TV/FILM/VIDEO:
The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) says TVA’s 8 p.m. broadcast of the final episode of Le dôme on March 29, 2016 should only have been broadcast after 9:00 pm with appropriate viewer advisories. Le dôme is the French-language dubbed version of the series Under the Dome, based on a story by Stephen King. The series finale contained scenes in which a man beats another man over the head with a metal ball, a man stabbing another man in the abdomen with a piece of metal rebar, and a scene of a man stabbing his own adult son to death. TVA aired the episode with no viewer advisories, but did provide a 13+ classification icon. In TVA’s opinion, the violence was not sufficiently graphic to necessitate a late evening time slot, but it did agree that it should have aired viewer advisories.
Sarah McLachlan will be the 2017 inductee into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. With a career that spans almost 30 years, the multi-platinum singer/songwriter has 10 JUNO Awards, three Grammys and a Billboard Music Award to her name. She’ll be honoured with a tribute on April 2 at The 46th Annual JUNO Awards Broadcast on CTV from the Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa.
Sunday’s Super Bowl will be triple-simulcast on CTV, CTV Two, and TSN. CTV’s extensive live coverage includes more than seven consecutive hours of pre-game programming beginning at 11 a.m. ET. CTV is strategically airing the first episode of CraveTV original comedy Letterkenny, commercial-free, directly following the broadcast.
Five new and nine returning series cement CTV’s 2017 midseason schedule, as the network announces additional Winter premieres. The newest addition, Trial & Error, marks John Lithgow’s return to primetime television on March 7, with the comedy following the arrest and murder trial of a beloved poetry professor (Lithgow) and the young lawyer (Nicholas D’Agosto, Gotham) hired to defend him. Also joining CTV’s midseason schedule is the series premiere of Kevin Williamson’s (The Vampire Diaries) adventure series Time After Time on March 5 and Vanessa Hudgens in new DC-inspired comedy series Powerless, beginning Feb. 2.
Hollywood Suite will air the 2017 BAFTAs (British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards) on Feb. 12. The group of speciality channels will also air the 2017 Film Independent Spirit Awards on Feb. 25 on HS00. Both shows are considered major indicators for success at the Academy Awards.
Rogers Media original series Nirvanna the Band the Show begins airing Feb. 2 on VICELAND and City. Featured on Rolling Stone’s list of the 25 Most Anticipated TV Shows of 2017, the eight-part, half-hour comedy, adapted from the web series of the same name, centres around a hapless, two-piece Toronto “band” that will do anything to play a show at The Rivioli. Following the premiere, the rest of the season will air exclusively on VICELAND and its website.
E! debuts the new Canadian series The Shocking Truth from Calgary-based Pyramid Productions, beginning Feb. 6. Exploring the real-life events that inspired Hollywood’s most memorable crime stories and thrillers, the 12-episode, 30-minute series also features a behind-the-scenes look at the stars of these iconic films, including Anthony Hopkins (Silence of the Lambs) and Ryan Reynolds (Amityville Horror), as they recount how they prepared for their roles. A companion podcast will drop on iTunes after each episode.
TVO is decommissioning eight transmitters and cutting seven maintenance positions, which will save the broadcaster an estimated $1 million a year. TVO says it will cease transmitting from Belleville, Chatham, Cloyne, Kitchener, London, Ottawa, Thunder Bay and Windsor on July 31. One transmitter will be retained in Toronto for the purposes of the CRTC licence and to minimize distribution costs.
