With three months to build audience before spring sweeps, invasion of the mid-season replacements is already underway.

CanWest Global Communications is out off the top with King of the Hill, the new animated series from Beavis and Butt-head creator Mike Judge and The Simpsons exec producer Greg Daniels.

Twentieth Century Television is bringing up this Simpsonsesque black half-hour starring ‘hard-working, loyal family man and proud Texan’ Hank Hill. Surrounding cast and characters include wife Peggy, son Bobby and nubile 18-year-old niece Luanne who lives in the house. Expect a proliferation of lines like ‘Hank has a narrow urethra.’ Enough said.

King of the Hill will be slated Sundays at 8:30 p.m., bolstered by a lead-in of 3rd Rock from the Sun. Bumped out of its slot by King as of Jan. 12, Boston Common bounces at the mercy of Hockey Night in Canada games and the Superbowl Jan. 26, this year packaged with a special episode of The X-Files.

One final Global note – Fox Kids Network is plugging its Saturday 9:30 a.m. slot with a 1991/92 live-action adventure series Eerie, Indiana, as of Jan. 18. No official word out of Global yet, but chances are Casper is on his way out.

Upping the quality of the comedy spectrum months before The Comedy Network kicks off, Baton Broadcasting System has picked up Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, airing weeknights at midnight. The critically acclaimed Politically Incorrect just migrated from Comedy Central to abc in the u.s.

bbs has also signed Chicago Sons to replace the now-defunct Townies Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. (For the record, last issue’s piece on November sweeps identified Wednesday night’s Law & Order as a ctv property when it actually belongs to Baton. This season, the network and the affiliate have swapped Wednesday and Thursday slots so that bbs owns all of Wednesday primetime, ctv all of Thursday. Sorry for the mix-up.)

For its part, ctv has taken Ink out of simulcast and slid it into Thursday at 9 p.m. where it will no doubt be bashed by Seinfeld. At this point, the revamped Ted Danson & Co. has yet to make the Toronto/Hamilton People Metres, but is pulling respectable national numbers at 1.2 million viewers 2+ for the week ending Dec. 12. ctv property The Naked Truth is new in behind Ink at 9:30 p.m. Almost Perfect has been bumped from the schedule.

Usually loathe to launch new product in sync with the mainstream nets, the specialty channels too are releasing their share of programs this month.

Bravo! is launching a new in-house-produced half-hour weekly arts series, Arts & Minds. The program will profile artists and events internationally, a regular behind-the-scenes-look type program. January features author E.L. Doctorow on the theatrical adaptation of Ragtime, quality time with Oscar Peterson, and Margaret Atwood and Rohinton Mistry on the Booker Prize. February and March include Allen Ginsberg, Spalding Gray, Sotheby’s art auction, and the Harbourfront International Authors Festival.

On the Life Network agenda is Destination x. Dubbed the first ‘interactive documentary television series,’ hosts Tamara Bick and David Fraser lead 26 episodes comprised of a wacky look at travel videos sent in by viewers, complete with commentary, bits of history, trivia and travel tips. The program is produced by Paragon Entertainment.

Finally, under ‘too much information,’ Warner Bros. Television has begun production on Reunion in Hazzard, starring the original Dukes. ‘Cousins Bo, Luke and Daisy Duke return for Hazzard’s annual homecoming and pit the General Lee in a no-holds-barred moonshine race against an unscrupulous businesswoman to keep her from building a giant theme park that would ruin the environment.’ Oy.

-Hot docs

As hibernation season goes into overdrive, so goes Depth tv. This month cbc, ctv and Discovery Channel are pitting three fine Canadian documentary series against the popular mainstream tv offerings.

cbc’s magnum opus Dawn of the Eye debuts Sunday Jan. 19 at 8 p.m., the first and a stunningly comprehensive history of newsreels and television news. Also the largest coproduction ever negotiated between Canada and the u.k.

Length, scope, and trailers attempting to be teasers but which don’t make a wit of sense, will likely keep the masses corralled around 3rd Rock and X-Files. Too bad. The minority interested in the history of film and filmed news will find the two-hour premiere and the five one-hour episodes well worth the Sunday time.

The pace and tone are pubcaster slow, but jewels are forthcoming, unearthed by executive producer Mark Starowicz and a transatlantic team of producers that scoured both continents for archival footage for more than two years.

Yugoslavian archives, British Army records, uncatalogued boxes in barns, underground bunkers in Warwickshire, the home of Nazi propaganda artist Joseph Goebbels, are amongst grounds scoured.

