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
On Thursday, when the news broke, there was a temptation to blame the sudden shuttering of Canada AM to loosening Canadian content requirement requirements. These were implemented last year by the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission. One of the results of that “Let’s Talk TV” pow-wow in Ottawa was a gradual reduction in the number of hours Canadian Over-The-Air
The dust has settled and–contrary to an early report here–CTV has won the Sutherland sweepstakes. The most sought after network series at the Hollywood screenings this year turned out to be Designated Survivor. The ABC political drama stars Kiefer Sutherland and a man who becomes the president of the United States, pretty much by a
All this love for Justin Trudeau from Trevor Noah and the rest of the Daily Show gang (see previous post) got me thinking–is there some secret Canadian Karma connection with this series? Then I found it. Right next to the West Side Manhattan soundstage for The Daily Show, at 52nd Street and 11th Avenue, there is
NEW YORK–We all knew Trevor Noah had big shoes to fill last September when he took over from Jon Stewart as host of The Daily Show. Nine months later, overall domestic ratings have slipped a bit. On a trip to the show’s West Side Manhattan studios last month–the same soundstage where Stewart reigned–the spin was
NEW YORK–If you’ve got a few hours before that Broadway show, try and book yourself into a taping of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. I attended the taping Thursday afternoon, where Ricky Gervais was the guest. The studio is way over on the West side, on 11th Avenue and 52nd Street, in the exact
Ryan Seacrest signed off the finale episode of American Idol Thursday night with, as TV critic Roger Catlin tweeted, a worrisome addendum: “So long America…for now.” There is some chatter that Idol will be back, and soon. The 15th and farewell season steadied at around 11 million viewers per week, still a strong draw, especially on Fox.
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