Hurricane Hazel McCallion helped storm the Rick Mercer Report to a seasonal high, scoring 1,289,000 viewers last night. The 88-year-old Mississauga mayor was the latest Canadian icon to goose Mercer’s numbers, with both Nancy Green (1,262,000 in January) and Don Cherry (1,169,000 in November) also driving the weekly CBC comedy series to new heights.Getting a
The first podcast of 2009 over on CHML’s Scott Thompson Show takes a look at the best and worst on TV of 2008. You can listen in here.This was the year that the smug, superior look was smacked clean off the faces of network programming executives. What does it all mean in 2009? I’m off
There is so much fallout still falling out over NBC’s surprise announcement this week that Jay Leno is moving to 10 p.m. that is is hard to know where to start. It’s good news for ABC’s Nightline, which is beating Leno and David Letterman and now won’t be ditched to make room for Jay. It
This week on TV Talk with CHML’s Scott Thompson, we review last night’s U.S. presidential election coverage, including that bizarre hologram effect that beamed Will I. Am aboard the CNN studio. Sometimes change can go too far.Maybe the hologram trick worked: an estimated 71 million Americans watched last night’s election coverage, with CNN (7,687,000) besting
Arrested Development fans, rejoice. Fox has officially ordered a new series from Mitchell Hurwitz.It is one of six new shows the No. 1 broadcaster in the United States unveiled today in New York at their annual upfront before advertisers.There is no sign, however, of Intelligence on the network’s new schedule. Creator Chris Haddock (above with
Hosting a little cyber chat today over at TV, Eh? Web mistress Diane Wild has this podcast deal up and running and today at 2 p.m. E.T. I’m chatting with one of the nicest men in Canadian broadcasting, Roger Abbott of the Royal Canadian Air Farce.Just last month, Abbott and fellow Farce fave Don Ferguson
This week’s podcast with CHML’s Scott Thompson gets into the best reality show on television right now–the U.S. presidential primary elections. Listen to our conversation here.The jumping off point this week is the pivotal speech Barack Obama made in Philadelphia yesterday. Obama addressed race the way John F. Kennedy dealt with his Catholicism in 1960,
This week’s podcast with CHML’s Scott Thompson (listen here) gets into the fallout from the CBC pickups and rejections, including the all-too-predictable, knee-jerk joke-of-the-week: ACTRA calling on the government to step in and make CBC uncancel jPod, MVP and Intelligence. Read their boneheaded release here and notice how they can’t even get the name of