Spooks, spin-offs and a more defined role for the cbc mark this season’s launch of the 1996/97 network tv schedules.

Amid wrestling with union woes and budget cuts, the cbc has fulfilled its long-held goal of ridding itself of u.s. programming in primetime. The 1996/97 cbc schedule features 50 new programs, including 20 new entertainment series and miniseries, two new current affairs series and three new children’s shows, and accounts for much of the distinctively Canadian programming on the networks, or what executive director of arts and entertainment programming Phyllis Platt calls ‘not ersatz industrial Canadian; homegrown, rich, defiantly Canadian.’

Sunni Boot, managing director of Toronto’s Optimedia, says this season represents one of the best ever in terms of u.s. schedules.

u.s. as well as new prime Canadian programs reflect a high heebie-jeebie factor, picking up on the X-Files-inspired rage for the irrational. Together, ctv and CanWest Global will offer eight-and-a-half hours of Canadian prime programming, four of it new. Saturday nights will see the head-to-head scariness of two new Canadian programs airing at 10 p.m. on Global and ctv.

Global’s PSI Factor, from Atlantis, a 22-episode, hour-long, fact-based paranormal anthology series hosted by Dan Aykroyd, will be scheduled against ctv’s Poltergeist: The Legacy, a production of Trilogy and PMP Productions for mgm tv and Showtime.

Global will also air Atlantis’ Sinbad, an effects-intensive revival of the old fantasy-adventure movies. Sinbad will run Saturdays at 2 p.m. as part of a ‘totally heroic television’ package with another pair of period pieces, Hercules and Xena. The more down-home Jake and the Kid, from Great North and Nelvana, has been picked up for season two and will continue to air Saturdays at 7 p.m.

Atlantis’ Traders will also be back for another season in its Thursday 10 p.m. slot, running against er .

The X-Files/Outer Limits paranormal block has moved from Friday to Sunday nights starting at 9 p.m. The Friday 8-10 p.m. pairing will be Sliders and Millenium, a new one-hour series from X-Files creator Chris Carter about an fbi serial killer chaser, which CanWest Global national vp of programming Doug Hoover says will set a new benchmark in drama production.

Insight Productions’ Ready or Not will return to Global as part of a week-long 7 p.m. ‘checkerboard’ of teen-targeted programming that includes the new movie-inspired series Party Girl and Clueless Monday and Wednesday respectively and Bewitched-inspired Sabrina on Friday.

Global has also picked up Jeff Foxworthy, in simulcast Monday at 8 p.m., and Something So Right, a comedy featuring thirtysomething alum Mel Harris, running Tuesday between Mad About You, switched from Sunday, and Caroline in the City, moved from the Thursday Friends/Single Guy/Seinfeld lineup to run in simulcast.

Another thirtysomething, Ken Olin, stars in the new Global cop drama EZ Streets Wednesday at 10 p.m.

Hoover says Global will have slightly more simulcasting this season, with about 19 hours in primetime.

ctv is offering three new Canadian hours and two new u.s. hours per week. New ctv sitcoms include the Michael J. Fox vehicle Spin City, being touted as a likely hit; Ink, a romantic comedy with Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen; and the Steven Spielberg cop show High Incident.

Alliance’s Due South was not picked up as cbs failed to pick it up in the u.s.

In addition to Poltergeist, ctv Canadian content includes F/X: The Series, a movie spin-off from Fireworks starring Australian Cameron Daddo (Models Inc.) and Kevin Dobson (Knots Landing), running Saturday at 9 p.m., and Two, a Fugitive-type one-hour series from Stephen J. Cannell. The three Canadian shows are syndicated in the u.s. and are not heavily Canada-centric.

‘It’s a question of us trying to find or acquire or develop the best Canadian shows we can given financial restrictions,’ says ctv programming head Arthur Weinthal. ‘These programs are produced by Canadians through Canadian companies and are shot entirely in Canada. Drama is not nationalistic, it’s about what goes on between people regardless of where they live.’

ctv has also revamped its staple W5 to be more of a newsy and less of a feature-oriented program. Weinthal says Canada’s longest-running news magazine will feature more ctv news personalities, including Lloyd Robertson and Valerie Pringle, and more ctv news personality contributors.

The biggest volume of change comes in the cbc arts and entertainment lineup. ‘This schedule clearly puts the focus on us as a producer of distinctly Canadian programming,’ says cbc English tv network vp Jim Byrd.

