Say kids, what time is it? It is time to celebrate Howdy Doody’s 75th anniversary. Broadcast network television’s first Monday to Friday series and first regularly scheduled colour series launched during a winter snowstorm in New York on December 27, 1947. There were approximately 15,000 to 20,000 television sets within reach of NBC’s signals along
The start of the traditional broadcast network TV season begins in earnest this week, although earnest may be overstating things. To paraphrase Tina Fey a dozen years ago, network television today is about as cutting edge as vaudeville in the sixties. Nevertheless, one of the new/old offerings, mainly what you get from broadcast nowadays, is
I kid you not: I was too young to have seen Jack Paar in his prime as host of The Tonight Show. I was born in 1957, the year Paar took over Tonight from Steve Allen and made it his own for the next five years. With the show starting around 11:15 p.m., this was
Bill Maher once said that, “Everybody who ever has done a talk show should pay a royalty to Steve Allen.” Allen would probably have agreed. He was the first host of NBC’s Tonight Show, starting with a local New York version in 1953 and then launching the series nationally in September of 1954. David Letterman,
When it comes to ratings and putting today’s television landscape in context, I always call on the Programming Insider himself, Marc Berman. The New York native has been a friend and colleague since he began attending the Television Critics Association’s semi-annual network press tours in 1999. Back then, Marc was reporting for Mediaweek; before that,
Court is be back in session with the return of the original Law & Order. The series upon which executive producer Dick Wolf built an empire is back after a 20 year run (1990-2010) and then being “paused” for over a decade. In Canada, it joins the Citytv schedule on Thursday nights, throwing City to the
A tight, exciting game capping one of the best NFL playoffs runs ever helped Super Bowl LVI reverse the downward ratings trend in recent years of TV’s biggest draws. In Canada, the 2022 Super Bowl, won in the dying minutes by the Los Angeles Rams over the Cincinnati Bengals, attracted an average audience of 8.1
Because its annoying and sometimes messy to have to look down from your bowl of chili to watch them on TV during the game, here is a link to some of tonight’s most-talked about Super Bowl ads on-line. With NBC selling commercial time for upwards of seven million dollars per spot, the new ads feature