UPDATED WITH CORRECTED OVERNIGHT TOTALS: The overnight, estimated tally for Bell Media’s share of the Super Bowl audience suggests that up to 40% the Canadian football audience opted to watch the game — and the American ads — on Fox Network border stations. For the game itself –from kickoff at approx. 6:37 p.m. ET to the end
It’s really happening: a legal, American feed of a Super Bowl game on Canadian TV screens. The CRTC mandated an exception to the simultaneous substitution rule and not even lawyers or lobbyists could stop it — this time. The hiccup will cost CTV millions and, really, that’s not fair. Nonetheless, go ad crazy, Canada. Things
My mother, Margaret, turns 92 Wednesday. Her birthday is December 7 — as my dad and FDR used to say, “A day that will live in infamy.” Roosevelt, of course, was referring to another momentous and far less joyous occasion: the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. The dawn raid that drew the United States
LONDON — How do you get a Bat Out of Hell and onto a musical stage? You call a Canadian. There are actually several Canadians connected to Jim Steinman’s Bat Out of Hell — The Musical, previewing in Manchester in February and opening in London at the beautiful Coliseum in June. The show is produced
Bell Media announced Monday they have exclusive rights to the new Star Trek series in Canada. The series–scheduled to premiere next January and begin production in September at Pinewood Studios in Toronto–was on every network short list in Canada. In America, it is the tentpole for the new CBS All Access digital service. Casting is underway but
Random highlights from CTV’s really big shew for advertisers Wednesday night at Toronto’s Sony Centre: The venue was the same but the cast has changed. Just last year, Phil King was centre stage at the CTV upfront, changing T-shirts between clips. This year Phil got to sit out front; he’s now on the supply side, having
Day Two of Upfront Canada Week began bright and early Wednesday at 8 a.m. in Toronto. CTV likes to get journalists fresh off a punishing commute along the Gardiner before turning them loose on their executives. The reward was some Canadian bacon (nice) and artery-choking sausages and plenty of fresh fruit. There were some delicious
One of the wonderful surprises from Thursday night’s TV on Film Project screening at the TIFF Bell Lightbox was discovering an audience member had a hand in bringing two classic gems to Canadian TV screens. For many years, Pip Wedge was VP of programming at CTV. In the fall of 1966, however, Wedge was creating shows for CTV