Last year I had the pleasure of moderating a panel at Prime Time in Ottawa, an annual Canadian TV industry pow-wow in our nation’s capital. Michael Hennessy and the folks at the Canadian Media Production Association host a gathering of 600 or so producers, broadcast executives, lobbyists and others who basically travel from all across
The boldest moves of the just-concluded Canadian network television upfront week in Toronto? It may have been the moves Bell Media boss Kevin Crull made on stage Thursday at the Sony Centre. Crull exploded the image of Bell execs as staid number crunchers by suddenly turning into Ryan Seacrest. He began as a three-dimensional hologram
Arrow‘s Stephen Amell will help CTV pull up its socks These Canadian network upfronts are micro-managed to within an inch of their lives. Studio publicists sit on stacks of screeners as well as talent releases for fear a Canadian journalist might be prepared for an interview, or, worse, stumble on any actual news.Despite these stubbornly
TV titans Pelley, Crull, Stewart, Dion and Robertson. Photo: CityNews So we were all sitting in the dark with a bunch of ad folk early Thursday morning when something crazy happened at the TV Day symposium in Toronto: news.Not at the industry day itself, which was organized by the folks at the Television Bureau of Canada.