Wednesday night was a nostalgic night, but also an extraordinary night in broadcast network television. There were two half season finales on CBS and Fox: Survivor and The Masked Singer. With the best storytellers in comedy and drama having migrated to cable networks such as HBO and streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and
There’s been a lot of nit picking over the past two days about the nominees for the upcoming Golden Globes awards. I think people are missing the point. This is an awards show in name only. It is a TV special, and the members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association are basically all in on
An easy target every year is the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on NBC. Those of us with long memories still cling to when the parade occurred during our own age of wonder, with folks such as Lorne Greene and Betty White in the booth. It never seemed like an endless infomercial back then. I took
There are two things Canadians are usually very good at – hockey, and saying sorry. Ron MacLean tried to combine the two Saturday night on Hockey Night in Canada following the dismissal this past Monday of his long-time pulpit mate Don Cherry. There were mixed results. MacLean, smarting from a week of sleepless nights, stickhandled
I have a great fondness for Don Cherry. The Hockey Night in Canada icon has granted me some memorable interviews over the years, dating back to my days at TV Guide and The Toronto Sun. We would talk about his vintage Lincoln Mark VI’s, Bobby Orr, and my dad’s stint in the Provost Corps during
The live sketch comedy “Middle Raged” played to a packed audience Saturday night at the Westdale Theatre in Hamilton, Ont. Ex-22 Minutes player Geri Hall and TV writer/producer Gary Pearson (MADtv, Sunnyside),wrote and performed the entire show. The talented duo, friends and neighbours for years in Oakville, basically threw their own lives and families into
Thanks to the phenomenal ratings success of The Big Bang Theory, CTV owned Thursdays for a decade plus in Canada. Before that, Global owned the night for their own long winning streak. While scheduling and linear are no longer everything, as long as there are advertisers, Thursday nights are still a key battleground. Despite the
Over the past five years I’ve had the great good fortune to spend this week in the south of France, attending the annual international TV marketplace known as MIPCOM. I’ve truly valued that perspective, occasionally through the good graces of Canadian government agencies, on the rapidly changing business of worldwide content marketing. Also, the view