If it’s June it must be September and with it comes fine, even inspired scheduling for the 1997/98 Canadian tv drama series.

While Traders made CanWest Global last season’s Cancon darling, at the midway point of fall launch season mayhem the Asper net is being eclipsed by the new productions on Baton Broadcasting/ctv. Granted no one’s bumping er out of simulcast but the schedules unleashed at this month’s festivities more incorporate than ghettoize, even pump up, Atlantis Films’ Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict and Alliance Communications’ Once a Thief and Due South.

This year’s primetime skeds for the private networks are filled with surprises, including the incorporation of repeat episodes of popular series built into the new season lineup. Between syndicated episodes and originals, Frasier will air a minimum of seven times weekly in Ontario and Vancouver through a combination of CanWest, bbs and Rogers-owned multilingual service cfmt; X-Files scores primetime twice weekly, original episodes on CanWest and inventory on Baton Friday nights.

Set up as the potential beneficiary of X-Files in syndication is Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict, which Baton is scheduling with a strategy mirroring CanWest’s X-Files/Outer Limits package. The Files will open in its long-held Friday 9 p.m. slot, back-end loaded by Final Conflict at 10 p.m. in both the Ontario and Vancouver markets. The similar setup on Global contributed to Atlantis’ Outer Limits’ status as the number-one rated Canadian series last season.

As for the return of Due South, ctv could be setting up the battle of the Canadian drama series. cbc won’t make its 1997/98 schedule public until June 18, but ctv is posting Due South in the Sunday primetime 7 p.m. slot traditionally home to cbc’s Sullivan Entertainment-produced Road to Avonlea and more recently Wind at My Back.

Although Disney is launching its new feature film strand in that hour and the adult audience-skewing 60 Minutes remains in place, Gary Maavara, ctv group vp programming, calls the slot ‘a jewel’ and makes the point that there are a lot of people tapped into the tube that night. Due South was pulling 1.2 million to 1.3 million viewers in its last incarnation on ctv, running up against Friends Thursday nights.

ctv has signed on for 26 episodes or two seasons worth of Due South. Showcase is in for a second window on new episodes. With the sexy new addition of Callum Keith Rennie to the cast and some smooth hosting of the media launch by Paul Gross, the series was the product of much media buzz post-ceremony.

According to ctv president John Cassaday, Due South is better positioned to pull audience since Showcase took second window Canadian rights this season. ‘They’ve promoted the heck out it. Corona has incorporated it in part of its outdoor campaign. It’s become part of the culture. Now if Corona would only turn it into a tv campaign and do 52 weeks on ctvŠ’

(For the record, Corona is positioning billboards adjacent to the larger-than-life Paul Gross-centered Showcase splash. The bevy caption reads ‘Do South’. It can’t be a coincidence, says Showcase president Phyllis Yaffe, who is also pondering a conversation with the Corona folk.)

Alliance’s other drama contribution to the 1997/98 slate, Once A Thief, is being launched in the Monday 10 p.m. slot. The female-skewing Cybill and Naked Truth air in the hour before, but Cassaday makes the point that women will find the Once a Thief characters attractive and that Monday late primetime has become a recognized mainstay for strong dramatic programming.

In response to questions on Once A Thief’s industrial nature, Maavara says, ‘It’s terrific storytelling about some terrific characters. I suppose you could describe it as industrial. We prefer to call it a great show.’

ctv’s third Cancon primetime hour, the Fireworks Entertainment-produced FX: The Series, remains at 10 p.m. Saturday, given a leg up this season by the Steven Bochco-produced, James Belushi-starring Total Security in the previous hour.

Over at Global, Outer Limits will remain in the 10 p.m. slot behind X-Files Sunday night. ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’ says Doug Hoover, vp programming and promotions at CanWest. Atlantis’ Psi Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal has been shifted to early Saturday primetime at 8 p.m. versus last season’s 10 p.m. slot, in part to place it behind the similar male-skewing Sinbad (Atlantis) and in part due to the positioning of The Practice in the u.s. at 10 o’clock. Psi Factor’s format will change this season, with each hour-long episode featuring one 60-minute story instead of two 30-minute pieces.

Hoover bristles at questions on the industrial Cancon pebbling CanWest’s sked, pointing out that Psi Factor is 10 out of 10 on the point system.

‘You don’t get any more Canadian than that. D’es everything have to have hockey pucks and wheat fields? We have to compete head-on within the most fragmented market in North America and Psi Factor is a terrific show.’

Traders is yet again positioned against er where Hoover says he expects it to do a 3 rating or better in the wake of increased consumer interest in the stock market post Bre-X.

CIVT 18-34-centric

chum may not have scored a broadcast licence but the status quo has opened up windows in the Vancouver market for virtually all of its in-house produced product including The NewMusic, Electric Circus, FashionTelevision, MediaTelevision, MT-MovieTelevision and Ooh La La on Baton’s civt.

The civt sked is looking 18-34-centric. Primetime has strands of Friends and Frasier in the 7-8 p.m. slot Monday to Friday. The slate includes bbs staples Melrose Place, Drew Carey, Ellen, Law & Order and Home Improvement, as well as new pickups Hiller and Diller, Soul Man, Meego and Over the Top. X-Files repeats twice weekly on Tuesday and Friday. Breaker High and Francis Pascal’s Sweet Valley High will appear on the Vancouver slate only; ally mcbeal will air only in Vancouver and Alberta.

Cold Squad, a coproduction with Keatley MacLeod Productions and Atlantis, has been scheduled for a January premiere. Double Exposure, a coproduction between Cullen Robertson Productions, Soapbox Productions and bbs, is slated for a December launch in the 7 p.m. Sunday slot in both Vancouver and Ontario. Cold Squad has yet to be built into the sked.

civt’s other Cancon offerings, Vicki Gabereau Live and Counterpoint, a weekly Vancouver-based national public affairs program, will launch in the Monday-to-Friday 10 a.m. slot and 11:30 a.m. Sunday respectively. The bulk of Citytv’s signature stash will telecast through Sunday afternoon.

New tack for Global

Last season’s less than stellar Monday night for Global has spawned a shift in its scheduling strategy. To take eyeballs away from Baton’s Melrose Place at 8 p.m., Global is setting up Dawson Creek, a grassroots version of a series about beautiful yet angst-ridden younger people, at 7:30. The hour-long program will run to 8:30 where the new female-skewed must-see lineup of Fired Up and Caroline in the City will take over.

Dawson Creek is a terrific program which has the potential of doing for Warner Bros. what X-Files did for Fox, says Hoover.

‘We wanted to get it on the air so it wasn’t going head to head with Melrose. This way we get a head start.’

Although WIC Western International Communications’ fall sked won’t be unleashed until June 16, on it will be nbc’s Veronica’s Closet, the Kirstie Alley series it scooped in l.a. after a bit of a dust-up with CanWest.

As expected, the l.a. screenings hosted a more frenzied competition in program buying between wic and bbs which centered mainly on Vancouver as bbs sets up and wic fills the holes in its schedule. CanWest tried to stay out of the crossfire, but it’s safe to say there were cases where it couldn’t, says Hoover.

‘We would have wanted to have Veronica’s Closet. They outbid us. We have to make money on our American and it’s a margins business. I don’t want to talk about price. Fair to say that had we been able to buy the program with a price that would have allowed us to make money on it, we would have.’

Finally, although a national branding strategy for CanWest won’t come to fruition until the fall, its new logo plus teasers at the June 12 launch confirm that the regional identities of its affiliates are destined to be sidelined to the Global id.