Listen up to Kardinal Offishall, the Toronto-born rapper and music producer now encouraging a new generation on Canada’s Got Talent. That series, which shoots at the Fallsview Casino OLG Stage in Niagara Falls, Ont., starts a second season Tuesday on Citytv. On this week’s podcast, Offishall talks about his own experiences as a talent show
Pluto TV is one of the newest, and most heavily promoted, of the free streaming services to arrive in Canada. Part of the Paramount entertainment colossus, it boasts 100 channels and thousands of movies, all free. Canadian content, especially newscasts and “How To” shows, is boosted through an alliance with Corus Entertainment. The service is
The most-watched TV show on Netflix in Canada over the past week was MH370: The Plane That Disappeared. The three-part docuseries looks at the tragedy that occured in March of 2014 when Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 disappeared from radar screens shortly after takeoff on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. There were 239 passengers
An overnight, estimated audience of 3,413,000 watched CTV’s broadcast of the 95th Annual Academy Awards Sunday night. The Hollywood movie awards gala, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, drew an additional 1,153,000 to the red (or champagne) carpet pre-show on the Canadian broadcaster. In the US, Fast National Live+Same Day data suggests 18.7 million viewers watched the
At the beginning of Sunday night’s 95th Annual Oscars, Jimmy Kimmel parachuted from the rafters down onto the stage of the Dolby Theater. The live stunt came right after the opening film montage which had Kimmel ejecting from Tom Cruise’s fighter jet in a scene from one of the nominated movies, “Top Gun.” But it
I recently was invited to one of the tapings for Season Two of Canada’s Got Talent (returning Tuesday, March 21 on Citytv). When I took my seat inside the large auditorium at Fallsview Casino in Niagara Falls, Ont., Howie Mandel was just making his way to the judges desk. A row or two over, a
I have not seen any of the films nominated for Best Picture at the 95th Annual Academy Awards, which airs Sunday on ABC and CTV. I’ll watch, as usual, at least some of the show. I’m glad Jimmy Kimmel is hosting. This is his third time and he seems the perfect choice to host post-Slap.
Robert Blake, who died March 9 of heart disease at the age of 89, almost didn’t get to be Baretta. The gritty cop series, which ran on ABC from 1975-78, began a season earlier when it was called Toma. That series was based on a real-life New Jersey police officer named David Toma, who was
You could not cover television in Canada for the past 40 years without encountering the great Gordon Pinsent. Thank God. Pinsent, who died in his sleep Feb. 25 at 92, was a towering figure in film and television. In his native Newfoundland, he was much more than that. I was out in St. John’s, Nfld.,
I never, ever watch The Masked Singer but last week I was flipping around and paused long enough to see the prime time broadcast TV highlight of the year — TV legend Dick Van Dyke unmasked! The 97-year-old Tony, Emmy and Grammy winner became the oldest and most decorated Masked Singer participant ever. The judges
Richard Belzer is primarily known to TV viewers as Detective John Munch. And no wonder. He played the sardonic cop character for 23 seasons on 11 different shows across six different networks. The two main shows were Homicide: Life on the Street and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, but Belzer also played Munch on
Charles Kimbrough looked like a local news anchor. He had the hair and the tight smile and looked good in a suit in that middle-aged white man tradition found on Eyewitness newscasts in dozens of North American TV markets. His ten season stint on Murphy Brown as anchorman Jim Dial cemented that impression. The series,
North America was certainly ready for Laverne & Shirley when the series premiered in 1976. It arrived as the ABC network soared from perennial also-ran status become the No. 1 US network for several years. Powering them there were the breezy comedies created by Garry Marshall, including Happy Days, the series that introduced the characters