Jason Ritter is my guest this week on brioux.tv: the podcast. I spoke with the 45-year-old actor recently at the Corus Entertainment Upfront in Toronto. Ritter is so thrilled to be on Matlock — last season’s biggest rookie hit on both Global in Canada and CBS in the US — that he’s been dancing up a storm
I was living in Los Angeles in 1986 when Pee-wee’s Playhouse premiered on Saturday mornings on CBS. What a welcome sea change in children’s television. It was as if Prince and Cindy Lauper made a TV series with Captain Kangaroo. Best of all, every week, the secret word was “FUN.” The series was this incredible
There was a time when “Upfront Week” was covered like the Super Bowl. Now it is more about football than any new comedies, dramas or even reality shows. Today at these big budget presentations, sports leads; dramas and comedies are thrown in as extras. Upfront Week is simply now known as the second week of
TV critics, like everyone else, sometimes get caught down rabbit holes. This morning I was on with Humble & Fred Radio (except I was speaking with “Humble” Howard Glassman and Maureen Holloway; she sitting in this month for regular co-host Fred Patterson). Howard, who assumed I had seen it, asked for a quick description of
The 67th Annual Grammy Awards drew an overnight, estimated 1,416,000 viewers Sunday night on Citytv. That is down from the 1,760,000 who watched the Grammys live one year earlier on City. Keep in mind that with Live+7 and even 30 day playback and digital data, those totals will both swell much higher. Despite appearances from
Fire up the Tiki torch and pass the Doritos: Genevieve Mushaluk, a 33-year-old corporate lawyer from Winnipeg, Manitoba, had her torch snuffed on last week’s two-hour, second-last episode of Survivor 47. After finally winning an immunity challenge on the second-last episode in a diving, swimming and puzzle-solving competition, Mushaluk was also able to partake in
After 31 years as host of The Fifth Estate, plus another decade winning Emmys for CBS and NBC News, award-winning investigative journalist Bob McKeown is ready to retire. The Ottawa native never shied away from his assignments, especially when it came to reporting on football and head injuries. Back in the ’70s, he was a CFL
This past spring, the CBS action-drama Tracker became an instant hit, emerging as the No. 1 US network series of the season. On this episode, I speak with the tracker himself, Justin Hartley, who was in Toronto last June promoting the series at the CTV upfront. After a career in soaps (Passions; The Young and the