All things must pass, and so we are into the new reality on Saturday night’s in Canada. After 74 years, a tradition dating back to 1952, there are no more “free” Hockey Night in Canada broadcasts. Rogers no longer shares their primetime weekend showcase with the public broadcaster. Viewers instead can subscribe to Sportsnet to
Proof that Saturday Night Live is still appointment television in Canada came this past weekend. In much of the country, the 52nd season premiere of the series — and first ever on Bell/CTV — was bumped 16 minutes by a college football game overrun in the US. Hard to say if that will tackle CTV’s
Louise Lasser was a genuine original who burned bright in the 1970s. The star of the daily, syndicated, soap-comedy Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976 -77), she was probably the first major TV character to suffer a season-long nervous breakdown. Post Nixon, Watergate and Vietnam, she represented what many North Americans were feeling at what was,
First, here is what I liked best about the 2026-27 Bell Media Upfront that took place Thursday in Toronto at Meridian Place: that it still happens. These big, showy, ad agency programming-paloozas are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Some networks, including what’s left of CBS, have gotten out of the rent-a-hall business and
You have to feel for the folks at Corus Entertainment and Global Television. Ratings-wise, even as broadcast numbers continue to tumble, they had a pretty good year last year. At Bell, they boast that this is the 25th consecutive year where CTV has emerged as No. 1 overall in prime time network ratings, but they
It takes more than 22 Minutes to amass 700 episodes of a Canadian TV series — or any North American series for that matter. Saturday Night Live, after 50 years, is inching towards 1000 episodes. (It’s at 991.) The Ed Sullivan Show, from 1948 – ’71, was a really big variety shew for 1,068 Sundays.
Sometimes my name trips people up on the phone. In 2008, for example, Hulk Hogan wrestled with it. “Bill Brioux–sounds like a wrestling name,” said the WWE’s ultimate showman. Hogan was on the line to promote the finale of American Gladiators, then in its first incarnation on NBC and City-TV. The Hulkster was shocked to
This has been going on for months now, half a year at least. Every time Donald Trump burps out another middle-of-the-night tweet or lurches into another Oval offside about Canada becoming the “51st State,” the fiercest pushback comes during the opening monologues of at least half a dozen US late night talk shows. The folks