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
Thursday night at 8 p.m., the hour-long final episode of The Big Bang Theory will bring to an end one of the greatest success stories in TV history. The show CTV took a chance on in 2007 will have racked up ten, consecutive No. 1 finishes for an entire season. Not American Idol, not The
As someone old enough to have watched Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In back in the late ’60s, early ’70s, I was horrified by the shoddy salute Netflix dumped into its streaming service Tuesday. It was offensive and abysmal, and, as Edith Anne used to say, “That’s the truth. PFFFFT.” The original Laugh-In (1968 – 73) was
“What’s a Tim Conway?” a character once asked on The Simpsons. “Oh, about 128 pounds,” came the reply, voiced by Conway himself. Now it is 2019, and there is a generation out there who really are asking, “What’s a Tim Conway?” Those of us who grew up with The Carol Burnett Show as well as