CTV’s gambit to blunt CBC’s Rio Summer Olympic Games coverage with their broadcast premiere of Game of Thrones is off to a bloody start. In Monday’s head-to-head matchup, CBC’s primetime Olympic coverage drew an overnight, estimated 2,021,000 viewers vs. the 667,000 who watched the very first episode of the sword-and-sandal fantasy epic. It was about the
Looking for a team to root for on The Amazing Race Canada? It’s hard not to cheer on Lowell and Julie Taylor from Lethbridge, Alta. The couple are in the back of the pack heading into Tuesday’s fourth episode, which finds the teams scrambling around Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, As a guest of CTV, I
On Tuesday, The Amazing Race Canada heads to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon. It was an eye opener for me to tour this booming metropolis last May while the racers were out dodging thousands of scooters on the streets. Ho Chi Minh is a city of contrasts with simple concrete stalls set
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
Frankie and Amy Gassler are a zany mother-daughter duo who have made it through to the fourth round on The Amazing Race Canada. These B.C.-based hairdressers are like The Gilmore Girls on peroxide. Frankie got pregnant with Amy when she was 15, so no wonder the two look like sisters. I interviewed them in Vietnam and
I get asked this all the time–have you ever interviewed any slime-y reptilian creatures? Aside from that one brush many years ago with Sam Neill (must have caught him on a bad day), that didn’t happen until May when I was in Cai Be, Vietnam, way down in the Mekong delta. That’s when I had
Four seasons into shooting The Amazing Race Canada, Jon Montgomery has become better known as a TV host than for winning a gold medal in skeleton at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games. The amiable Manitoba-native, who now lives with his wife in Victoria, B.C., answers 10 questions about shooting in Vietnam this season. Viewers
Now it can be told: I was in Vietnam in May with The Amazing Race Canada. I was fortunate to travel with CTV’s Jim Quan, my ol’ Sun shooter pal Mark O’Neill–the series’ in-house stills photographer–and my other ol’ Sun Ent pal Jim Slotek. We were flown to Taiwan on a 15-hour flight and then on