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Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

Income Property hits the road for Season 10

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HGTV

From a media release:

Income Property returns with a bang this winter, celebrating ten seasons of house hunting, messy demolitions and mind-blowing transformations. Handyman and real estate expert Scott McGillivray is back and ready to help eager home hunters find their ideal investment property. The new season of Income Property premieres Thursday, February 26th at 9pm ET/PT on HGTV Canada with four, special vacation rental episodes rolling out in April.

For the first time in the series’ history, Scott takes Income Property on the road as he helps four sets of homeowners renovate the vacation rentals of their dreams.  In these episodes, Scott and his homeowners trade in their tool belts for surf boards, fishing rods, and canoes to take in some of the local activities.  Featured in one of these episodes is Entertainment Tonight Canada’s own Roz Weston as he enlists Scott’s help in transforming his dated country cottage into an upscale rental retreat.

 

To honour the 10th season milestone, HGTV will air a marathon of one Income Property episode per season leading up to the new season premiere. As a unique added bonus, fans will get to see Scott and the Income Property team hijack the network’s master control during the marathon.  Interspersed between episodes will be a series of 25-second promos that give fans an inside look at the series as well as Scott’s personal life.  Viewers will see clips from some of Scott’s wildest stunts on the Income Property set, his first national television commercial, his wedding video, his boy band, behind-the-scenes bloopers with the crew, ‘where are they now’ check-ins with homeowners, and much more.

 

Scott was just 21 when he bought and renovated his first rental home and has since built a real estate empire across North America. He has not only proven himself as an outstanding contractor and investor, but as a relatable and loveable host. He was recently named PEOPLE Magazine’s Sexiest Man of the Week and is now tucking a tenth season of Income Property under his tool belt.

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Featured, Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

Dino Hunt Canada uncovers new species for TV

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Finding dinosaur bones while television cameras are rolling is difficult enough. But discovering a whole new species? Next to impossible. And yet that’s exactly what happened when it came to production of History’s latest homegrown project, Dino Hunt Canada.

“Production had started on the series and there was the possibility that they would find something new,” says Sarah Jane Flynn, senior director of original factual content at Shaw Media. “Then they came back to us and said, ‘You’re not going to believe this, but this really is a completely new species. We pretty much lost our minds.” The result is the star of Dino Hunt Canada and the newest showpiece in the Royal Ontario Museum’s dinosaur exhibit, a new species related to triceratops. (A video of Dr. David C. Evans unveiling the animal is below.)

The project, Flynn explains, was the result of former Cream Productions (Wild Things with Dominic Monaghan) co-founder Christopher Rowley asking ROM head palaeontologist Dr. David C. Evans what he was up to and being told his team was on the verge of discovering something big. Rowley and Evans told Shaw what they had planned and the network jumped on board.

Bowing Friday night, History’s four-parter not only tells the story of how Evans and his team discovered the as-yet-unnamed beast (an interactive website urges Canadians to come up with a name for it), but spotlights the palaeontologists who scour this country for bones. One of the biggest surprises—to me at least—was learning that dinosaur bones and other fossils aren’t just found in the badlands of Alberta. Digs in B.C. and the Bay of Fundy are documented in Dino Hunt Canada in what Evans calls a Golden Age for the industry.

Narrated by Dan Aykroyd, the first episode serves to introduce several of the key players in the show, including Evans and his team in Alberta as they began to unearth their unique beast. Palaeontology butted up against television production with Evans’ group faced with the daunting task of putting the skeleton together in months rather than years in order to meet Shaw’s broadcast deadline.

“We knew we had something special because the first thing we uncovered were the pieces of the neck shield, which is the most characteristic part of the horned dinosaur,” Evans explains. The biggest challenge for Evans’ squad was to uncover remainder of bones locked under a hillside; a summer of daily jackhammering and the animal was free of its earthly bonds.

“By then we were able to tell History, ‘We’ve found something new here,'” he says with a smile. “‘If you want to be here when we uncover this new dinosaur, come on out.'”

See what they uncovered starting tonight.

Dino Hunt Canada airs Fridays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on History.

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Featured, Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

Preview: You Gotta Eat Here continues cross-Canada noshfest

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Oh to be John Catucci. I dream of it sometimes. The opportunity to travel across Canada—with the occasional stop in the U.S.—sampling  things roasted, broiled, barbecued, grilled and steamed? It’s worth what it would do to my waistline.

