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
With semi-annual press tours to Pasadena, Calif., shut down, two colleagues from the Television Critics Association, Roger Catlin from Washington and Neal Justin from Minneapolis, decided to cross the border into Toronto. These guys go everywhere — they even went to the Red Skelton Museum in Vincennes, Indiana. Neal, who had already arranged a Second
Sometimes reruns can still draw big numbers. Take, for example, the Toronto Maple Leafs. They have lost a record-tying seven Game 7’s in a row and haven’t made it past the Second Round of the Stanley Cup playoffs since 2002. Their last Stanley Cup win came in 1967, 58 years ago. Even though many had
You might want to have a drink handy for a toast: George Wendt died May 20, on the 32nd anninversary of the Cheers‘ series finale. His death at 76, peacefully in his sleep at his home in Los Angeles, will no doubt inspire editorial cartoons of his Cheers character Norm Petersen arriving at the pearly
I have a rough rule of thumb when choosing a book to read: anything over 400 pages is just, as the kids say, TMI. More than that tells me that the author simply couldn’t decide what to take out, so they left everything in, say, the subject’s great-great grandfather came to America in 1852 and
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
Colourizing filmed images from 60, 70, 80 and even 100 years ago or more has been bringing the past closer in recent years. Everything from The Beatles in early concert footage to horse and buggy scenes in old New York or even astonishing updates of classic films such as “Metropolis” just looks more relatable and
Wednesday’s Toronto Maple Leafs win over Florida Panthers in Round 2 NHL Stanley Cup action approached the three million mark in overnight viewers. An estimated, average minute audience of 2,874,000 watched on Sportsnet National (1,555,000) and CBC (1,319,000). Add in the viewers who also streamed on digital platforms and the game certainly would have topped