That Long Distance Feeling

THE WORD NOSTALGIA was originally a medical term used to describe melancholia caused by long absences from home or country. The illness was ‘discovered’ in the eighteenth century and appears to have been directly connected with dislocations in people’s lives brought…

MTM TV

Some of my television columns examined particular themes — the treatment of old people on TV, for instance. The following column looked at the treatment of women. … “As Mary Tyler Moore goes, so goes the nation.”— Maude BACK IN…

Jolts Per Minute

In trying to describe the difference between American and Canadian television, I came up with the crude but I think useful notion of ‘jolts per minute’ (JPMs). American programmes had far more. … CLEARLY, IT WAS A COUP for 90 Minutes…