Catucci is back for Season 4 of Food Network’s You Gotta Eat Here! on Friday night with the same formula that’s worked for the past three. In it, the affable, comedian, writer and actor drops by a trio of eateries—Pizzeria Via Mercante in Toronto’s Kensington Market neighbourhood, Moonshine Barbecue in Montreal and The Cheshire Cat in Carp, Ont., outside of Ottawa—to munch and mingle with the staff and customers.

I wiped away slobber as Catucci and Romolo Salvati worked their way through pizza and pasta at Pizzeria Via Mercante, exclaimed at the size of the smoked ribs and “totini” (tater tots smothered in pulled pork, gravy and cheese) at Moonshine Barbecue and stared in wonder at the pub fare sampled at The Cheshire Cat.

A die-hard fan of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, I at first dismissed YGEH as a cheap Canadian rip-off of what Guy Fieri’s been doing for years. How wrong I was. Yes, Catucci is travelling to restaurants, talking to people and eating plates of food, but his sense of humour, shameless mugging for the camera and open-eyed wonder at the foods placed in front of him makes this project unique. And it’s proved to be quite the triptych of dining moments for me. Thanks to YGEH, I’ve added several fantastic places to chow down to my contacts list and I’m look forward to adding a bunch more thanks to this newest season of 26 episodes.

You Gotta Eat Here! airs Fridays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Food Network.

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Industry News, Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

History greenlights Proper Television’s Brett & Cliff Go to Hell

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From a media release:

After a successful pilot, HISTORY has greenlit six, one-hour episodes of Brett & Cliff Go to Hell with production starting in Roatan Island, Honduras.

The series follows adventurers Brett Rogers and Cliff Quinn as they re-live actual historical worst-case scenarios in six locations around the world. Filming the entire journey themselves, each one-hour episode will chronicle Brett and Cliff’s treacherous voyage as they pit themselves against history’s toughest men. Broadcast details will be announced at a later date.

The six episodes will be shot over six months, with each expedition being shot over seven days. Production began on Roatan Island, travelling back in time to 1723, with Brett and Cliff on the run from pirates. Dressed in authentic period clothing, with period tools and little food, they must survive a full seven days amongst the hordes of jungle insects, alligator-like caimans, and venomous coral snakes.  Brett and Cliff will also travel to Arizona, Louisiana, Manitoba and Newfoundland.

The pilot, which was filmed last year and premiered in December on HISTORY, captured Brett and Cliff as they put themselves in a worst-case scenario from 1885 – as two gold prospectors who stayed deep in the Yukon wilderness late into the season, only to have their camp burn along with most of their belongings. Using only authentic clothing and tools, their goal was to make a punishing trek to the safety of the Yukon River in seven days, while staying one step ahead of hunger, plunging temperatures and sheer exhaustion.

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Industry News, Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

Lynn Crawford and Noah Cappe team for Food’s Great Canadian Cookbook

Food_Network

From a media release:

Two of Shaw Media’s most dynamic hosts are heading across the nation and into Canadians’ homes and communities on a revolutionary mission to define, document and celebrate Canadian Cuisine. Shaw Media is proud to announce that celebrity chef Lynn Crawford (Chopped Canada) and funny man Noah Cappe (Carnival Eats) have been named the faces of the colossal multi-phase project, Food Network Canada’s Great Canadian Cookbook. The multi-platform venture launches later this year with the ultimate online experience for food fans. The website launch will be followed by an explosive four-part docu-series, which starts production today in association with Alibi Entertainment.

The highly entertaining four-part television series sees Crawford and Cappe travel the country stopping along the way to meet and eat with Canadian food lovers and makers. With a richness in diverse cultures, an abundance of deliciously home-grown ingredients and multi-generations of beloved family recipes to draw from, each episode of Food Network Canada’s Great Canadian Cookbook takes a look at Canada’s cultural food mosaic by capturing kitchen conversations and chronicling culinary quests with everyday Canadians.

Food Network Canada’s Great Canadian Cookbook four-part television series is an original production produced by Alibi Entertainment for Shaw Media and Food Network Canada. The digital component is designed and produced by Toronto-based agency Digital Howard in collaboration with Alibi Entertainment,Shaw Media and Food Network Canada.

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