Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Kevin Newman: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1908

Episode Date: June 1, 2026

In this 1908th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with newsman Kevin Newman about his stops at Global, CTV, and CBC, his move to ABC in the USA, eventually hosting Good Morning America, why he retired in 2019 and why these are challenging days for news addicts.Toronto Mike'd, an award-winning podcast, is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball, Ridley Funeral Home, Nick Ainis, and RecycleMyElectronics.ca.If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey, this is Kevin Newman. I'm a grandfather to two grandsons and a retired anchor and journalist. And this is my debut on Toronto Maked. I was going to say, don't bury the lead. Welcome to episode 1,9008 of Toronto, an award-winning podcast, proudly brought. Brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery. Order online at Great Lakes Beer.com for free. Local home delivery in the GTA.

Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh. Homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. Visit palma Pasta.com for more. Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball. Catch a game at Christy Pits this summer. No ticket required. Fusion Corp's own Nick Aeini's.

He's the host of building Toronto Skyline. And Mike and Nick, two podcasts that you ought to listen to. Recycle MyElectronics.C.A. Committing to our planet's future means properly recycling our electronics of the past. And Ridley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921. Joining me today, making his Toronto mic debut. It is indeed. Kevin, Newman.

How you doing, Kevin? That's a pretty chill way to start the day. That's nice. Well, you're leaving with beer. Did you know that? Like, do you have any idea that you get swag just for making the track? This is the takeaway? You're taking that fresh beer from Great Lakes Brewery.

You're taking it home with you today. Thank you. That is awesome because, you know, it's 26 degrees and sunny out there. Is it? Because it's down by the lake here. It feels like I need a jacket. You need to get into the basement, buddy. Touch grass.

That's what the kids say. Touch grass. Oh, yeah. It's right off the top. Oh, I know. The Chunky that left these chunkies? Newman! Do people drop the Jerry Seinfeld?

Newman? Oh my God, yeah. They don't do it as much anymore, but at the height of it when I was on Good Morning America in the States, it was like Newman, this, Newman, that. Yeah, yeah, that happened. Okay, I figured as much. And one more little thing for you off the top.

Ready? Go! Come on Bimble, please. Well done and out comes Bimbo, and here's Bimbo with... Introducing Bimbo, the birthday clown, and a son of happy. Here we go. Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, and the birthday call you know, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, Bucie show, Bimbo, Bimbo, I just got it. You are you, a very happy birthday.

Happy birthday to you, Kevin Newman. I know your birthday is tomorrow. Yeah, I am sorry. 67 and I was on the Uncle Bobby show. Okay, I need detail. Aging court, right? I need to hear about this. When I was four years old, I was Kevin the safety guy.

So my grandmother had booked me on the Uncle Bobby show. And for those of you, too young to remember this. I don't think anyone listening is too young, but go ahead. Go ahead. Just in case. Just in case. Yeah, yeah. So you would go out to Agent Court and my job for one week was to get in a motorized little car

where I would drive around the back lot of CTV, where I ended up Like finishing my career a couple of years ago in a weird sort of cyclical thing. Anyways, driving around four years old, best job ever. And my job was to stop where the stop sign was. And Uncle Bobby would be there saying, hey, kids, this says stop. And I didn't know what it was about. All I knew is that I got to drive a little motorized car and drink hunting. So you're only four?

I was four, which, you know, was probably illegal except it was a private parking lot. So I would park in that lot later in life in my real car. Yeah. So this is a mind blow off the top, Kevin. Like I was excited to get into your news guy, news junkie. We're going to get into your news career, journalism. But hearing that you were on the Uncle Bobby show as a four-year-old, complete mind-blow to me, because I don't know if you've heard Toronto Mike before,

but like that's a recurring touch point is Uncle Bobby. Because I grew up of Uncle Bobby. I just played for you just because I knew it was your birthday tomorrow. I played Bimbo the Birthday Clan from the Uncle Bobby show. Yeah, of course. So you didn't know this? No. I had no idea.

You're on, I had no idea. My research, my crack research into your life and times did not reveal that you were driving that car in ageing court. Uncle Bobby, you know, there's so many Uncle Bobby's stories that we share on this show. But one is that he drove a school bus. Yeah. Did other people find him odd? Oh, yeah. Well, no, he was, but the legend is.

So I think this is a preferred legend to other countries have children's entertainers with terrible. With different histories. Yes, yes, yes. Uncle Bobby was very into the mothers of the children that would come on the show. I hate to say this, but did Uncle Bobby and your mom ever do the tango? Well, I went with my grandmother. Oh, he doesn't care. Maybe not.

But I've heard about the Uncle Bobby like shaggin wagon. Like if it's rock and don't come and knocking. Well, he wasn't, you know, I was accustomed to seeing him on television because I watched him on television. And then when you actually got in studio with him, he didn't talk to you. And I thought he was like mean. But he, okay, there's some. so many legends I've been told, but as a school bus driver, you'd think he'd be good at talking to kids? You'd think he'd have a good rapport of kids. And also, there's a legend he had a about, and again,

a shout out to Retro Ontario, Ed Conroy, who does deliver most of these great stories. But on Halloween, he was in an apartment and he had some door that could open, you know, the middle of the door, so the top part would open and he would kind of do this special treats for the kids on Halloween. We'll move on to Uncle Bobby, but four-year-old. Kevin Newman, you get your media start on the Uncle Bobby show. At CTV, which is where I had my media end when I was the host and correspondent for W5. We're going to get to that. So I was actually, like at several times, I was actually in the same studio in age in court that I had been in with the Uncle Bobby show.

Mind blow. And there was one cameraman. I remember I did a couple appearances on Canada AM. And I was telling this story to Bev Thompson at the time. And the cameraman from behind sort of peeks out from behind. says, I did that show. And I said, do you remember me? Anyway, but there were tons and tons and tons of kids.

Okay, you know what? I could shut it down now and your Toronto Mike debut would be a huge success. I said, I can shut it down right now. But I have a note that came in from a dear friend of mine, a good FOTM. That means friend of Toronto Mike. You're now an FOTM, Kevin. Even if this goes sour and you storm out of here, you're an FOTM. Yeah.

You know, I'll Photoshop the picture of us by Toronto Tree. And I'll just say, hey, Kevin was here. Lorne Honickman says, Oh yeah. He says, I gave Kevin some feedback when he was putting together an AI website, get fact. I'm just reading what he wrote. You could explain what it all means.

But he says, please say hi to him for me. I'm going to reach out to him this week. So you've been warned. The legend that is Lauren Honickman is reaching out to you this week. Oh, Lauren. We were competitors when he was at City and I was a global and he would beat me most days because his energy level, as you know, is through the roof. And he was very kind when,

about a year ago, a friend of mine, Wolf Dinick, and I put out an appeal on LinkedIn and said, hey, this Trump shit is looking real. And we had always been concerned about miss and disinformation. Does anybody want to help out? So we built an AI fact checker, and Lauren very kindly offered some assistance in all the terrible legal problems that could arise from us building an AI fact checker. And being a journalist himself, he was, you know, he cared about the issue as well. And yeah, so we built it, and it's been out there for a year now. We're doing a pivot as you have to with AI because it's just changing so bloody fast.

So it's been relaunched as asklora.aI. And it's there if you want to check the veracity of a news story. It's free. And so if you're ever wondering, is this true, how much of this is true? What are the sources that these guys are pulling on? You can cut and paste it and put it into asklora.a.i. And it'll give you a very fulsome answer. Ask laura.a-a-i, so L-A-U-R-A.

Yeah, after Laura Seacord, right? Of course. She was the heroine of the war of 1812. The last time the Americans tried to us. Yeah, like, I went on, I'm going to pump my tires, Kim. Enough about you. I went on CNN a couple of times. And the first time I went on CNN was just after Trump was going off on this 51st state bullshit.

And I really did feel when I was sitting here, I was sitting right here, waiting to go live on CNN this morning with Audie Cornish. And I remember this feeling of like it was, 1812 redux. Like I really felt like I was going to take up arms and defend this sovereign nation from the Yanks. It was happening again. Well, and that's what Wilf and I thought too. We had the same sort of feeling. So what can we contribute? I mean, we're obviously not going to get bayonets. Well, why not? We need you. You look fit. But the missing the disinformation stuff, we thought would become

more prevalent. And we're starting to see it already in the, in the referendum in a possible referendum in Alberta. It's tough to fight dumb. Have you, you know, as a newsman, like, like it's, I, again, I guess I give people too much credit. Like, I always think, okay, the average intelligence, it feels like a George Carlin bit. Like, this is the average intelligence. Think half of the people are dumber than that. But, like, I feel like I've historically given people too much credit for having the intelligence to know when they're being, uh, bam, bam. Well, there's a problem.

None of us were trained in media, um, uh, media studies, right? We, we, we, our kids know it a lot better than we do. And so what we wanted to do was. a tool that people could use to help them because they don't you know I mean as journalists our whole life is trained to figure out what's real and what isn't what's truth and what's half truth but most people just don't have those skills so what we were hoping to do was to give them a free tool that they could apply to that so that if they had the interest in being smarter they could find out okay so I'm very interested if in I hope you're okay with this but if we kind of walk through your

like your legacy, your history on our various, you know, radio stations and television stations. And then at the end, maybe we can talk about life, you know, since 2019, right? When was the last time you did broadcast television? 2019. No, I retired then. So you got seven years now and I got questions about the past seven years and what it's like for you. I know you're a news junkie. We're going to have to cover all of that.

