Judas Priest. Not Lieutenant Hunter as well? The rash of former TV stars who have passed away in the last few days is alarming, especially considering another former reality show star came within a half inch or so of joining them. Passing away Friday, July 13 was James B. Sikking, part of the large and
CBS is suddenly selling more properties than Frank Leo & Associates. On the heels of the news that CBSViacom had reached a deal to sell their Manhattan headquarters comes word that the media giant has also put its 40-arce, Studio City, Calif., production centre on the block. This will be heartbreaking news to Jim Belushi.
I’ve been up at the unplugged cottage the past few days. It’s a good place to put things in perspective — including the strange phenomenon known as summer television. The simple wood frame cottage was built by my dad and his builder buddy over 70 years ago in 1947. That very year was the dawn
Podcaster Mike Boon, a.k.a. “Toronto Mike,” invited me back on his show Monday to “kick out the jams.” Mike, a fellow Michael Power grad, who, as he liked to point out, graduated from that high school many years after I did, invites all manner of media types over to his basement studio and quizzes us
On Tuesday, CHML’s AM900 morning host Bill Kelly suggested to me that Steven Bochco was to television what Steven Spielberg was to movies. Both moved their medium forward. Bochco certainly was an innovator as a writer and story editor, combining serial elements into police procedurals. Bochco also encouraged Hill Street Blues pilot director Robert Butler to literally
Way back when I was a young Turk at TV Guide Canada I was asked to get Steven Bochco on the phone. I thought the request was pure madness. At that time and for many years afterwards, Bochco was TV’s top showrunner, the much-admired writer/producer behind such groundbreaking hits as Hill Street Blues and L.A.
Getting busted in ’86 by Hill Street cops Warren and Haid. Photo: Gene Trindl When people talk of this new “Golden Age” of television, shows such as The Wire and The Sopranos are often cited as the starting point. Kiefer Sutherland–back as Jack Bauer in Fox’s revival of another respected show, 24–says the spark goes farther