*Christmas presence for Atlantis’ Borrowed Hearts

‘Tis the season to be warm and fuzzy and to generate huge ratings with well-crafted warmth and fuzziness. Case in point, the numbers both above and below the border for the Atlantis-produced mow Borrowed Hearts: A Holiday Romance.

According to Nielsen Media Research, Borrowed Hearts was the most watched program in both the u.s. and Canada for the week ending Nov. 30. Simulcast on cbs and ctv Nov. 30, 27.6 million Americans and over two million Canadians took in the two hours about a struggling single mother who agrees that, for a fee, she and her seven-year-old daughter will pose as the family of her bachelor boss in order to impress a potential buyer of his company.

In the u.s., where the film received an 18.4 rating/28 share, Borrowed Hearts won the week’s top ratings in both the household and total persons categories and finished first in the week in the adults 35-54, women 18-49 and women 25-54 demographics.

Shot in Toronto, the film stars Roma Downey, Eric McCormack, Sara Rosen Fruitman, Shawn Alex Thompson and Hector Elizondo. Executive producers include Atlantis’ Peter Sussman and Ed Gernon. Mary Kahn was the producer.

In other Atlantis-related news, at press time, a slot for the Keatley McLeod/Atlantis Films coproduction Cold Squad remained a work in progress, but sources say Friday at 10 p.m. is likely, behind Baton Broadcasting’s play of The X-Files: The Originals. The move would result in a slot shift for Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict, also produced by Atlantis.

*Nothing too good for a series?

CBC drama execs will be eyeing the ratings for Alliance Communications’ Nothing Too Good for a Cowboy to evaluate the mow’s potential to spin off into a series for the 1998/99 season.

The mow, based on the memoirs of Richard P. Hobson Jr., was written and produced by David Barlow (Peacekeepers) and Charles Lazer (The Odyssey), executive produced by Christine Shipton and directed by Kari Skogland (The Size of Watermelons, White Lies). It will air on the pubcaster Jan. 4 at 8 p.m.

The 1940’s romantic comedy stars Madison’s Chad Willett, Roseanne’s Sarah Chalke and stage actor Ted Atherton in the tale of a Vancouver socialite who marries a cowboy and helps him establish the world’s largest cattle ranch in British Columbia.

The target market skews slightly female, although Susan Morgan, cbc creative head, tv dramatic series, says the cowboy factor is equally attractive to the male skew. cbc employed a somewhat different focus group strategy for the mow, using both urban (Toronto) and rural (Waterloo, Ont.) test pools.

*Cochran goes live

CBC commemorated the International Children’s Day of Broadcasting Dec. 14 with the first live-action project for Halifax-based Cochran Entertainment, Pit Pony.

The mow, set at the turn of the century, is the story of a young boy who leaves school to help his family by working in a Cape Breton coal mine. Cast includes Richard Donat (Emily of New Moon), Gabriel Hogan (Peacekeepers), Denny Doherty (Theodore Tugboat), Rhonda McLean (Black Harbour) and Jeremy Akerman (Major Crime). Heather Conkie penned the script, based on the book by Joyce Barkhouse. Eric Till directed; Andrew Cochran is executive producer.

Cochran, of Theodore Tugboat fame, is capitalizing its Internet programming expertise with the broadcast, preparing a classroom guide for senior elementary and junior high school kids available on the Web. The site includes history on the Nova Scotia coal mines in the early 20th century when more than 10,000 young boys made up the employee list.

*Comedy’s golden boy

First there’s the abundance of good ink on his new daily comedy show. Then there’s the fact that he’s a stand-up comic. Also, there’s the nickname ‘Horse,’ spawned on the Mix 99.9 Rob Christie in the Morning show where he does a regular guest gig. All in all, one fully expects Mike Bullard to be insufferable, so that smiling guy in the jeans and sweatshirt signing for the courier package and making jokes with the delivery guy is a bit of a surprise. When he trots off to bring you a Diet Coke, leaving you laughing with whatever it was he said last in spite of yourself, it could be time to rethink the stereotype.

It’s four hours before Bullard goes on-air when we arrive at the loft on Mercer Street, home to the Open Mike With Mike Bullard writing and production team. The latter, composed of nine people, gather around the big table, discuss the night’s lineup, making the set ‘less cheesy,’ and how to handle freaks on the call-in portion of the program after somebody named Santa Claus cleared the filtering process and found himself on live tv.

Given the short, painful death of The Ralph Benmergui Show, a daily Canadian comedy show telecast in the middle of primetime and headlined by a mostly unknown stand-up comic, Open Mike had all the attributes of a suicide run when it launched in November. Today it is, ostensibly, one of the few programs within the tier three group with the potential to cross into the main network. At the very least, Open Mike, along with the Fat Ladies, has cut through to the wide audience Toronto press, to mainly glowing reviews. This, Bullard says, is good.

For the record, in its first week Open Mike on The Comedy Network at 8 p.m. m/f recorded an average minute audience of 35,000, according to Neilsen Media Research. Considering the cable universe and time slot, this too is good.

At 5 p.m., the group retires to ‘Mike’s Bedroom,’ a space to the side of the main office where Bullard, 39, stretches out to relax and work on the opening monologue. Various and assorted writers, producers and the director, crash on the bed or on the floor and say funny things and smoke. It’s all very New York, only better because it’s Canadian and, hell, it might actually work this time, the Canadian comedy show prototype.

Bullard isn’t overly ratings-focused. ‘It’s a specialty. If we get 50,000 people watching, we’ll be on until the year 2020.’

Quick, irreverent, and totally unable to resist an opening, Bullard says he was more than a little tense in November because ‘we had no product and a lot of hype. That puts a lot of pressure on the product and I wasn’t always sure who was pulling for me. But the press has been there and so has Baton. About the network and the people behind it, I have only good things to say.’

Elsewhere on the Comedy ratings strata, the expanded promotion budget is paying off in decent numbers for specials including Robin Williams: Off the Wall at the end of November, which scored 208,000 average minute viewers (Comedy had the exclusive hbo presentation). Fawlty Towers, Sundays at 6 p.m., is bringing in a 153,000 average minute audience. Kids in the Hall is running 110,000 average per episode.