Distinguished Artists

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Distinguished Artists is a Canadian interview television series, with no particular focus within the arts and entertainment industry. It profiles big names in music, comedy, drama, and literature.

Hosted by Emmy Award-nominated writer Lorne Frohman, this interview series is filmed in front of an audience at Assembly Hall, near Humber College Lakeshore Campus. The format focuses around a main interview, then allowing the primarily student audience to ask questions in the time following the main segment (in a style similar to the American program Inside the Actors Studio).

Distinguished Artists is in fact the first network television show produced entirely by students of a college or university. Co-produced with TVO, the Humber School of Media Studies & Information Technology created, produced, wrote, shot and edited the series. Music students from the Humber School of Creative and Performing Arts wrote, arranged, and performed the series' theme song.

Episodes debuted at 4 p.m. Saturdays on TVOntario, airing again the next day. The series aired in the 2005-2006 season on CHUM-owned television station BookTelevision. At one point in 2006, it was also airing on Canadian Learning Television.

As of 2006, the show is no longer aired on TVO, and airs only on BookTelevision.

[edit] Interviewees [Incomplete list]

Date of initial broadcast listed after the name.

Season 1

Joan Rivers, 2 April 2005; comedian, talk show host, awards pre-show host
Joe Flaherty, 9 April 2005; comedian, voice actor
Alistair MacLeod, 16 April 2005; short-story writer and novelist (No Great Mischief)
Bill Holman and Jane Bunnett, 23 April 2005;
Pat LaBarbera, 30 April 2005; saxophonist
Andrea Martin; comedienne
Colin Mochrie, 11 June 2005; improv comedian
Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, 18 June 2005; comedy duo
Edward Albee, 25 June 2005; playwright
Michael Brecker; saxophonist
Fiona Reid; actress
Paul Quarrington; author
Jane Bunnett; jazz musician
Jayne Eastwood; actress