With the departure of Road To Avonlea, the Sunday 7-8 p.m. slot will be filled with another Sullivan family drama, Wind At My Back. Two East Coast-based series, Gullages, a comedy series from Bill McGillivray set in a St. John’s taxi stand, and Black Harbour, a Nova Scotia-based drama from the creators of North of 60, will run in the Wednesday 8-10 p.m. slot.

Byrd says the network will monitor response to Gullages and other partial-season series to determine their longevity. ‘By the time this season is over we will have tested five or six short part series and we’ll see which ones play best and have the most potential,’ says Byrd.

Monday is comedy night, with Royal Canadian Air Farce starting at 7:30 p.m. followed by Just For Laughs, Comics, Salter Street’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes and The Newsroom, a comical look at the schadenfreude-ridden world of tv news from writer/actor/director Ken Finkleman.

Byrd says to get this season’s schedule on the air despite budget cuts of $50 million, the network had to be ‘very imaginative’ about its spending and that the several million dollars that ordinarily would have gone south was a major mitigating factor.

Recent tentative agreements with cbc English unions on the issue of contracting out stipulate a limit of 60% on the amount of arts and entertainment programming to come from independent sources, and Byrd says the ’96/97 schedule represents a mix of about 50% each of in-house versus independent and coproductions.

Platt says the elimination of u.s. programming doesn’t necessarily mean a corollary loss of revenue. ‘This year has been particularly difficult with CanWest and the ctv group buying together,’ says Platt. ‘Prices have gone up and we would have had to put more money into picking up u.s. shows. There’s no telling how that would have fallen out.’

Many media executives say there wasn’t enough u.s. programming to have huge advertising revenue repercussions. Boot says many advertisers bought cbc for its off-prime strips, sports and the lifestyle Canadian programming it will continue to deliver.

In news and current affairs, cbc will bring back its staple programs The National at 10 p.m. and Venture as well as Undercurrents with Wendy Mesley Fridays at 7 p.m.

A news-themed Tuesday will run Man Alive with new host R.H. Thomson, Market Place, The Fifth Estate and Witness from 7-10 p.m. The fifth season of North of 60 returns Thursday at 9 p.m. following the 37th season of The Nature of Things and Adrienne Clarkson Presents, running commercial-free.

News in news is the Canadian Biography series, a mix of in-house and independently produced hour-long documentaries on Canadians of note, and The Dawn of the Eye, a six-part coproduction with the bbc looking at the history of tv news. Canadian biographies on Mordecai Richler, Peter Lougheed, Roberta Bondar, Don Cherry and Anne Murray are already in production, with another 15-20 docs to come.

cbc’s coverage of the Atlanta Olympics, immediately followed by the World Cup of Hockey, will provide an effective showcase for the network and an opportunity to promote the new schedule, says Byrd.

‘There is about an eight-week period from mid-July to mid-September when we will have the only original production on the screen,’ he says. ‘That’s a great chance for us to produce quality programming that will bring big audiences in, and it’s also a great opportunity to promote the fall schedule to follow.’

New commercial-free cbc kids’ initiatives include Sesame Park, a Canadianized version of Sesame Street that takes youngsters away from brownstones and city streets and into an ‘ecologically friendly park,’ Guess What?, a 15-minute science discovery series aimed at preschoolers, and Cinar’s Wimzie’s House, currently seen on Radio-Canada.

For the older, after-school crowd, Jonovision, a sketch comedy and talk show hosted by Jonathan Torrens from Street Cents, runs Monday to Thursday at 4 p.m.

ctv’s new Saturday kids’ hour, The Giggle Gang, features several Canadian kids’ properties including Bunch of Munsch, For Better or For Worse, Nilus the Sandman and Bunnykins.

Unheralded by a launch, the Baton schedule includes the acquisition of a number of new u.s. sitcoms including the return of Bill in Cosby. The show is running on Baton Sunday at 5:30 p.m., but Baton spokespeople say most viewers will be able to see it on a second Baton station during its original cbs time of Monday at 8 p.m.; for example Toronto viewers can pick up the show on ckco Kitchener where it will be simulcast.

Baton is simulcasting Fox’s Melrose Place in the Monday 8 p.m. slot. Other new Baton sitcoms include Men Behaving Badly and Molly Ringwald’s new Townies.

wic will be holding its schedule launch June 24 and has announced it will be running Nelvana’s Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew teen series and will also run the third season of Madison, which ran previously on Global and is headed into production on season four.

New u.s. programming on wic includes Suddenly Susan with Brooke Shields, L.A. Firefighters, a one-hour, action-packed drama about the titular professionals, and Stephen Bochco’s new comedy Public Morals. TI