Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Review: The Agenda

TVO has overhauled its 8:00-9:00 p.m. timeslot, morphing Studio 2 into The Agenda. According to today's Globe and Mail, the intent is to delve more deeply into fewer stories because, apparently, the old format left some wanting more. I never found that to be the case and I fear, if Monday night's two-segment premiere is any indication, this will be a snooze-fest. While they've put a tie Steve Paiken, dumped Paula Todd (thank you), and replicated the Sports Centre set, there's no material difference between Studio 2 and The Agenda. Steve continues to lob intelligent, but softball, questions at guests and they're booking the same panelists (Janice Stein, Eric Margolis). I won't bother rating this on the Go/No-Go scale because, even if the show is worse, there's simply no Canadian alternative. At least I can now download it to my laptop and watch it during my Information Systems class.

4 comments:

Road Hammer said...

I am still a major fan of Michael Coren. Of note was this past Monday's episode where Manu Raj's bachelor party got a passing mention.

David said...

Coren is great. I recall fondly the debates between him and Irshad Manji in the early Studio 2 days - lots of firepower there.

What's Manu up to these days?

Road Hammer said...

Who cares? I always thought that guy was a puffed-up jerk anyways (ergo, the nickname "Manure"), although he did know his stuff. I just found it funny that one of the other guests (David Menzies) gave Coren a hard time for passing on the rip-roarin' affair, if you get what I'm sayin.

Anonymous said...

I have only seen one episode of The Agenda and it was last night (Friday). They were discussing McGuinty and where they are going from here re the election.

Terrible. Way too many panelits.

I think TVO is the only place the anti-semite Eric Margolis can get any face time.

We'll see how The Agenda rolls out. Apparently I missed a decent show about Toronto civic issues.

I will be watching more to see how this new entity rolls out.