Interviews include Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Ted Koppel and Arthur Kent, as well as Fritz Hippler, the man in charge of the Berlin book burning, an interview which Starowicz credits with providing one of the most disturbing moments in his life.

Three versions have been produced; one for cbc, one for The History Channel and one for the bbc, with emphasis on the visual history of the particular country in which it will air.

Slated against Global’s Sunday night fodder, the premiere will cover ‘The Birth of Visual News’ and yield some of the first images of Canada recorded on film including Sir Wilfrid Laurier on the campaign trail. The following episodes will air Sundays at 9 p.m., against X-Files.

Launching Jan. 20 on ctv is a beautiful six-part documentary series, Women: A True Story, produced by Montreal prodco Point de mire.

The $3.6 million project is hosted by Susan Sarandon and with some unique stories and truly magnetic interview footage brings much worth watching.

Producer Lise Payette credits ctv vp entertainment programming Arthur Weinthal for bringing the project to fruition. ‘He wasn’t afraid of the content – or the budget.’

Advertiser-wise, the series is sold out up front with names like Ford and Colgate behind it. The Multimedia Group of Canada is handling international sales. nhk Japan is already on board as is, go figure, a satellite service in the Middle East.

The series will replace Two Jan. 20 in the 10 p.m. slot, then run five consecutive weeks in W5’s place Tuesdays at 10 p.m., potentially dragging a piece of the female demographic away from Global’s NYPD Blue.

Finally, Canadian documentary filmmakers are finding a strong, consistent window through Discovery’s The Body: Inside Stories, entering its second season this month in the Monday 9 p.m. slot.

Raw, sometimes mesmerizing, the critically acclaimed 26-part series is now complete with new host Margot Kidder and will vie to wrestle some eyeballs away from This Hour Has 22 Minutes with one-hours directed by Brian McKenna (The Valour and the Horror), Katherine Gilday (The Famine Within), John Kramer (Volcano) and Barry Greenwald (The Negotiator) among others.

Following the season premiere, ‘Separate Lives,’ which tracked cojoined twins Hira and Nida Jamal and included footage of the 17-hour, 23-person team operation which had never been seen before, this month’s slate includes ‘Trauma: The Golden Hour’ (Jan. 13), which tracks the workings of a trauma unit medical team, and ‘Waiting to Be Normal’ (Jan. 27), which focuses on two end-stage diabetics in need of kidney/pancreas transplants.

The Barna-Alper Productions-produced series gets its second airing weekly Saturdays at 4 p.m.

-Cancon rates

Although December ratings were predictably depressed, some Canadiana came through with respectable numbers.

Airing Dec. 8, the cbc/The Film Works production Giant Mine scored 1.3 million viewers 2+ nationally, according to ACNielsen.

Sullivan Entertainment’s Wind At My Back drew 1.2 million nationally Dec. 8, maintaining that number the following week with 1.2 million Dec. 15.

Fogbound Films’ Black Harbour, feeling the effects of stiff Wednesday night competition, registered 865,000 viewers 2+ nationally the first week of December.

Speaking of Canadian programs, add Scotiabank to the local producers list. Its first one-hour project, RRSP Reality Check, ran across the CanWest system Jan. 11, and will run in Quebec on cfcf Jan. 17.

The program – couched as a ‘financial reality check’ – targets the boomer demo and features five families approaching retirement planning from different perspectives.

The program was produced by Toronto-based It Works on a budget of just over $200,000. Scotiabank vp marketing Rick White says more programs are in the works with an eye to more narrow target markets.

-Psi Factor on the hot seat

Although Psi Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal is finding favor Saturday nights in both Canada and the u.s., it’s not sitting well with the Council for Media Integrity.

The cmi, a u.s.-based group of scientists and academics, was formed this year with the mandate to hold the media accountable for its interpretation of science.

After holding a press conference Jan. 9, Psi Factor host Dan Aykroyd was named the recipient of the first CMI Snuffed Candle Award for ‘presenting pseudoscience as genuine.’

For its part, Atlantis points out that the show is presented as an entertainment program. Yes, the stories are based on actual case files. Yes, Atlantis takes a fair bit of latitude, but they also have a PhD who approves scripts and makes science-related suggestions to improve quality, says exec producer James Nadler. ‘This is television. No one came to us and said you have to improve the science elements of the show. If people are looking for a little publicity, fine. For our part, we’re absolutely happy to talk about the show.’

The cmi is sponsored by the 20-year-old Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal.