Antonia Zerbisias of the Toronto Star offers an opinion on the new Canadian media reform movement:
Tamsen Tillson of Variety reports on CTV vs Global:
From a media release:
The Comedy Network announced today the debut of 4 new series and the return of several, popular multi-award winning programs for the 2007/2008 Season.
New Original Series:
The Jon Dore Show stars award-winning comedian Jon Dore whose flat out crazy take on life is told through an array of real-life interviews, off-the-wall tangents and wild antics. Topics include: performing as a male stripper to help cure the blahs; getting help from a Hypnotist to squash a smoking addiction; and enlisting the services of an army drill sergeant to whip himself into shape. The 13-part, half-hour series is The Comedy Network?s newest original production.
Returning Original Series:
The Comedy Network’s highest-rated Canadian comedy series revs up this fall as Corner Gas returns with 19 episodes of high-octane laughs straight from Dog River, Saskatchewan. This multi-award winning series was recently nominated for seven Leo Awards, including Best Music, Comedy or Variety Program, or Series.
Having recently won the prestigious Gold Medal Award for Best TV Variety Program at the New York Festivals for a third year in a row, sketch series Comedy Inc. returns for a fifth season of edgy sketch, social/political satire and uninhibited physical comedy.
The 11th season of this multi-award-winning, star-making, stand-up series, Comedy Now! promises to deliver another year of uncensored, all-Canadian laughs.
Reserve your ringside seats for the ultimate in satire as today’s hottest stars trade punches in the animated series, Celebrity Deathmatch, returning this fall to The Comedy Network. This season’s celebrity matches include: Johnny Depp vs Orlando Bloom, Hilary Duff vs Lindsay Lohan and Barry Bonds vs Bud Selig. Celebrity Deathmatch is a Comedy Network/MTV co-production.
From Animation World Network:
From a media release:
BLOOD TIES
All-New Series
Blood Ties follows the misadventures of Vicki Nelson, a feisty, attractive, 29-year old ex-cop turned private investigator with a degenerative eye disorder, who seems destined to sit on the sidelines until fate intervenes, turning her life upside down. After witnessing a terrifying murder, she finds herself on a collision course with a stranger who is also investigating the murder. He is Henry Fitzroy, a 450-year old vampire who just happens to be the bastard son of King Henry VIII. After solving the murder, Vicki finds her forays into supernatural crime are anything but over. Week after week, Vicki’s relationship with Henry draws her into baffling cases involving a terrifying pantheon of occult adversaries. Forget fraud investigations and cheating spouses – she’s squaring off against ghosts, goblins and ghouls. Vicki and Henry’s unlikely alliance soon progresses beyond a purely professional arrangement, complicating her relationship with her long-suffering ex-partner in policing and love, Detective Mike Celluci and pretty well everything else in her life. Based on the best-selling novels by Tanya Huff, the series stars Christina Cox as Vicki Nelson, Dylan Neal (Dawson’s Creek) as Mike Celluci and Kyle Schmid (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) as Henry Fitzroy.
GRAND STAR
All-New Series
What if the universe’s grandest star no longer existed? Towards the end of the 21st century, nuclear waste stored on the moon explodes and the Earth falls into a new Ice Age and the name, function and very existence of the Sun has been forgotten. During the disaster, a few hundred people left Earth aboard a spacecraft, but are now hoping to find a solution and return to Earth. They succeed in preserving the species, but quickly destroy democracy, civilization and liberty, using their space-age technologies to build a network of electric railroads, managed by the Pointmen, which become the perfect tool for their wide-reaching power and dictatorial control over all the other inhabitants. The Pointmen are fanatically motivated to preserve the status quo, and hide the past with secrets and lies. And they know the sun still exists – a fact that would bring their downfall. Produced in association with CHUM Television, Grand Star is based on the saga by French novelist Georges J. Arnaud and stars Canadian actors Tyler Johnston (Godiva’s) and Kyle Labine (Freddy vs. Jason).