But maybe here, before we go back to London, Ontario, which I believe is where it all, begins for you in broadcasting. Before we go back to London, Ontario, you mentioned something, just when you arrived, you mentioned something about learning more about your Toronto roots, I think, something with Ancestry.com maybe.

Can you just like share that story? Because this is Toronto, Mike. We need to know how Toronto you are. It turns out I am excruciatingly Toronto. I sort of knew the family story was, you know, on my mom's side, my grandmother arrived from Liverpool, is a 14-year-old orphan,

lived on Ozington Avenue. my grandfather was a milkman in North Toronto. My grandfather was a milkman in Toronto. Yeah, there you go. Maybe they knew one another. Yeah. And just before you move on, my mom's side, my grandparents were both born in Toronto. Really?

Well, those two were not. On my dad's side, there was my grandmother Newman, who was the first woman to run for mayor of Toronto. Whoa. Yeah, that was in 1956. She lost to Nathan Phillips. But she was the first woman to run for mayor. and she was a politician on city council for years, helped evacuate the people from city,

from Center Island to turn it into a park, et cetera, et cetera. And my grandfather was a lawyer, Queens Council, and those are the Newman's. But then in my 40s, I found out my dad was adopted, and he had kept that from us. So I did lots of chasing in my retirement years. And my birth grandfather is a guy named Alvi Luna, I found. And the lunas were the among the German immigrants

that turned an old, First Nations hiking route into Young Street. So they cleared Young Street all the way up to New Market. Longest street in the world. Yeah, and they began it. So that was the Loonaws. That's my birth grandfather. And then in my birth grandmother's side, they are Lockhees,

and they were Scottish, and they still run Lockhees grain elevator up in New Market and brought a lot of the Scottish expertise in grain farming to Newmarket, and that's a big grain farming area now. So, you know, and then I was born in Toronto. Barton Mount Sinai. Okay, I was born in St. Joe's in Parkdale. There you go.

So here go. You are Toronto enough to be on Toronto mic. Okay, good. Can we continue then? You may continue. I can start recording now. You ready? You know, the foot of,

what blows my mind. So shout out to Nick Aienis, who literally cuts a check to help keep this thing going every month because he believes in it so much. So love this guy. But one of his shows I produce is called Building Toronto Skyline

and we talk to the people who are developing one young street. And it's going to be And five stories or something. Like, so when you talk about your ancestors who helped start, you know, Young Street, if they knew the foot of young. And I guess, am I right? At the time was the foot of Young Street, like front street? Yeah.

Yeah. Like, so even if they could see, oh, look, now it's further south. And we're building a tower, a residential tower that's going to be the tallest residential. That's cool. Tower in the country. Well, and, and already, if you look at the pictures of the skyline, a buddy of mine takes pictures of the skyline. It's it's rivaling the Cian Tower for your eye now. It's huge.

It's unbelievable what's happening. And they had a similar tower. And I can't remember there's some development hell going on there. But one bluer, I believe, where young and bluer are. But this one at young, this one's, you're right, it's going up. It's happening. It's a monster. It's a monster.

I could never do it. I have terrible fear of heights. I don't know who rents those places at that height. I had on the show, the guy who was, he was an iron worker and he was there to put the final part of the Cian Tower up. and he was talking about going up there and this elevator thing. What's between that guy's legs? I mean, come on, man. That's an episode, man.

In fact, I met that guy because he came on building Toronto Skyline. So there's my shoutout. So you've got your beer. I shouted out Great Lakes Brewery. One last thing I'm going to say, and then we're going to get you to London, Ontario, is that I have a free event. Free.

Did I say free? No ticket required. Unlike my, I'm wearing my Elma combo shirt right now because, of course, it was a huge money to buy a ticket to see me at the Elma combo. But it is nothing to come to. to TMLX, the 22nd Toronto Mike listener experience. TMLX 21 is June 25.

That's a Thursday, 6 to 9 p.m. at Great Lakes Brewery in South Atobico. That is 30 Queen Elizabeth Boulevard. Just show up. Not only is your first beer on the house, Kevin, but you will eat delicious palma pasta, Italian food. I have a lasagna in my freezer for you, Mr. Newman.

And I like the way you say pasta. How do you say pasta like me? Yes. Because I get criticized. You know, I get criticized. No, I mean, as a broadcaster, I care about these things. It's Newfoundland. It's pasta.

Well, I'm glad we're talking because people, like, how do you say produce? Do you say produce or produce? I don't know the correct Canadian way. I always say pasta. Yeah, usually you defer to the British. So it would be produce. Okay, but not. So it's produce, but not pasta.

No, it's pasta because that's the way the Italians say. So what you do is you find out how it is said locally, and then you adopt that. See, you hit it out of the park with the, Uncle Bobby story. I can't be that. Sorry for the boring stuff to follow. No, but now that you've told me I'm saying pasta correctly for the past 14 years, feels good.

So if you, Kevin, you can bring your friends, your family, you can bring everybody. I will feed everybody at TMLX22. Wow. At Great Lakes Brewery on June 25, 2026. Be there. Okay. Take me back. Like, did you always know you wanted to work in news?

Like, when did you realize this was your calling? You know what? It goes back to the moonshots. I was a geek for the Apollo program. And I used to watch it all the time and Walter Cronkite and Wally Chirah watching, you know, those very brave astronauts take off. And I used to think, I'm not brave enough to be an astronaut, but man, is his job cool. He gets to be at Cape Canaveral. He gets to be very close to stuff. And I think that's the first time I thought, ooh, that Anchorman stuff is pretty all right. And it was fun because I got my grandson now and we were watched the Artemis go off and I told him the story and anyway

so that sort of was the beginning of it and then I became a Jewish junkie in my teen years. I was, I was the weirdo that on the night of the Quebec referendum I got excited in class and biked home hard so I could watch the coverage of the referendum result like nobody else in my neighborhood.

And then yeah and then all through And then I went to Western, and I didn't think much of their journalism school at the time, so I volunteered at their, and helped set up their campus radio station and a news division. It's still running there on CHRW, which is cool. And then from there, I started volunteering around London and then wrote a fan letter to a reporter at Global News in Toronto, whether or not I could sort of, you know, not a creepy one, hopefully. Can I guess who the reporter was?

I have no idea. Why am I even guessing? Go ahead. Peter Truman. No, I did write him. He was the anchor. Yeah, he's the anchor. Yeah, I don't mean to demot it.

But the reporter was Christina Popmerski, and I actually, I, she knows this story, so I'm not telling it out of school. I made up a fan club about her, that was a bunch of college guys that really liked her reporting and liked, you know, the way she presented the news. And it wasn't, it was slightly misogynistic. Let's be awesome. Let's be honest. But she loved it.

She got a big kick in, but she said, sure, come on down. And so I tracked her a couple of times on. stories and that's really when the bug hit me. I thought like, A, you get to go out and you get to see shit. You get to talk to whoever you want to talk to. It's like the best backstage pass you could possibly get because you just say, you know, I'm so and so from global news. I'd like to talk to you and they seem compelled to do it. It's kind of like where you call me up and go, oh yeah, try on a mic, sure. But and it was, you know, it's, it was a fascinating, curiosity-driven, um, marvelous way to spend my career years. Okay. So you,

ended up working as a reporter for global Ontario. I did. Early 80s. Okay. But when you're at London, you're, are you, how are you working with the Western Mustangs football?

Oh, we did the first play-by-play on Canadian radio, campus radio for it. So I didn't know much about football, to be honest. So I pulled in the guy who know the most and I did all the color stuff. And we did, yeah,

we did play-by-play. Okay. I think that's another mind-blow in a series of mind-blows. Okay. Now, I will, for the listenership, I don't expect you to know who I'm talking about Kevin, but Elvis, so everybody knows Elvis from the Festivist episodes

and our live recordings at Palma's Kitchen in Mississauga, but Elvis also worked on after you, because you're the first, but later would work and call these Western Mustang games on CHRW. So it's just wild to hear. Really? Yeah. There's a lot of connections going on here. Yeah, yeah. No, and then the alumni from that experience is pretty good too. I mean, you were basically making it up as you went and, yeah, learning. Learning by doing as opposed to learning in a classroom, which is, I think, always better. Well, that's how I learn. Like, I need to do it. Like, sometimes I actually, like I did, I did, I'm going to do another bright. I did get a degree from U of T, but I only felt like I needed some kind of piece of paper to open to, like to get the interview or

whatever. But like, most of the stuff I used today, all this, I didn't go to school for podcasting. No, I have to do it. I didn't go to school for journalism. Okay, well. And I did fine. And yeah, you seem to do all right. We're getting to that right now. So tell me, do you have any, like, highlights from this opening part of your professional life in Toronto broadcasting at Global Ontario? Well, I mentioned about the backstage pass

and just how when you say you work for an organization, somehow people feel compelled to say yes. Right. So Leonard Nimoy was appearing on a stage show that he'd written about Leonardo da Vinci. Okay. And he'd written it about, Da Vinci's brother.

