Ah, the joys of simulcast. As the u.s. goes about rejigging schedules, so goeth we.

Over the next two months, Canadian broadcasters will adopt an if-you-can’t-beat-’em approach or find their own creative ways of plugging schedule holes as the u.s. nets give the b team a shot.

At Baton Broadcasting, abc’s new $1.2 million half-hour starring Arsenio Hall will air Wednesday nights beginning March 5, replacing Ellen. Out of the closet and on the shelf, as it were. No official word from Baton yet as to whether they’ll simulcast.

As of March 4, NYPD Blue is backbenched, clearing the Tuesday 10 p.m. hour for David Kelley’s new legal drama The Practice, which CanWest Global will simulcast. Both NYPD Blue and Ellen will be back in place for May sweeps, as will er, which ctv is without for three weeks while Warner Bros.’ Prince Street gets a chance.

Murder One is officially gone at the end of January. Global is shedding no tears, rather tickled to have an extra hour for preempted programs bumped by nhl games. The u.s. contingent is planning to broadcast the final six episodes of Murder One as a three-part miniseries mid-April. Although nobody is confirming the series is gone for good, it’s likely the primetime audience never quite got past the ongoing, one-story then three-story thing, and that it won’t be back. CanWest will make a call on the miniseries later in the season.

chch-tv’s Suddenly Susan will be available in the half-hour behind Friends on Thursdays as of Feb. 27. Could be time for a wic promotions push, an attempt to convince the 25-54s it’s worth switching over from Global at 8:30 p.m. (at least until Seinfeld) and well timed too with chch’s February entry into the Ottawa market. Dangerous Minds and Relativity may be on their way out, leaving the Monday 8 p.m. hour and a Saturday night slot for chch to fill.

Also on Feb. 27, abc is trying out Vital Signs, the first primetime network series from Disney’s Buena Vista Television. The one-hour reality show, which recreates medical emergencies and includes one-on-ones with the doctors involved, launches at 9 p.m. abc maintains it’s a quality program, but the competition claims abc is finally rolling over to nbc’s killer Thursday lineup and programming some lower budget content.

Fox Entertainment Group is giddy over King of the Hill. In its first Sunday airing, King held almost 100% of The Simpsons’ lead-in audience in the States and is getting credit for helping the X-Files pull its best numbers to date. This side of the border, Global takes The Simpsons out of simulcast and is opening up the Sunday 8 p.m. hour with 3rd Rock From the Sun, followed by King and X-Files. Ratings for the premiere episode and X-Files are lost in space, a casualty of the ACNielsen computer system crash. Trust no one.

Or maybe trust cbc, which, after Nielsen’s short-circuit coincided with the launch of the Avro Arrow, placed phone calls to 1,500 homes to discover who watched what Sunday and Monday nights.

It’s this simple: an adult in each household was asked to account for the viewing time for each member of the family in 15-minute increments over the course of Sunday and Monday nights. Someone who watched two quarter hours was weighted more than a viewer who watched one. At the end, the percentage of people who watched, weighted by how long they watched and then expressed as a percentage of the population supplied the final number. Clear like mud.

According to the cbc, Arrow yielded an average viewing audience of 2.8 million Sunday night, 2.4 million Monday night. In simple terms, 20% of Anglophones watched at least some of it. Francophones weren’t surveyed.

In other cbc news, The Newsroom is back Feb. 10 with seven new episodes. Shooting wrapped Jan. 15. Expect David Cronenberg, Angelo Mosca, Linda McQuaig, Hugh Segal and Bob Rae to make scheduled guest appearances, the last two in a special one-hour finale. Testing its one-hour sitcom potential?

On the subject of Giant Mine, cbc’s creative head, movies and miniseries, Jim Burt called to point out that Filmworks was not the coproducer for Giant Mine. Rather it was an entirely in-house produced cbc product. ‘Just wanted to let people know we still do that’

As for Traders, the second season relaunched yet again on Thursdays at 10 p.m., albeit preempted Jan. 23 and 30 by prereleases of Millennium. Direct Protect is the new insurance company sponsor in tow.

-News numbers

Shipped in from Ottawa in December, Global’s new vp news Ken MacDonald has his work cut out for him.

According to ACNielsen statistics, Global’s news at 5:30 p.m. is the only slot on the whole 6/11 news landscape where it approaches cfto-tv’s numbers.

Maybe it’s successful alternative scheduling, maybe the substantive Young and the Restless audience can’t find the clicker, but Global’s First News at 5:30 p.m., skewing heavy female overall, pulled a 15.1 in the 55+ demographic Jan. 6.

Lovely for a half-hour, but at 6 p.m. the audience scuttles en masse to cfto. Global’s 6:00 Report records a 6.2, same day, same demo, compared to a 16.2 on World Beat News. cbc’s Early Evening News comes in at 2.3 for the 55+ demo; CityPulse at 6 p.m. surprises with a 5.2 for the same skew.

