Trek: Picard for this review and I have to report: it was a chore. Remember that first “Star Trek” movie? Way, way back with Kirk and Spock circling the Enterprise for, like, half an hour of forced awe? The early arc of this series, I’m sad to
It’s getting to the point now where I hate getting a call from a producer at the CTV News Channel. Almost invariably, it means that someone of note in television has passed away. Such was the case Wednesday when Murtz Jaffer called to say that Terry Jones had died. Jones, who suffered from a rare