And it was a one-act show. This was like after the early Star Trek years when he was a starving guy in Hollywood and ended up in like London, Ontario in a one-man show. So I thought, oh shit, I'm a bit of a trekker. I called him up and I said, would you like to talk? And he said, sure, come on by. And I thought, oh, fuck, this amazing. So I didn't talk much about Star Trek because I knew at that point in his career,

he didn't want to talk about that. So I saved that for the end. And I asked him a series of questions about, you know, Malvolio and, uh, you know, and Da Vinci and his brother and the ear and the whole thing. And at the end of it, he said, you know, you're going to do fine. You'll ask some really good questions. And so to be validated by Leonard Nimoy. And he's got that voice.

That voice and a very sharp, like, smart man, you know. Yeah. Well, he has a Toronto connection additionally in that he made three men and a baby here. That's right. So three men and a baby is filmed in Toronto. Ted Danson, Steve Goodenberg, who knew Toronto well, because he was in Police Academy, which was filmed down the street.

Was it? Afterwards, we'll walk over and see where the police academy was. It's now Humber College, South Campus. But who's the third guy? Hold on. Oh, Ted Danson. Oh, it was Tom Selleck. Oh, that's right.

Doing comedy. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, Tom Selleck. Ted, that was a monster at the box office. And Leonard Nimoy directed that. And that convinced the Star Trek guys to let him direct probably one of the most successful Star Trek movies.

And one of my favorite Simpsons cameos is, is Leonard Nimoy. As the head? The world, no, that's a... Futurama. Yeah, you're right. The world needs laughter. There's this great episode.

The monorail. So the monorail episode, which was, I believe, written by Conan O'Brien. It's one of the great Simpsons episodes. It has a wonderful Leonard Nimoy cameo. It's awesome. All right.

Your brain's too much. Oh, you know, just about Simpsons. Everything else, you're the guy, you know? Okay. I almost corrected you. When you talked about Artemis, I said, Kevin Newman, that's Artemis 2. Oh, you're right.

That is not Artemis. See, I needed a good editor. You needed another great legs beer. Okay. So why do you leave Global Ontario for CTV? I understand you're their parliamentary correspondent in 86. Yeah, I needed the money, frankly. Show me your T4s from the Global Ontario experience.

Yeah. So, did you work with Hebbsey real quick? No, no, I found. No, I did. I did. All right, here you go. I have to go back to Hebsy because Hebsi's a dear friend, and I co-hosted his show for five years.

You have to go before Hebsy, did with the Bob McCowan era. Yes. I was the first sports reporter on Sportsline. You know, Bob McCowan, well, more than once, Mark Hebscher took over for Bob McCowan. Because even on 1430 doing Jay's talk, he took over there. They both have the gift of the gab, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I don't know if Hempsey ever got that Bob McCowan salary he was getting at the end of his run after. I don't think anybody did. I mean, it was rumored to be bigger than Lloyd Robertson's.

Well, geez. Well, is that right? Yeah. Okay, that's major cabbage he was pulling down there. But okay, so you were a reporter on Sportsline when Ba-McCowen was the host. When it started, yeah. Yeah. Yes, I was the first reporter for Sportsline.

And again, knew nothing about sports. So that didn't last long. And I took the first opportunity to get into news. Met my wife in the global newsroom in Toronto, Kathy Cairns, Hottie. I was president of her fan club. Yeah, good. Oh, wait a minute. No.

Anyway, we got married, I had a son, Alex, and she was heading to go back to work. And we didn't want that if we could avoid it. So I got a job at CTV. Actually, it was in their Atlantic Bureau and doubled my salary, which helped my wife stay at home. It's tough to get that 100% bump. Yeah, it's almost impossible. And so that's how I ended up going to CTV. And then I spent some time at CBC.

after that. I was living in Alberta when my daughter, Erica, was born. And then went back to the doom. I did Parliament Hill reporting for all three networks a couple of times. And then ended up anchoring my first show, which was called Midday. Oh, you kidding me? I was talking to Ralph Benmergy yesterday. Do you talk to everybody all the time? Okay, well, Ralph Benmergey, I produce his podcast. Oh, do you? So that these people are, yeah. Well, I replaced Ralph. Yeah, yeah, I know. He went off to do the nighttime show. He went off to do Friday night, which I could do 90 minutes. minutes on that right now. My God, we've covered that like crazy. And Ralph was at my alma combo show. So,

there you go, yeah. But I want to play something real quick because you mentioned midday, so I'm ready for that. Hold on here. You've said many times in your life about how artists aren't really created. They're born, and they are compelled to create. And I think you can develop a talent, but a real artist

is by nature and outsider. They have almost an alien perspective. and maybe an artist can be made by childhood disease, which gives a deepening of perspective that otherwise would not occur. Maybe an artist can be trained or exposed to techniques or encouraged. But I think the artistic nature is a birthright. Wow, Joni Mitchell. Johnny Mitchell.

That's on midday, you chatting with Joni Mitchell. Can I tell you how terrified I was? was for that interview? I expect nothing less from you. I want to hear how terrified were you talking to Canadian legend Joni Mitchell? She had just turned 50 and she put out probably what I think is her best album. And then I had never, I had come out of parliamentary reporting and had done almost no entertainment interviews. And she was of course a legend. An older woman who had the intellectual ability to answer questions like that, which you don't hear much anymore. Right.

And she was doing a series of interviews in a dark room in Toronto. They had put the lighting down. She was at a table and there was a cigarette going at the table. And there was a little bit of rum on the table as well. And she had been doing a series of interviews at that point and was a little bit tipsy, I think. Yeah. And sat down and sort of started flirting. And I didn't know what to do with that.

I never had game in that world. And so I thought, okay, well, and I thought, I thought the interview was a disaster because I was so nervous. I was so tentative. But as I look back on it, and it's actually on her website as one of the interviews that she liked the most, because the questions were, you know, unorthodox. And she got to talk about a lot of the things that she didn't normally talk about. So in retrospect, it looks really good, but I remember I was sweating buckets. I thought it was a disaster.

I don't know what would happen to me if, you know, Joni Mitchell were dropping by the basement. I get nervous enough when Kevin Newman's dropping by the basement. I can't imagine. Oh, man. Like, just, you know, just so much feeling in her and I didn't really know how to do it. And, you know. That little clip.

So obviously, it's a much longer interview. I just pulled a little clip because I thought it was interesting to hear it. Because I liked the way you handled the interview because you seem like a, you just seemed like a curious cat. and you were engaging her, and she gave thoughtful, interesting answers. And I think in 2026, I'm so used to like, yeah, the PR can rehearse talking points. I'm so sick of it. But that conversation felt authentic to me. Well, thank you very much.

I mean, I was genuinely curious about her because I didn't know much. The other time I did that was with Prince. I had an interview with him on Good Morning America. And, of course, that was at a time when he had changed his name to the symbol. So, you know, the producers gave me questions like, what's a symbol about? And I thought, oh, God, this guy's going to hate me because, you know, he's, he's like a Joni Mitchell level thing. He would make me super nervous because the legend is like, don't look me in the eyes. Like, I think, at least Joni, you're talking to a fellow Canuck. Right. You know, I feel like you can have a

conversation. But if you told me Prince, I'd be like, I don't know if I want to do that. Well, and he didn't want to do it. His agent had booked him on it. And he thought, like, what the hell am I doing on American morning chirpy chirpy show shing. Good morning America. So I, um, so I, I approached it as, um, he had, he was deeply in love and he had written a couple of stories about what made that love special. So I did a, I did an interview about, um, the, the love and how do you know and like, what about it and how has that changed your artistic expression and is it harder to write when

you're happy? And I asked sort of like those kinds of questions that when I went off air, the producer pulled me aside and said that was the worst thing. Like, what are you doing? Why aren't you asking about his thing? His symbol. His symbol. But for the beginning of the interview, when he didn't trust me, he didn't answer.

Every question I would ask, he would take out a cracker out of his jacket and snap it. And that was his answer. He was doing a performance art thing. And so I'm partway through. And the control room's not giving me any guidance here. And I'm thinking, oh, this is awful. And so I just said, we're going to get, we're going to get our guests some cheese. in a commercial break and we'll be right back.

And he laughed. And then during the commercial break, he didn't talk. But then when we came out of it, he did. And his interview with me is actually on his website too, as the notoriously interview shy prince who actually talked a little bit about the nature of love in his life. This love, was this the Toronto gal? Yeah, it was.

Okay, because he was living here. Yes, he was. He had a house. In the bridal path. That's right. Yeah. Hanging out with Gordon Layfoot, maybe. Could be.

Who knows? I could see them having, you know, cheese and crackers or whatever. My, it's a couple of things. One thing is if I, you know, the late great prince, shout out to Ridley Funeral Home. He's no longer with us. This cannot happen. By the way, Ridley Funeral Home has a tape measure for you, Kevin Newman. Pillars of this community.

That was quite a segue. Measure what you will. Yeah, you can't, you can't do that on global news or whatever. But shout out to Ridley Funeral Home. But if I had them on. What's a tape measure to me? You, you know what? That's between you and your God, as far as I'm concerned.

