The Oral History of 'Jonovision,' Canada's Perfectly Weird Teen Talk Show
Host Jonathan Torrens, Sum 41's Deryck Whibley, Snake from 'Degrassi,' and many, many more on the show that defined Canadian youth culture in the 1990s and early 2000s.
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This is a great telling of the history of Jonovision, the show that thousands of Canadian millennials watched after school on public television while waiting for The Simpsons to come on. I was one of those kids, and I had special affection for Jonovision host Jonothan Torrens because he was the half-brother of a friend of mine. As the article explains, that's part of what made Jonovision cool: it felt approachable, like something your friend's friend might make.
I hadn't fully appreciated Jonovision's cultural impact until reading the article. This weird teen talk show can be credited with launching Sum-41 and Degrassi: The Next Generation (and, thereby, Drake).