Although seniors are consistently the highest news ratings draw, it’s worth noting the ratios tend to play out across the board. Random sampling: Nov. 28, First News drew a 5.5 in the 18+ demo, a 3.8 in 25-54, and an 11 in 55+. At 6 p.m. for 6:00 Report, those numbers dropped to 2.8, 2, and 4.9 respectively, while World Beat scored an 8.3 in 18+, a 5.5, 25-54, and 16.9 in 55+ (and it’s not even Lloyd’s slot.) cbc turned in numbers on par with Global at 3.1 for 18+, 2.2, 25-54, and 4.5 for 55+.

-Geminis: There You Are

Yet more ink on the Geminis.

Lost amongst the salutes to cbc and the like is the outstanding showing by Discovery Channel, the sole nominee amongst the 1995 specialties.

Discovery, an ongoing feast for the eyes, took three of the six nominations in the Best Photography in an Information Program or Series category for Flightpath, Great Canadian Parks and Forbidden Places.

Five series produced with independent producers took nine of its 11 nominations, with Forbidden Places, produced by Toronto’s Television Renaissance, leading with three, followed by two for Flightpath (Screenlife Productions) and one each for Great Canadian Parks (Good Earth Productions), Harrowsmith Country Life (Stone Soup Productions), Buck Staghorn’s Animal Bites (Keg Productions) and The Living Tides of Fundy (Stuart Beecroft). The other two – @dicovery.ca and Canada in Space, up for best information series and best special event coverage respectively – were produced by Discovery.

The Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television’s results are good timing for Discovery, which launched a $700,000 ad campaign this month in Southern Ontario and b.c.’s lower mainland. With any luck, the cumulative effect will be that the 40% of Rogers subscribers still stuck in cableNazi think will ponder their decision to abstain from tier two.

On a final Gemini noteinquiring minds want to know: whither a nomination for Traders’ Patrick McKenna?

Developing a cult following on Bay Street (‘Pull a Marty’ is code to kickstart a flat trading day), McKenna has turned head trader Marty Stephens, originally conceived as more a bit player, into a steady source of joy. Lightning quick, cynical, mischievous but woundable, McKenna has weaseled his way into the hearts of viewers above and beyond some of the leads.

Writer and Traders character creator Hart Hanson says he suspects his nomination for the ‘Dancing with Mr. D’ episode was due largely to what McKenna did with the material.

‘The writing was okay, but he just did something wonderful with it, and I have no idea why he wasn’t nominated. Maybe it’s that Canadian thing where once you’re successful, you have to get back to the end of the line. But I’m horrified. Completely horrified.’ Yup.

-Documentary contribs

Citytv jumps on the documentary bandwagon this month, forsaking its usual feature film fare in primetime with The Un-Canadians, airing Jan. 29 in the 9 p.m. slot.

A coproduction between the National Film Board and Joanne Smale Communications, The Un-Canadians, based on the book, digs into the workings of The Security Panel, a government agency that assisted the rcmp in investigating some one million alleged Canadian ‘subversives’ during the Cold War.

The following week, tvontario, with a heady 17 Gemini nominations dominated by its documentary strands The View From Here and From the Heart, begins celebrating the Chinese New Year with a dedicated week.

Feb. 2 through Feb. 7 will air a series of China-centric docs including two coproduced by tvo and nhk Japan. Feb. 5, Human Edge will rerun In the Name of the Emperor, the tough story of the Rape of Nanjing in 1937. The week will cap on a lighter note with the Canadian premiere of Ermo, a Chinese comedy about ‘a feisty noodlemaker with one driving ambition in life – to own the biggest television in her village and thus regain her family’s social standing.’ If that’s too much fun for early February, On the Waterfront and Raging Bull air back-to-back the next night, Feb. 8.

-Ground control to Major Tom

While Atlantis Films’ Flash Forward gets its Canadian premiere on Family Channel Jan. 29, the u.s. trade pubs are heralding The Adventures of Sinbad as one of the highest rated new action/ adventure series below the 49th. Outer Limits too is being saluted for catching up with Baywatch in the male 18-34 and 18-49 demographics.

All very good news for Atlantis, but one can’t help but raise an eyebrow reading stories about Canadian productions where a Canadian prodco isn’t mentioned once.

Case in point, all from the same story: ‘the swashbuckling Adventures of Sinbad from All American Televisionmgm’s acclaimed anthology series The Outer LimitsEyemark Entertainment’s Psi FactorRysher’s F/X: The Seriesmgm’s Poltergeist the Legacyand Twentieth Television’s Two.’ Possession is 9/10ths, or something.