Measure what you wish. Okay. as you what you wish. But just remember to shout out Ridley Funeral Home. But I would be worried I'd have nine, I would never get, I'd be lucky to get nine seconds, but 90 minutes of Prince,

and I spent all 90 minutes talking about bad dance. That would be the Toronto Mike interview with Prince. Can we get off bad dance already? I saw him at that incredible performance at the Super Bowl in the rain, when he's saying Purple Rain. Right. I was singing along,

by that point, the Turetural Rain's head, like, everybody was drenched. And so we were all in our underwear, standing singing Purple Rain with Prince and his guitar, and it was epic. I think that's the greatest Super Bowl halftime show of all time. Without a doubt. Yeah, okay, we agree on that too.

Without it out. Okay, but where was the bat dance? Okay, that's something I got to talk to my therapist about. Okay, so midday, were you at Valerie Pringle? Initially, and then Valerie went off to do Canada AM, and then I worked with Tina Srebribeki most of the time. Okay, shout out to midday here. It's a great show, you know.

Yeah. I don't know why they don't bring it back, because the first of the first of the format is just so cheap and informative and it's Canadian. Like, yeah, they really should bring it back. Why do you think, I've got to ask this question while we're on the, before, because we're going to get you to, you know, ABC. Why do you think Friday night with Ralph Ben Murgie was such a failure? Like, why, why is it that we couldn't have our own late night talk show where we could

have, uh, celebrate Canadian and, in all the great Canadian musicians and artists and things? Oh, we did. Yeah, but it didn't last. That one didn't, but... No, that one. Well, you're going to talk about Mike Bullard? Sure.

Yeah, Mike Bullard. Mike Bullard. Shout out to Reilly Funeral Home. I could do 90 minutes on Mike Bullard, but I don't want to drag down the Kevin Newman debut here. But okay, so we, so, but why didn't the Ralph Ben Murgie show work? It was overproduced. It was, um...

Too many cooks in the kitchen? Too many cooks in the kitchen. It was too slick. It didn't, it didn't, it didn't hang. You know, the thing about, the thing about late night is the conversation and the surprise that's going to come out of, um, something that, you don't expect. And you're in a different kind of mood.

And it was, it was produced as if it was, in my view, an 8 p.m. show. It was overproduced. Overproduced. Okay. I think I went,

I don't think it went 18 months even, actually, as I think back. But one of the great moments that came out of that, well, a lot of great moments. I liked a lot of it. But Scott Thompson came on, and he was on with Don Cherry.

And it was this really wild moment of Don Cherry and Scott Thompson. And I played it for Scott Thompson from the kids in the hall. But in the calendar for next week is Don's, son Tim Cherry. And I'm going to play it for Tim Cherry and talk to Tim Cherry about it.

I think it's just one of the great clips is, uh, no kidding. I didn't know it existed. Yeah. And, uh, Dawn drops the F slur, but he does it. It's, you have to, you know, Scott, Scott loved it. He loved every second of it. So I think that's what matters most here.

But quite a moment in Friday night with Ralph Ben Mergie history. Did you also substitute for some guy named Peter, how do you pronounce this, Mansbridge? Did you, uh, substitute for FOTM Peter Mansbridge on the national? I did. the goat. The goat. And he,

yes, I did, occasionally and co-anchored with Pam Wallen, who I had known from CTV years. Also an FOTM. Also a goat.

And then, yeah, I did a little bit of that, but not a lot, but enough to, enough to say I did it. Pamela Wallen loves her cats.

She literally wrote a book about cats. Yes, and her hairdresser. Okay, well, yeah, she's got great hair. Great hair, and we'll leave it there. Okay, I met her in the junction.

She did a book launch, and I went over, biked over to see her. She's full of life. She's, her laugh, her laugh. She's one of those people that can hear it a mile away. Okay, we like, we like laughter on that. The world needs laughter, as Leonard Nimoy once said on the Simpson. The world needs laughter. Holy cow.

Yeah, it's coming back. It's called a callback. That's really good. They should give me a Friday night show on CBC. Hey, CBC, come on. So this is big and exciting because you, Canadian broadcaster, you're on CLEC, you're on CBC hosting Midday, then you also would sub for Peter Mansbridge on the national.

You get the tap on the shoulder from ABC News in the United States of America. Can you give me that story? How does this happen? Well, you want the story? What do you think you're here for? Yes. So I was told that my days at midday were ending, that they had another anchor lined up for it.

and that, and they told me, as they always do in the business, that they tell you on a Friday. And anyway, the guy who was coming in to take over the show couldn't move for six months. So I had to keep doing the show that I knew I'd been fired from. And I kept waiting for CBC management to talk to me if there was anything about to come up. And after six months, nobody had called. The only call I got one day was from the talent recruitment person, at ABC. So I snuck down to New York and did a series of interviews with like, God, that was intimidating.

And anyway, so they hired me for my, for the overnight show. They have an overnight show World News Now, which if you haven't watched it, it means you're not, you don't have young kids or you're not a prisoner. You know, a former anchor has been on this program. Is that Thalia? Yes. Yeah, Thalia, sure. I went down to do it with her. Yes.

The Canuck Connection. Yeah, there were two Canucks doing the American Network News together. Wow. And anyway, so I got the job, but I couldn't take it because I didn't have the immigration. So I had to keep working at the CBC waiting for the immigration to come through. And it came through. And that's when I went to Odom and said, you know, that meeting you didn't have with me while I'm leaving. So, oh, well, we'll have the meeting.

I said, no, no, no, this is done. It's gone. So I didn't want to leave. But, again, it was financially rewarding. And I didn't have a job at CBC as far as I knew after the guy that was going to take over, took over, which he didn't end up doing, by the way. Anyway, so I went down and worked the overnight, which is, as anybody who works an overnight shift knows with family, that's really tough work because it's like flying to, you know,

Japan every weekend in the kind of jet leg you get as you turn around for your family on weekends. And then you've got to, you know, work right through the Sunday to be there. Anyway, it was exhausting. and I still vow I will never take an overnight shift, although that's not going to happen now. Nobody wants me. But, and then did that for about two and a half years. A lot of it with Thalia, and it was,

it changed to how I broadcast. It was so fun and loose and humorous and irreverent. And we got in trouble once for making fun of Kim Jong-un, but mostly it was, it was just a terrific place to. What do you mean? You got in trouble for that. I feel like that's fair game. Well, he was ridiculous.

Well, he was making it, he was, there was some video that they had put out where, you know, it looks very much like a Trump cabinet meeting looks now where everybody going yes to your leader, yesterday or your lead. Tell us about the 18 holes in one you got this morning. So I was, I was, I was, uh, I was voicing it over and like providing what the thought bubble might be for the guys. Anyway, what I didn't know is that Kim Jong-un was visiting New York, the United Nations that day and had a meeting with the head of ABC News the next day and had brought it up.

And, uh, yeah. we got shit for that one, but... Wow. But other than that... They were going to send you to North Korea, I think. Yeah. Anyway. I would be proud, like, that I was brought up by Kim Jong-un for being offensive or something.

Like, I think that's a badge of honor. Well, I actually think, you know, they had to chew me out, but I think there was a little bit of winking going on at the same time. Okay, okay, okay. Okay, so when, like, okay, so you're at ABC News, right? You mentioned ABC World News now, but at some point you get Good Morning America. Like, so how do you get Good Morning America? That's a big deal. It was a big deal.

Like, you're just a guy from Toronto. Who are you to host Good Morning America? Well, that's the first thing I asked him when they offer me the job. Are you sure you want a Canadian saying Good Morning America? Yeah. Because- Well, Peter Jennings is Canadian. But he didn't say Good Morning America.

No, but he said Good Evening America. But, yeah, so, yeah, well, there were some problems. about that because my cultural references weren't quite there. You know, I didn't know baseball. I talked about toboggins and, you know, slush. You said took and they said, what's that? Yeah, all that stuff. But so I was a newsreader, which was a great job for a good two years when Charlie

Gibson was there and Joan London. And that was a fun, a fun gel. Quick, quick, quick tie in. Joan London once dated, believe it or not, Nick Kiprios, when Nick Kiprios was with the Rangers, Nick Kripprios is the son of Thalia Assurial as grand, sorry, godparents.

I thought, I thought they were cousins. No, that's, I, that's what we all were, thought was true, because it was,

I think that came up on sports line or something, but I had Fally on the program. Another call back. Yeah, I asked, yeah, I asked her explicitly,

is Nick Kiprio's your cousin? And she explained, he's the son of her godparents. So cousin asks, not a blood thing, but it's like cousin-esque that you grew up together. All right.

There you go. That is a small one. And the Joan London thing, she did. didn't know, but I'm like, it's in his book because he spent 20 minutes. I didn't know they dated. Yeah, this is a like, come on. Catch up, Kevin. Sorry, man. I should have come here a lot sooner. I thought you were in news junkie. That's the important stuff right there. Okay, so back to Good Morning America. Yeah, so then they wanted to change

the anchors as they seem to want to do, which is a dumb thing to do. That's your phone ringing. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought it'd be a cooler ringtone, to be honest. What kind of jams do you like? You know what? It's back to Good Morning America. It's that ring tone because it's the least anxiety provoking. Oh, that is. Because it kind of sounds fun and it doesn't sound urgent. Like you got a spa or something. Yeah, I can't have urgency in my life anymore.

