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THE BEAT GOES ON

TORONTO—Mary Hartman, Saturday Night and The Gong Show may be your idea of what progressive television is all about, but here in Toronto they’re still talking about the night Iggy Fop singlehandedly took on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation—and won.

July 1, 1977
Rick Johnson

THE BEAT GOES ON

Raw Power Comes To The CBC

TORONTO—Maiy Hartman, Saturday Night and The Gong Show may be your idea of what progressive television is all about, but here in Toronto they’re still talking about the night Iggy Fop singlehhndedly took on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation—and won.

90Minutes Liue is a Canadian rip-off of The Tonight Show, geared by the CBC to compete with the bigger markets across the border. Like all Canadian television programs, 90 Minutes is an hour and a ’half of bland, embarrassing self-indulgence by Canadians pretending to be Americans— with the sole exception that, unlike their American counterparts, the guests of 90 Minutes get to make fools

of themselves live, coast to coast, all across Canada.

90 Minutes’ host is a guy named Peter Gzowski (the G is silent, like the P in toilet) who, with his black hornrims and drooping moustache, is the most convincing argument alive for reinstating

the term ‘square’ into contemporary use. Sitting behind a desk so grotesquely huge that it effectively cuts him off from any kind of personal contact with his guests whatsoever, Gzowski comes across looking like the ultimate Canadian, as seert

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