PASADENA, Calif.–Annie Lennox put on a private concert for critics Monday night at press tour. Would I lie to you? PBS has spoiled critics rotten in recent years with private music shows featuring the B-52s, Tony Bennett (both on the same tour), Sting (albeit in his weirdo lute phase), Roseanne Cash and Harry Connick, Jr.
Sure, there’s a hockey game on, but for some folks, the big news Sunday night is the fifth season North American premiere of Downton Abbey (9 p.m. on PBS). Now, this isn’t so much a spoiler alert as a spoilsport alert: I’m not that much interested in Downton Abbey. I’m actually more interested, still, in
Monday was the 45th anniversary of the launch of Sesame Street. It was produced by the Children’s Television Workshop and funded by the U.S. Office of Education, the Ford Foundation and the Canarnegie Corporation. I was already too old to be interested in Sesame Street when it came out. I grew up on wildly diverse
This week, CHML’s Scott Thompson was shocked–shocked!–to hear that Bell was getting out of the TV news business. Well, that was their threat anyway. Bell’s brain trust, along with other industry weasels leaders, have been in Gatineau, Que., the past week-and-a-half. They’re attending something called “Let’s Talk TV: a Conversation with Canadians.” The CRTC called
One of the best new offerings of the 2014 Fall TV season begins Sunday night: The Roosevelts: An Intimate History. The seven-part, 14-hour miniseries airs every night this week through to the 20th on PBS. It chronicles the lives of Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, three well-to-do Americans who had a tremendous impact on the lives of
I was working as a busboy at a restaurant in Ontario Place at the foot of Toronto the summer Richard Nixon resigned from the White House. I was a high school student and it was a pretty good summer job; $2:10 an hour and all the chips you could eat. The restaurant faced East so I
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.—Downton Abbey is PBS’s Super Bowl. The ITV import draws the highest ratings on the public broadcaster and network officials once again gave it red carpet treatment at press tour. Reporters were given yellow wrist bands to get into Tuesday night’s dinner event, where four cast members, along with a couple of producers, sat
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.—Bill Carter started something on this press tour I can’t get out of my head. It’ all has to do with this cool book idea which involves gathering names of celebrities that can also be interpreted as sentences. Think Hugh Downs, or W.C. Fields, or Jeremy Irons. Or Ken Burns. PBS’s documentarian-in-residence and frequent