Okay, anyway, back to Good morning. But like, what are your jams? Are you a classic rock guy? Like, what are you? You know what, I'm all over the place. I have, I just got back from Berlin where I saw Dermannady, who's one of my favorite Irish singer songwriters. I like heavy metal music.

I'm a big, um, uh, east coaster. Yeah, so I'm all over the place. Like East Coast, does that mean like Ashley McIsaac? What is that? Is that Great Big C? What are we talking about? Well, some of it's great big C. Some of it, and of course I'm got-

The Rankin family? No, no, no, I'm having to say, Joel Plaskett. Oh, yeah, I love, I love, I love, I'm working on getting him on Toronto Mike to actually. Love Joel Placke. He's a lovely man. Yeah. Yeah. Sloan, love Sloan, love Slipknot on the heavy metal side.

Wade and bleed. Yeah. Are you kidding me? That's heavy, man. Little Lamb of God. The drums, the drummer, maybe. This is heavy, man. It depends what I'm doing.

Okay, okay. That's a little divergent. Now we're back to Good Morning America. Yeah, good. You did it well. You could have done that. Nobody asked me. No.

Nobody tapped me on the shoulder. Well, they tapped me on the shoulder to replace Charlie Gibson. And the show was losing ratings at the time. They thought an injection of two new people who were pretty well untested would work. It did not. We didn't jive. We didn't have chemistry. This is Lisa McCree.

Lisa McCree. Yeah. And so she was, a broadcaster, well-known broadcaster in the States from L.A., Texas. And it just didn't work. And, you know, that chemistry thing is sort of magical. It either works or it doesn't. And it didn't.

And the ratings kept going down. And nine months later, Lisa was sent back to Los Angeles. And I got to be... You were sent to North Korea. Even better. I got... My consolation prize was to get to work on Nightline with Ted Cople for a while after that. Okay.

I'm sorry about this, but there's that famous scene where... what is it, Ned Flanders wakes up. And he says, I just realize I hate Homer Simpson or something. And then Homer wakes up and he goes, I just realize I hate Ted Koppel. And then he says,

oh no, I find him knowledgeable and witty or something. Did you remember this at all? This doesn't mean anything to you? Okay, I have a little, it's hard to find audio of you on Good Morning America. Well,

they probably, because it was so short. And YouTube hadn't been invented by then. They hadn't invented recording devices yet. Okay, let me just play what I did find. Well, remember springing out of bed bright and early on a Saturday morning for your favorite cartoon. I'll tell you, Scooby-Doo could get me out of bed like that. Well, a lot of things have changed in more ways than one.

Today's hottest cartoon is called South Park, and it's a show that comes on long past most kids' bedtimes. And the characters are sputting words that would put a wise guy like Bugs Bunny to shame. It's made for adults. The cartoon is proving irresistible to children, however, a fact that has some parents hopping mad. The controversy centers on four foul mouths. foul mouth third graders, the stars of comedy. It's funny that we come off to Simpsons and here is a new show called South Park here. So, there you go.

That's cool. I don't know where you found that because there's not a lot of it, as you said. Yeah, luckily you talked about a subject matter. People actually do care about archiving. So South Park heads, I think. With another great Canadian hook too. Yeah, well, yeah, we blame Canada. Sure, absolutely.

So not only are you a correspondent for Nightline, but you're, you know, we talked earlier when you would substitute on the national, you'd take the spot of Peter Mansbridge when he was at a Scottish castle, you know, with Cynthia Dale. Periodically, he had to do that. You know that, right? But you would also substitute for Peter Jennings.

Am I right? On World News Tonight? Yeah, I was a regular substitute on the weekend edition and then quite a few times got to sub for Peter on World News Tonight. And even now, because the theme song doesn't change over time. And I watch David Muir and I hear that theme song go and I get a big pit in my stomach of, oh, my God, here it comes.

There's nothing, there's nothing like hearing, you know, that, and then to know that you're in the chair and that in a couple of seconds, you know, 19 million people are going to watch you, hopefully not stumble. That's, that's pressure. And am I right that you were anchoring coverage of the death of Diana? Diana, Princess of Wales. Yeah, it was the long weekend. It was a Labor Day weekend.

And most of the truly famous anchors were, you know, on Martha's Vineyard and doing their things. So I was the standby anchor and I got the call. And so, you know, I raced in from New Jersey where I lived with my family. And she had had the accident at the time. And so we went up live. And the thing about television then was, you know, there weren't the resources or the cell phone cameras that we had. have today. So it was mostly an audio event. We didn't have live footage out of Paris for the longest time. But I had covered Diana at the CBC on Royal Tours a few times. Sure. So I had a lot of stories to share

and I had a lot of perspective. I knew, you know, that she's Diana, Princess of Wales, not Princess die and, you know, all of those things. And so I just basically did a radio show for eight hours. And then when the authorities in Paris had determined that she had passed, we were still on the air and interrupted, you know, all the network programming. And we had a producer that was in the scrum there. Now, the scrum is what in Canada you call when you sort of are around everybody and pressuring for answers. We had a producer in the scrum. She held up the cell phone and the authorities in Paris.

basically said El Malle. She's died. And I knew just enough French to be able to, from my, you know, education in Mississauga, Ontario. Yeah, exactly. And to be able to say, Diana, Princess Wales has died. We don't know, you know, this, that, or the other.

But, you know, that turned out to be the career-making moment for me in the United States. And largely because I was Canadian, because I knew the royal family. I had recently lost my sister, actually. It was about six weeks earlier from that. So the idea of how to broadcast grief and the sensitivity of the moment was obviously part of my makeup at that point.

And it just seemed to work. And so that's when they began thinking about me seriously for Good Morning America, as the co-host. That was the, yeah. Well, you represented the Commonwealth. Yeah, I did. Basically. Like the viewers go, like, who is this guy who seems to know in a weird amount of stuff about the royal family?

And then you could whip out the money in your wallet and say, this is, was her former mother-in-law. And you can show the camera here. So I'm sorry about the loss of your sister. Thank you. Sorry to hear that. I wanted to show this out at the top, but I got so excited about Uncle Bobby. I forgot. So I'm just, because we're going to get you back to where you belong, Canada.

Okay, this is, what are you doing in the USA? We've got to get you back to Canada. Yep. But I want to say that yesterday I had the privilege of hosting a book launch for Larry Klopat, who's being on this program, Larry came on to talk about losing his only child and the grieving process. And he would journal throughout this, you know, processing this, we kind of unfathomable thing that happened to him, losing his boy. Awful thing.

He would journal his thoughts. And he came over here. and I would record him reading his journal. And it became a podcast series called Why Am I Here and He Is Not? And yesterday at the GLB Brew Pub at Jervis and Queens Key, he launched his book. I'm holding in here for you, Kevin. It's called Why Am I Here and He Is Not?

A Father's Journey Through Grief, Love, and What Remains. And I want to say it was a privilege to host this thing with Larry and his wife Arlene, who wrote a chapter in this book. Boy, that's brave. I'm telling you, I couldn't believe. that he was able to sit where you are right now and I would sit here just recording him and maybe less lights

in here but he would read his journal and it was extremely brave, very courageous. Many times he thought twice about, you know, sharing this, but what I believe it's done, the podcast and now the book, it helps other parents who are going, because everybody grieves differently and knowing you're not alone can be immensely

helpful during such a horrific time. So, congrats Larry and I'm sad and the book had to be written, but I'm proud of you for writing, why am I here and he is not? Which is a very common feeling. I had that for my sister too. Why am I here and she's not?

For years and years and years of the guilt of the survival. Survivor's guilt. That's a real deal. Yeah. And dealing with that. So I wanted to do that. The top. Yeah.

No, I'm glad you did. That is very brave. Very brave. Now, again, since we pause down, and we're going to get you back to Canada here. I do have one more gift for you, Kevin. So it's underneath the beer. Okay?

I know. You get so much stuff. You got your beer, you got your lasagna, you got measuring tape. But this is a book on the history of Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball. Oh, my dad used to go watch that down by the lakefront. Well, yes, that's a previous iteration of the team. But this version of the team plays at Christy Pitts. And it's free, again, no ticket required.

And I couldn't make yesterday's game because I was at this book launch. But check out Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball because you sit on the hill at Christy Pitts. It's high-quality baseball. You can watch Yassie El Pueig. I saw he threw a runner out at home yesterday. And you can grab a hot, hot, I always say hot dog. That's probably not what a journalist would recommend.

But you can grab a hot dog and you can get a beer, a Leafs Lager, if you will, and you can enjoy some high caliber baseball. I highly recommend it. I've been to a couple of games this year. I'll be to a bunch more. I love it. Yeah.

You got the history of Toronto Maple Leafs baseball there. Learn about the Butler brothers, Rob and Rich. They are East York Legends. Cool logo. And of course they played down where the Porter, parking lot is now. Yeah, well, they played the head. I mean, we just did an episode on the 100th anniversary of the Toronto Maple Leafs team that

was playing on where the tip-top Taylor's building went. Yeah, yeah, right there. They still have a, it's called Stadium Road, I believe. Yes, it is. Yeah. So there's an episode with DM Fox where we talk about the 100th anniversary. The 1926 team won at all. And it's quite a story learning about the 1926 Maple Leafs.

