​Sidney M. Cohen

Sidney M. Cohen is one of Canada’s most experienced television producers and director and network executive producer, with over 10,000 program episodes produced and/or directed. With 45 years experience in the broadcast industry and still going strong, Sidney has launched 24 new series. He is a member of the Quarter Century Club of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, The Canadian Film Television Producers Association and the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television and served as a judge for the Gemini Awards and the Iris Awards sponsored by the National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE).

 

Sidney’s career began in Montreal and he’s worked in Ottawa, New York, Los Angeles, England, Israel, France, Spain, Poland and in many regions of Canada. He has traveled to Southeast Asia, Europe, numerous Caribbean countries and the Arctic. He’s one of the few Canadians to have worked with the "Ed Sullivan Show" and has produced nearly every type of program format. Some of his early work was with American television game show pioneers, Dan Enright and Jack Barry, subjects of Robert Redford’s film, “Quiz Show”. Sidney also commuted weekly to Los Angeles to direct America’s first live interactive series “Say Powww” starring Jack Clark and produced Alex Trebek’s early CBC game show “Strategy”.

 

Sidney created many series including “The Mad Dash”, the popular Canadian network daytime game show (and the first English-language Canadian created series to be licensed and produced abroad). It’s recently completed a four year run on GameTV Canada. He co-created the prime time hit series “Thrill of A Lifetime” which ran for seven years on CTV to large audiences and was revived in 2002-3 for telecast on the W Network and in 2004 on Biography (USA).

 

Over the years he has met and worked with “countless names in the news” and has covered numerous historical events including the Quebec FLQ crisis from Ottawa, royal visits, elections, political conventions and was on the administration television staff of Expo 67 in Montreal. Sidney spent 6 years directing news and current affairs programs for CBC. He was part of the team that put “Midday” to air in 1984 and remained with the show directing it daily though 1988, developing many new production techniques.

 

At the launch of CBC Newsworld, Sidney directed a number of series including, “The Passionate Eye” & “On the Arts”. Sidney directed daily news for stations in Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto and the CTV National News for many years. In 1992 he directed all daytime live coverage of the Barcelona Olympic Games for CTV. Later in 1992 he was appointed Executive Producer of “Canada AM”, and remained in that position until he was appointed Executive Producer, New Program Development for the CTV Network. There, he created and produced numerous lifestyle programs including “Canadian Living TV”, magazine, gardening and other series.

 

In 1999 Sidney co-founded Virtual Broadcast Corporation, operator of the world’s first Internet TV networks and as its Executive Producer, was responsible for the development and production of programming across 22 specialty internet TV networks.

 

The production of “PORTHOLE The TV Cruise Show” in 2000-2001 brought Sidney’s love of television, travel and cruising together in an exciting new venture with PORTHOLE Magazine. A special was telecast on CTV and the resulting series was aired in the US and Canada. Sidney also performed the host duties on a number of episodes.

 

Sidney's past decade has been busy, producing and directing 7 seasons of TVO’s “Reach for the Top” (Ontario) and has directed five seasons of “Cooking with the Wolfman” for APTN TV. He's directed 2 seasons of the game show series “Inside the Box” for GAMETV in Canada, “Who'd You Rather” for  CaveTV, and three seasons of “Accessibility in Action” a ground-breaking magazine series for AMI-TV at Pyman Productions. He also directs lifestyle on-location programming and episodes of “The Agenda with Steve Paikin” for TVO.

 

Sidney is married to Susan, a watercolour artist exhibiting in the Toronto area. They have 2 children.