*CHUM’s Pulse 24 cable-bound

Who is replacing Vision tv on channel 24 of Southern Ontario cable systems becomes clear with the news that chum’s Cable Pulse 24 will launch within the next three months.

Pulse 24 wasn’t part of the new lineup announced by vision.com at the end of September, but chum is prepping to add another 50 people to its 600-plus payroll and broadcast the Ontario local news service in either December or January.

Stephen Hurlbut has been promoted to vp news programming for all of chum broadcast. Bill Patrick is being parachuted in from The New vr to be director of news programming for Pulse 24.

Hurlbut, who started as a cameraman for Citytv 18 years ago, says there’s room on the news spectrum for a 24-hour local service despite the presence of Newsworld, the addition of CTV News 1 and the dense 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. coverage on cbc and the private nets.

‘Newsworld isn’t news. It’s every chat show in the world. It’s not that I don’t think cbc is very important to this country. It is and I do. But if you want local news and traffic at 8 o’clock, it isn’t out there.’

The sked layout is a work in progress although the plan is to concentrate on business news while the markets are open (some nashing of teeth from rob-tv execs seems appropriate). Pulse 24’s approach to investment and finance will be less the sermon from the mount, more in signature City style, ‘digestible by the audience,’ and will include a heavy alphanumeric presentation as well as live hits from Bay Street. The Toronto Sun, which owns a piece of the channel, will provide input. ‘We’re not after a high-faluting business approach,’ says Hurlbut. ‘We’ll make ourselves at home on Bay Street’

In other chum-related news, media coordinator extraordinaire Valerie Wint has been lured away from the Toronto International Film Festival (700-odd scribes and scribblers this year) to head up communications for Space: The Imagination Station.

*Specialties, round four: Runaway Train

It’s with breathless anticipation all await the vetting of the 75 new applications for specialty channels. The last Slushie of Canadian content commitments and penetration projections, perpetuated by the capacity question, may pale compared to these babies.

Even with the distribution situation, the rules last time out were somewhat tangible: Canadian content plus consumer demand equals licence. God knows what the rules are this time.

In the 18 months since the round-two applications were heard, a new 19 foreign channels have made their way to the Eligible Services Lists, eligible, that is, for analog.

The politics of the thing have put Food tv on stream. Happily, Life Network’s ‘exclusive agent’ arrangement with Food will give Atlantis Communications part ownership of the channel, which will feed more back into the system than the other u.s. addendums. But really – 24 hours of food? Maybe it’ll be a pleasant surprise, but in the meantime the point is a) you can prove demand for almost anything, or at least the cablecos can prove demand for almost anything, and b) the Amurikan factor looks to have shifted down the priority totem pole.

Which leaves us with the Cancon question. There’s no penetration benchmark. Specialty eyeballs will splinter like crazy once 16 new services are added to the mix. The u.s. services may not have access to Canadian advertising but that doesn’t mean their piece of the audience won’t impact the Canadian channels’ bottom lines. At the same time, cable is attempting to roll back fees for carriage. This time out, Canadian programming contributions could legitimately be lower than in any other round of applications and leave the incumbents legitimately incensed.

At least one related question has to be how the new reality at the commission will parlay into programming. It’s a very few months ago it blocked Newsworld’s bid for access to Royal Canadian Air Farce and This Hour Has 22 Minutes on the grounds the programs fell outside its licensed program genre spectrum.

Now, nobody seems particularly upset that Headline Sports is selling The Front Page, an hour-long program in primetime, even though it pitched a more sports scores-oriented service in 15-minute vignettes. Yes, for the record, it is licensed as a specialty service and not an alphanumeric sports scores service, but fact is its primetime lineup is a stretch from what was originally anticipated.

It’s not alone. Homicide and NYPD Blue on Bravo!, for example.

Most recently Global Television Network’s Prime tv (prime as in the 50+ demo, not prime as in primetime) is testing the elasticity of programming commitments.

Granted, there’s a program called Grumps in the 11 p.m. slot which could sound somewhat 50+ish. RV Vacations is running at 4:30 p.m. on Fridays and Angela Landsbury, who is older, helms Murder, She Wrote, which is running Mondays at 8 p.m. But the primary ‘aging’ element of the majority of Prime’s primetime programming sked stems from the series’ original delivery dates.

The 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. block Monday to Friday is running Hill Street Blues, Remington Steele, Quantum Leap, In The Heat of the Night, L.A. Law and St. Elsewhere. Black Sheep Squadron is taking Saturday night, opening a 9 p.m. slot for a Canadian tba. Another Canadian tba series will have a choice Sunday afternoon slot, 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.

Global’s First Up will run at 6 p.m. m/f, followed by its First National newscast at 6:30. Sunday nights are The Sunday Big Event, which will often be a film. Wednesday’s 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. will be all Hollywood Biographies. The Monday 9 p.m. hour will be Celebrity Biographies. A small sports block runs Saturday afternoons (Golf the World and NFL Touchdown) between 2:30 p.m. and 4 p.m.

It wouldn’t be a surprise to see Newsworld back at the commission’s door. As for Global, geesh. You’d think they’d have enough testing the boundaries with South Park. Episode three Oct. 9 will surely have a hard time following ‘Cartman Gets An Anal Probe’ and ‘An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig.’ South Park carries a 14+ rating and a highly appropriate program advisory.

*History goes wide

While the vision.com ad campaign for the group remains awol, History Television is taking it to the street this week.

The first of its outdoor boards made an appearance Sept. 17. The rest of the boards – ‘Disco Sweeps The Nation,’ ‘U.S. Declares War on Canada,’ ‘Leafs Win The Cup’ and ‘Stock Market Crashes’ – are being released beginning Oct. 6. Television and radio are focusing on teaser stories revolving around historical figures and events. The campaign is a joint effort between Harrod and Mirlin and Alliance Broadcasting.

At the same time, Alliance has picked up the Citytv ‘storefront’ concept and opened a glassed-in master control room on the ground floor of its 121 Bloor Street building, the new ‘Broadcast Centre for Showcase Television.’

Finally, what a lovely invite to the History Television launch party Oct. 8. In the mail came a 45 record to celebrate its ’50s theme. On one side are the festivities particulars. On the other is a single: That’ll Be The Day by The Channel Launchers. The irony is not lost.

*Canadiana

One of the few venues available to Canadian short filmmakers, wtn’s Shameless Shorts, launches Oct. 19 beginning with British filmmaker Tessa Sheridan’s Is it the Design on the Wrapper?, winner of the 1997 Palme d’Or for best short film at Cannes. This season includes Canadian shorts Le Regard d’Antigone from Montreal director Valerie Maridor, and One Day I Stood Still and Raging Dreams – into the visceral, both from director Valerie Buhagiar.

At tfo, its new season is running movies seven days a week at noon and 9 p.m., uncut and without commercials. Children are the target of Disney flicks in the Sunday 3 p.m. slot.

At cbc, Cinema Canada’s 5th season launches Oct. 9 with April 1. The Circle Game from Academy Award-winning director Brigitte Berman runs Oct. 16. Oct. 23 is a collection of shorts dealing with the theme of ‘eternal love.’ Live Bait from Bruce Sweeney, which took the best Canadian film award at the 1995 Toronto International Film Festival, caps the month Oct. 30. Sadly, Cinema Canada is staying with its midnight slot.