But this is the Canadian Baseball League Maple Leaf playing at Christy Pits. Check it out. Last but not least, if you have, Kevin, old electronics, old devices, old cables, maybe they're all in a drawer or a closet, I don't know what you got going on there. Don't throw them out. Don't throw them in the garbage because those chemicals end up in our landfill. Go to recyclemyelectronics.ca, put in your postal code and find out where you can drop it off to be properly recycled.

That's your tip. All right. Kevin Newman. Okay. What brings you back to Canada? Creative opportunity, actually. like I had I had spent most of my career at that point trying to fit into shows that it had been existing for a long time. And they were, sorry, excuse me, built, you know, around the original hosts and stuff.

I have some water for you. Oh, can I? I'm a gentleman. I would do the beer, but it's a little bit early and we're not in the sunshine yet. It's 5 o'clock somewhere. Thank you. So, you know what? I should be sponsored by like fishermen's friends.

Have you ever used these things? They're good, right? I think in my life I've had fishermen's friends. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're good for broadcasting. But I like my voice better if there's something about it. If it's gravelly? Yeah.

Sounds like Scotchy or Scotch? Because I don't have a Kevin Newman voice. I don't have those points anymore. Yeah. Anyway, so it was creative opportunity. Global was becoming a national network having started in Ontario. There's my callback. And then they were going to create a national newscast.

And I thought, Jesus, that'd be cool. Like to create the Canada's third national newscast. What an opportunity. It was going to be at the supper hour, not at 10 and 11. So I didn't have to stay up late. And it was going to be out of Vancouver. which is a city that I never lived in before. And if you're going to come back somewhere,

you shouldn't come back to the same thing. You should come back to something slightly different. So I said yes. And we, a crew of 15 of us started Global National out in Vancouver and worked our tails off like any startup. You know, it was a hell of a lot of work with not enough people. And 9-11 happened our first week on air.

So suddenly we're covering like the biggest story of our lives with, you know, huge. themes of safety and and fear and war and peace and and you know this year is the 25th anniversary of global national so we were able to create and and you know how rare this is in Canada we were able to create a brand new source of verified journalism in Canada that was commercially successful and has survived for 25 years and is now considered sort of one of the institutional newscasts in the country so we had Lloyd Roberts and we had Peter Mansbridge and we had Kevin Newman.

Yes, and they called me John Doyle, the Globe called me the kid because I was about 20 years younger than the other two guys. Okay, shout out to John Doyle in his Irish accent. And soccer loving. He loves soccer so much. Is he an Arsenal fan? I can't remember his team. No, I can't either.

I can either. But I know he's huge. He loves TFC too. And I know he's pumped about the World Cup. It's going to start a couple weeks, I guess. That's going to, this city's going to go nuts. but I want to play a little ad for Global National with Kevin Newman. Wow, you prepared.

Closer. Welcome back to Toronto, a very important city. You'll come closer. Olympic officials admitting she was going to have more from the prime minister's interview. To understanding. Quebec authorities have finally brought a man to justice. To judging. There is one aspect of the health.

Because wherever the story is, this is the Canadian military base. That's where Kevin Newman is. The attack and hype is certainly one of the most significant. Global National with Kevin Newman. Explore some of the hidden messages. When he moves on location, you move closer to the story. Got a chill, man. You're going to run through a wall after hearing that.

Who's doing that voice over? That guy. That was a voice, wasn't it? Imagine. I would never shut up if I had a voice like that. Yeah, we made a lot of money off it. Okay. Before AI.

Oh, yeah. Well, that's all. Don't go there. I have, I will say, I have an episode coming up with Jeremy Hopkins about the AI slop and we're just going to rebel against it and rant against it. Enough is enough. The AI slop that I have to wade through when I check my social media feeds and I pursue. Actually, hold on to that because we're going to get you to 2019 here.

And then I want to ask you about 2026 and everything in the news there. Okay. So that's a good reason to come back, Global National. You are the first anchor and the executive editor. That'll lure you home. Yeah, I did. And we were able to create a newscast that wasn't like the other ones. and a brand new audience at 630.

I didn't want to do the news from the mount. I wanted, my insight was that I wanted to do to news what ESPN had done to sports. And kind of what sports line was in the early days as well. Yes, Guy. You know, just to treat the subject matter seriously, but, you know, be a little more authentic, have some fun with it,

seek to inform, focus on context. And we succeeded. I mean, five years after it's long, we were the number one newscast in the country, which was unheard of. That's wild. You know, Global had never had a number one newscast. And so, yeah, we worked really, really hard and it worked. And I still feel it is sort of the legacy thing that I leave behind when the time comes.

And you won a couple of Gemini Awards for Best News Anchor? Yeah, those are cool. Are they on display somewhere? Yeah. I've got my, it's just for me. My family just doesn't give a shit. But it's over a fireplace at my cottage. And the team at Global National won Best Newscast.

Yeah, and they're still winning. And Donna Friesen just won the CSA Award as best newscaster. So the tradition continues. Okay, the Cosmic Ballet goes on. So Donna Friesen, you mentioned her. So in April 2010, you announced you're resigning from global television. I think you're, it was effective August 30, 2010. Why?

I was burnt out. It was competing at such a level with, you know, a quarter of the people of the competitors. And I was, I didn't have much more to give. So I chose the moment at the Olympics, actually, at the 2010 Olympics, which to me was one of the stories I covered that had the most joy. It was just, it was a Canadian, it was filled with joy. And then I went down and I covered the Obama inauguration. which was again pure joy. So I said to my wife, I thought, I want to call my time

and I want to leave not when, you know, Canadian soldiers are in harm's way. In the same way, I want to have these two joyous moments and then figure out what else I want to play with later in life. And so I informed Global in April, resigned in August so that they had enough time to find a good replacement, which they did, and went on to CTV for 10 years after that.

Yeah, so a couple of years, though, I guess, to do other things, right? Yeah, well, I needed to learn about the digital landscape. I didn't understand it. You can't really, I mean, you know, you can't, you can't really embrace the new while you're so busy creating the old. And so I spent a couple of years just attached to various startups to learn about digital news. And so that when I did get another job, it was with Bell Media, and they brought me in as the digital news evangelist to try to bring CTV news. into the digital era. Okay, so we talked earlier that you would sub for Peter Mansbridge,

you would sub for Peter Jennings, and you would sub for Lisa LaFlam. I'm the sub of choice. Well, these are big names. Okay, so, of course, I don't want, your CTV time, so there's a lot here. You mentioned W5, I think, earlier. Yeah, that was my last assignment,

which is one of the, you know, was one of the great assignments in Canadian broadcast journalism because you did depth, you had time, you were working with the best to the best producers and we broke a lot of cool stories I got to meet a lot of cool people. Tommy Chong I got to meet on the eve of... I've had two of his daughters on this program.

Have you? Interesting cat and I got to interview him on the eve of basically marijuana being recognized as medicine in Canada, something that he had always said it was. Did you know he did Motown? Oh yeah, he helped discover the Jackson Five. He was at the Vancouver's.

Yeah, so I do know this because, knew this. Ray Don Chong. Well, Ray Don Chong came on Toronto Mike and told that whole story. And she talked about befriending very young Michael Jackson in Detroit. Yeah. And he was the opening act for the Supremes in Vancouver, too. Yeah.

And anyway, I didn't know this. You obviously do. Only because Ray Don Chong told me. Yeah. I just do a lot of listening on this program. That's how I learned. Well, you get to feed your curiosity. Scratch that itch there.

Okay. But you did a lot of, so you did a lot of stuff on, so we're going to talk about 2019, but I did want to. While we're in the 2010s here, while we're in Obama Corps, as I call it. Oh, yeah. Like we look back nostalgically on Obama Corps now. But you did publish with your son Alex, all out, a father and son confront the heard truths that made them better men.

Tell me a little bit about writing that with Alex. So I was doing a W5 story on a young hockey goalie up in Ottawa who had, come out to his family and, you know, still to this day there is no professional hockey player active that has come out as, uh, as gay. And so I thought it was an interesting way to explore the dynamics of the family. And then I'm sitting across from his dad, you know, interviewing him about his son and suddenly realized, holy shit, I'm asking this guy questions I haven't asked my own son who's gay. And so I went back to him and I said, you know what? There's a real, um, A, I feel bad that I haven't engaged you on these kind of questions, but B, there's a gap here.

