A few weeks ago I was invited back to Mike Boon’s Toronto Mike podcast, this time to kick out the TV theme song jams. I played it pretty close to my wheelhouse for all things ’60s and ’70s, so it had quite a retro vibe, for which I make no apologies. The brassy, audacious theme
Veteran character actor Sean McCann’s busy career spanned six decades in Canadian television. He passed away last week in Toronto at 83. The actor was starring with Jayne Eastwood in the children’s series Noddy when I interviewed him in 1998. The ambitious and entertaining TVOntario/BBC production boasted a toy-strewn set, with Katie Boland among the
Earlier this month at the Corus Upfront in Toronto, I had the good fortune to meet and interview two of the stars of The Young and the Restless: Amelia Heinle (Victoria Newman, left) and Melody Thomas Scott (Nikki Newman). Their long-running CBS daytime serial is still one of the most popular shows on Global, ranking
This month marks the 50th anniversary of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s recording of the single “Give Peace a Chance” in a Montreal hotel room. The makeshift studio was Room 1742 of the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel in the heart of the city, where the Lennons drew press from all around the world with their
Podcaster Mike Boon, a.k.a. “Toronto Mike,” invited me back on his show Monday to “kick out the jams.” Mike, a fellow Michael Power grad, who, as he liked to point out, graduated from that high school many years after I did, invites all manner of media types over to his basement studio and quizzes us
How vital a figure was John Logie Baird in the invention of television? It was once quipped in the UK that, in the years since Logie’s work helped make commercial television a reality, “TV had gone from Baird to worse.” Saturday in Toronto, the Scottish-born inventor was saluted at Moses Znaimer’s MZTV Museum where a
Wednesday night’s “Live in Front of a Studio Audience: Norman Lear’s ‘All in the Family’ and ‘The Jeffersons’” was an uplifting homage; a sweet valentine to TV in the ’70s. If you’re old enough to have watched these classic sitcoms back in the day, then this night was for you. I could have just looked
Brace yourselves children: Archie Bunker is back. The landmark sitcom from the ’70s returns Wednesday night on ABC with the 90-minute special, Live in Front of a Studio Audience: Norman Lear’s ‘All in the Family’ and ‘The Jeffersons. Late night host Jimmy Kimmel — who grew up a big fan of both comedies — and