There's no, there's no guide for fathers who have gay or trans kids that are coming out in the English language. I've done a search, lots of moms are talking about having LGBQ kids, but no fathers have written. To this day, we're the only father-son pair that have written about our experience. So he and I together wrote about certain chapters in our experience of his kind of. coming out at 17, where I was in my career at that point. And, you know, the book is written, we wrote it in isolation. Kate Philean was our editor and helped us coordinate it. And then one day, Alex and I took our manuscripts, met downtown over a couple of years,

and exchanged manuscripts and read each other's stories. And so the book is, the only, the neat thing about the book is you are reading these stories written in isolation, but as the reader, you're starting to see the connections between us and how we're, you know, how we're much more similar than we're dissimilar in our exploration of masculinity, in our exploration of success, ambition, you know, both bullied at various times in our school experience. And yeah, so it was, it was difficult, but free therapy for a couple years. Okay. Really, that's, that's, that's great. And, you know, tackling that project with your boy sounds really, really cool too. It reset us as adults, you know, and it's, you know, sometimes parents don't reset

their relationships with their kids. They continue to keep the same patterns, but that one, that one reset us. I have two kids graduating university. Well, one just, I just went to a convocation in Montreal last week for my oldest daughter, but my oldest son has a convocation in a couple of weeks. So it's like, I kind of, feel that. Like, from kids to adult, that transition is happening for half my kids right now. Take them camping or do something with them where you're the experts. It's fine. I can't get them.

I camp every year. And I can, I have two younger kids. I make them camp with me. They have a great time. So we're going to go in late July. But I always offer the older two kids to come join us. We go to the pinery. And I always say come, come join us.

And they haven't, well, the last time, a few years ago, I think Michelle said yes. And then a few, maybe a year before that, James said yes. but it's been a while. Yeah. You know, but I always, I would love to have them there. Okay.

But also, I think that, I had this chat with my, so I have four kids. And, and all four had openly gay, male classmates, all of them.

Yeah. And I'm, you're a bit old than me, but yeah. Oh, it's amazing, actually. It's just so amazing

because I look back at my, uh, primary school and then high school. And nobody was out. No male was out. No. No, and Alex was the only one out in his high school even when he was 17. And so, you know, as a father, you know, I worried, is he going to be safe?

Are people going to beat him up? Or is, you know, none of the stuff I needed to worry about. But I didn't have another father at the time to talk to because you can't out your own children to other people, right? So if they're not saying it like, yeah, it was a very lonely experience as a parent at that time. I think it's less lonely now. There's a lot of infrastructure in place. There's a lot of readings you can do. But at that time, and even 10 years ago in 2010, and the father is the most difficult person for a gay kid to come out to because they fear the judgment.

And gay suicides are in the coming out process are much higher. And so, you know, hopefully talking about it and providing an example of, you know, how many mistakes I made, how many mistakes he made. and just coming to, just giving men particularly a language around it helps make it a little bit better. Yeah, good on you for writing that book. Absolutely. And I just love the fact that you can be yourself in 20. But I say this, I'm going to say this with a little caveat, which is that I, I've had guests on this show who have a trans child. And I believe we have successfully normalized homosexuality. Like it's like, you know, you tell someone you're gay and they're like,

Okay, cool. Like, it doesn't matter. It's fine. It's normal. You're accepted. We're allies. But I feel in this climate, and a lot of it has to do of what's going on south of the border in the United States right now. But there is absolutely an anti-trans sentiment that sickens me. And I think, I don't understand. It's very strange. It's just, it's, they need the other to feel stronger themselves. Like they used to kick a homosexual person, but now that you're, you're, you know, you're one of us now. We'll kick a trans person. Like we need to have some kind of a... Yeah, a fall guy for all those things that are wrong. Whipping boy or whatever. And it's such a small percentage of the population. It's nonsense. Yeah, so I just feel like, feel for parents of trans kids

because I would, I would worry about the safety of my child. Yeah. Anyways, so that's bullshit out there. If you're anti-trans, unsubscribe from this podcast. That's an order. Not interested in talking to you. Get out of here. Get out of here.

Don't come to TMLX 22 if you're anti-trans. Okay. All right. back. Now, okay, so tell me why you shut it all down. You just, you look fit. You, uh, you talk like a young person. You look like a, you're full of energy. I'm curious why seven years ago, September 2019, why did you retire from network television? Well, I've been fired from network television a few times. And I knew what that felt like. Um, and, uh, I'm a believer that, um, you move under the way to make room for the next generation. And so I was driving down from the car,

I was on the highway 11 or whatever. And I was driving down. And it was just like this thought that went through my head, um, you got enough. You'll be okay. Right? Like I,

I'll be all right. Oh, you have a cottage. I have a cottage. That's why I have enough, right? Because I got a second house. I'm jealous. I'm camping and you got a cottage. I know.

So, um, and so, um, and there's, um, there's so much more that I would like to experience before I get too ill or before my mobility is affected. And the truth is, you know, if you retire at 60, which I was fortunate enough to be able to do,

you have about 11 or 12 years of good health to do what you want to do. And then after that, things get creaky. Or you have a cancer scare or there's a heart scare or like things, suddenly your health becomes your full-time job. So that didn't seem like very long to me. That seemed like 10 years, which goes like this now. Right. So I thought, I can do it. I'm going to do it.

And, um, yeah, if you could have, yeah, I understand completely, uh, what is the one thing you can't buy is time, right? Like, like, like, and, and if you don't have your health, what do you have? Like, so, right. I'm assuming you've got your health. Uh, show me your medical records, Kevin Newman. Oh my God, they're actually way, way too long. Health is my, my, my, there's no hip-a over here. This is Canada. Okay, let me, uh, thank goodness, man. Good heavens. If I had to pay for all this down south, I'd, I'd be broke. Are you going on, uh, pleasure trips to the United States right now? No. I have, I went down, they had the 50th anniversary show for Good Morning America.

Right. That's the only time I went down and I got detained for three hours in no man's land. And I thought, oh, it's real. Yeah, no, I'm not going. Well, I just had Charlie Angus over here and he talked about his, he got detained. And then they, they, they, they saw his social media posts. Yeah. But, I mean, I'm not, no, I'm no, no interest. No. No interest. Well, I mean, I have. me a ticket to see the, I don't know, what do people care about? The Super Bowl tickets and I'll say, who else wants them? Well, I have good friends that I'm not going to see, you know, like I live there for 10 years.

Can't they come here? I know. I know. I know. Or maybe you'll meet in, I don't know, Tijuana or something. Yeah. It's kind of weird to have, you know, places that you've wandered off your list, but it's off my list. Okay.

Just curious. Okay. I want to shout out the active live stream right now. So you are, I didn't tell you, because it's top secret, but you're on live. Toronto Mike.com. We live stream there. And I mean, the real-time reaction to you as a guest on Toronto Mike

is extremely positive. I think you hit a home run in your debut. We're not done yet, because I'm going to ask you about... It was the Uncle Bobby story, right? Well, you hit, you know what? That first pitch home run. Some Blue Jays have hit a home run

in their first step back. I feel like Junior Felix did that. I'm now trying to remember. I know you're not a sports guy, but okay. Well, you've only done 1,920 episodes. I mean, Jesus. What are we at? This is 1908.

Okay. Oh, wait. Sorry, I'm ahead of myself. I think it's 1908. But I want to say hello to Andrew Ward, who says, what a great guest. And St. Catherine's Chris, who says, he is fantastic. And Jeremy Hopkins, who loved, he's a Toronto historian, okay? He's the one he's going to come in and go off on AI Slop.

But Jeremy Hopkins loved your family history, hearing about, you know, Youngstreet and the history of your family. And that could be an episode unto itself. So I want to say how to CJ as well. And Moose Grumpy? Oh, Charles McAdoo. That's right. There was a Blue Jay who got a home run in his debut this weekend. But Moose was at his first at bat.

That's what I need to know. How was it at the first Jay's game? 1977, April 7. Skip school. I'm trying to remember. We beat the White Sox is what I remember. Doug Alte did he heard of a bird? No, that's later.

Dave Winfield, that's much later. Dave Winfield kills a seagull. And I just had this chap of somebody. Jamie Campbell from Sportsnet took the carcass of that bird and had it with him at Exhibition Stadium. What the fuck? I know. He told me the story.

Unless he's, oh, unless he's, uh, bullshiting me, but, um, so you have memories

of that first Blue Jay game? Yeah, just, yeah, I went with the buddy, skipping school. We were freezing our butts off in the old C&E stadium.

And, uh, it was snowing, kind of. It was snowing. Yes. The guy had snow shoes on. Yeah,

it was perfect. Bill Singer, I think he was, he was the starting pitcher? I wasn't there. I don't mean, I was 17. You were 17,

but Doug Alt did two home runs. do, I do know that, the late great Dougald. I do have a 1986 shopper's drug mark calendar on my wall. If you ever want to know what day it is in 1986, that's stuck on me for George Bell. Son was born then. Okay, oh, good year, good year. Jays did not win the pen of that year.

Okay, so where I want to go with you here, oh, real quick, can you please tell Andrew Ward that about, I don't know if we want to go back, actually, but you went to Aerondale, right? I did in Mississauga, yeah. Okay, because he wants to know about your Ayrndale years, but I don't know. Very sad. I actually went back.

It was a 40th anniversary of the school, and they brought back, you know, guys who have been in NHL hockey players and whatever, and they had a little assembly for some of the kids there about. Who is the most famous person other than Kevin Newman? Donovan Bailey. Who I talked to just before. I was recording with Donovan 10 minutes before you knocked on the door. Yeah, Dave Poulin, hockey player.

Sure. He was in my ear. Mike Bullard. Went to Aaron. Oh, Mike Bullard. Yeah. E-O-T-M. Mike Bullard.

Yes. And, yeah, lots of. Anyway, so it was a pretty good group. Wow. And then, so they're going down the thing and everyone's talking about how great those years were and the friends that they met. And I had a shit time there. So at the end of it, I thought, this is, I'm here to tell you that for everybody who is ostracized, who everybody who, this is the worst experience that they've ever had, stick with it, graduate.

It only gets better from here. So I became that guy. Okay. And I want to say, Andrew Ward, I was wondering if your question would be any good, and it was good because it looks like Kevin Newman came to play hardball here. He's going to hit every pitch he sees here. Okay. So on our way out here, you've been amazing. Oh, it's been fun.

Thank you, man. I say that on behalf of the TMU, the Toronto Mike universe. You've been amazing. And I was reading a piece you wrote. I was reading it on LinkedIn, I believe. LinkedIn and the line. Yeah, I write for the line sometimes. Okay, well, so maybe this, maybe tell us what you've been.

I know you did some of this off the top. but what have you been up to since September 2019? And then maybe, if you don't mind telling me why these are challenging days for news addicts? Yeah. That's your opening line. You know what? I talked about the get fact thing. So let's leave that where it is.

I've been playing with AI because I didn't want to be the grandfather, you know, asking his kids to, like, fax him stuff. I want to stay relevant. I want to understand it so I can help them with their homework. Right. But these are terrible times. and part of my rhythm of my life has been to scan news because I had to be prepared to answer any question about it. I had to know where things were going. And, you know, if you've spent 40 years as I did watching politics, watching the world develop, you can make some pretty good

guesses about the way things are going. And so that has been a source of anxiety for me. And I know I'm not alone in the last few years, just seeing the disintegration of institutions, the disintegration of politics, the way that alliances are being fractured around the world at an incredible rate. And I have grandkids, and I worry about the world that, you know, they're emerging into. So I wrote a piece about being an adrenaline addict, which I think I have been in my business. and how hard it is to shake in a time that I'm generally fearful. And I'm generally, so I, you know, I have been trying to adjust myself to recognizing that, A, I don't have a responsibility to tell the world anymore what's going on,

that this is a conversation I'm largely having with myself. Or the guys at Tim Hornins or something. Or, yeah, yeah, yeah, give me another double double. And, um, and, um, yeah. You can't turn it off like a switch, right? Well, I can't because it's, it's a big part of my makeup. Um, and I do believe that I, I can, you know, make some, like I'm, I'm a believer that we should all be thinking about what it means if there's a cyber attack on our water supply or on our power systems. I think we're living in a time when, um, you know, other countries have the ability to disrupt our society in major ways.

they haven't used the ability yet, but they have it. They're implanted in our systems. And if you're a parent, you should be thinking about, you know, if that happens, what would I do? And so that's sort of where I'm at emotionally right now. And worried, you know, for my grandsons, is it, you know, what, I still think that the best thing I can do for them is give them a sense of wilderness, which is our great birthright as Canadians, that they're comfortable, knowing how to make a fire and, like, the things that

are tactile in the AI age and smelling the forest and knowing how to whittle a spear and all that, all that stuff. Right. So, yeah, so I guess I'll try and bring that to them. But can I protect them in the way that a father likes to protect their kids from what's about to come down the pipeline? I unfortunately can't. So if I'm hearing you correctly, you've seen this movie before.

And you know how it ends? We all have. No, that's the problem. I don't know how it ends. But I do know what I do ask you, how does it end? But I do know it's going to, I do know it's not going to get better soon. Is there hope for the United States of America? Or is that just a failed experiment?

We need to move on as a world. No, I think it's seen its best days. I do. I think the hatred for one another in America now is so deep and ingress. And fortunately in Canada, it's not there yet. We have somehow managed to huddle in the middle in a way and still have conversations. I still have WhatsApp groups with mega friends on them. I'm not esponging them.

I'm trying not to get into my corner. But in the United States, I just think the mutual hatred of fellow Americans is too great to heal. at least as long as I'm living. And what about the, because I can feel a palpable dist, and there were some lovely Americans at my Elma combo gig. Like they drove five,

of four hours, I think they drove. Plenty of lovely Americans. Steve and Lori, I'm shouting you out. They live in South New York State, and they drove to the Elma Combo last week. And they're lovely people, and they love my show.

I'm surprised because I just shit on them all the time, these Americans or whatever. But, I mean, I can feel whenever, there's any, whenever I see the, and I watch, you know, I watch the Canadians versus the hurricanes, for example. And then now it's time for the star spangled banner. And there's that flag. I feel in my gutt. Like it's like a guttural response of like, fuck that song. Fuck that flag. Fuck that country. I, it's palpable in me. It's not in me. I live there. I, I, I, I, um, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I'm prepared to, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, you know, fight the disinformation merchants. But I just think it's really, really sad because one of the things I learned to love about America was its constitution and the idea that it was a country based on ideals. And those don't matter to too many Americans now.

And I just think it's a terrible loss, not only for America, but it's a loss for all of us. And when you're in these chats with Meg, if you're still MAGA in 2026, like, hey, what does that say about? Your values, your morals, your character. And B, how do you remain friends of these people? I argue a lot with them. I look at their behaviors, you know, when, you know, they're getting much quieter now, which tells me that they're starting to doubt themselves, but they'll never admit it. And they're seeing the damage being done to places around the world.

I mean, the idea of, you know, invading Cuba, Panama, probably. Well, they were talking about Greenland before. Greenland. Well, they were talking about this country. They'll keep talking about it. Yeah, I don't think that'll ever happen here. But will there be operations inside of Canada someday? Maybe. You know, specific operations. There's definitely already, you know, Meg is starting to pay attention to the Alberta referendum.

So, yeah. And I'm assuming you worry about interference in our democratic elections here. 100%. Foreign interference. Yeah, I don't think they can. disrupt our election because our election is still pretty old school. We still go in some place with a pencil and a piece of paper. But you know me as well as I do. But their minds, yes, they'll try to poison the minds. The misinformation that is prevalent on, I'm going to say,

for example, Facebook. Oh, 100% man. Like, I hate, I hate, I've, I don't, I'm not on Facebook anymore. I'm so disgusted by it. But, um, but yes, they're going to try to, they're going to try to poison our minds. Right. And I'm hoping that Canadians are savvy enough to know that that's the intent and they will ask questions. Again, I think we're overestimating the intelligence of the average Canadian. But I hope you're right, man.

I hope Canada can resist the movement we've seen to the south. Geez, we're hanging on here. And thanks to good soldiers like you, Kevin Newman, I love this chat. Thank you, sir. I loved it too. And look at all those free shit I got here, man. You got beer from Great Lakes. I got a measuring.

Are you coming to TMLX 22 on June 25th? Now that I know about it. 6 to 9 p.m. at Great Lakes Brewery. Everybody is invited. Even you, Steve and Lori, if you want another four and a half hour drive to South Atobico, we'd love to see you there. Man, this was great. Uncle Bobby's story, I might have to pull it and play it during the next retro Ontario.

We do these Christmas crackers every year, me and Ed Conroy who's behind Reg. Oh, quick, quick, aside, because this happened just before the Donovan Bailey episode I recorded and I learned I was sampled on a hip-hop song. So I'm going to share this on TorontoMike.com like later today.

But this news came from Ed Conroy that I was, I was sampled. It's a dream come true. My voice on this podcast sampled on a hip-hop song. Very cool. I can't claim that. You may substitute for Peter Jennings the late grade.

But I'm a sample done of hip-ups on. Kevin Newman, loved it. We're going to have to get you back maybe to kick out those metal jams. Nice. And that.

Hey, what's your favorite ice cream flavor? Chocolate. Came in through blue sky. I almost forgot. Jay J. Jareth wrote, what's his favorite ice cream flavor? And we know it's chocolate.

Mine too. But give me chocolate with, like, chunks of fudge in there. Like, I like to have a chocolate with chunks of something chocolate. so like double chocolate. Chocolate orgy.

Love it. What's an or? Oh, Cynthia Dale. Peter Mann's Bridge is married to Cynthia Dale. Cynthia Dale played the mom. And Stu Stone, my buddy, played the son. And what the hell is that movie called?

But the famous line from Stu Stone, Mom, what's an orgy? And that! Heaven's like, where the hell am I? And that brings us to the end of our 1,9008 show. Go to Torontomike.com for all your Toronto Mike needs and put June 25 in your calendar. Come to TMLX22 at Great Lakes Brewery. Much love to all who made this possible.

That is indeed. Great Lakes Brewery. Palma Pasta. Kevin, don't leave without your lasagna. Toronto Maple Leafs baseball. That too? You get a lasagna. Well, that's the empty box, but it's in my freezer.

I wasn't messing around, Kevin. You'll love it, too. Toronto Maple Leafs baseball. They play at Christy Pitts. No ticket required. Best value in the city. Nick Aienys, Recycle MyElectronics.cai and Ridley Funeral Home. Their podcast is called Life's Undertaking.

And there is, I mentioned earlier, the Rankin family, just quickly, because Heather Rankin is going to be a guest on Life's Undertaking next week. See you all. I have to go to my calendar. Who's on next? Hold on. Musician Luke Doucette joins me Wednesday morning. Use the force, Luke. See you then.