Feature films in primetime on the specialties are going to give sitcoms and dramas a run for the audience next year, as fall launch season swings into gear.

History Television, Showcase Television and wtn have announced their fall schedules and their primetime slots read like a multiplex marquee.

Showcase, whose schedule kicks in Aug. 21, has doubled its movie content by moving the daily 11 p.m. Showcase Revue to 10 p.m. and midnight Mondays to Thursdays, repeating the 10 o’clock movie at 2 a.m.

During the weekends, Showcase Revue movies will air at 10 a.m. (this one as part of the Showcase Kids Revue, which features a general family-oriented movie), 2 p.m., 7 p.m., 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. That’s 24 movie slots.

On the slate this season are Seven, Restoration, Four Rooms, The Crossing Guard, Naked Lunch, Smoke, Menace II Society and Cinema Paradiso.

History on Film, hosted by Ann Medina, is returning to History’s primetime schedule at 8 p.m., four nights per week (Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays). It also airs at 3 p.m. and midnight on Saturdays and 3 p.m. on Sundays. That’s 14 possible times to catch a flick over the course of five days.

Slated films include Gandhi, Cleopatra, Bonnie and Clyde, Apocalyse Now, Reversal of Fortune, Lawrence of Arabia, The Last Emperor and Glory. History’s fall lineup starts Sept. 14.

wtn, whose new schedule begins Sept. 14, offers a ‘Movies Women Love’ strand on Mondays at 8 p.m., with Open Discussion, an issue-oriented film and discussion; Fridays at 8 p.m. and 1 a.m. with The WTN Big Picture (The only movie currently scheduled in this slot is Against All Odds. Susan Millican, vp of programming, says she is still negotiating with distributors, so she can’t yet name the other movies on the schedule.); Saturdays at 8 p.m. and 1 a.m. are Girl Movie night; and Sundays will offer a Leading Ladies matinee at 3:30 p.m. and an evening movie at 8 p.m. and 1 a.m.

The three programming execs interviewed for this story acknowledged the competition for movies, but were quick to mention their niches.

‘I think there’s going to be an increasing competition for viewers with all the specialties,’ says Millican. ‘There are a lot of movies out there, and there’s obviously movies we’re not going to buy. We will leave those for someone else to air.’

Laura Michalchyshyn, programmer at Showcase, says her schedule will gravitate to ‘edgier’ pictures.

‘We’ve shown Pulp Fiction, Natural Born Killers – and those did very well – Reservior Dogs, Bad Lieutenant and The Cook The Wife The Thief and Her Lover. I would say those are the perfect examples of great Showcase kinds of movies’

‘In a way, we’re competing for a movie audience,’ acknowledges Sydney Suissa, History’s director of program development and acquisitions, ‘but if you’re asking me if there’s a station out there that’s running material that I worry about, overall, no.’

Elsewhere on the schedule

Some Canadian and one huge American network television series – Party of Five – are acting as the short films before the primetime features.

In the quest for younger viewers and offers of ‘alternatives’ to standard network fare such as the evening news, Showcase has purchased the Canadian cable syndication rights to Fox’s Party of Five and will air it in the 6 p.m. slot, Monday to Friday. Michalchyshyn says Showcase bought 93 episodes with ‘going-forward rights,’ meaning as long as the series is produced each year, Showcase will be one season behind.

Party of Five will act as a lead-in to Showcase’s primetime fare, which includes some high-profile Alliance product.

Showcase has added Alliance’s Once a Thief to the schedule on Saturdays at 9 p.m. On Sundays and Mondays at 9 p.m., Due South will return, with the first season of the Callum Keith Rennie episodes starting in December, and the second batch – which will air on ctv this year – to air in the 1999/2000 season.

Other Alliance shows in the primetime schedule are Taking the Falls, the comedy caper series starring Cynthia Dale, Black Harbour and Counterstrike.

Showcase will also be highlighting a new primetime Canadian production with the debut of Showcase Originals. Betaville, a 13-episode one-hour drama series, produced by Chesler/Perlmutter/ River of Stone Productions and shot in Vancouver, will premier Aug. 21 at 9 p.m. So far, Betaville is the only Showcase Original.

Showcase will continue its children’s programming, which airs weekdays 7-9 a.m. and weekends from 7-10 a.m., with the Showcase Kids Revue film from 10 a.m. to noon. The Friendly Giant and Mr. Dressup join the fall kids’ lineup.

‘We’re limiting children’s programming to early morning,’ says Michalchyshyn. ‘With the other specialties that launched last fall, we’re finding that the kids’ market has been saturated and people really want general and family drama,’ she says, adding that ‘in the next two seasons, you’re going to see us moving more and more out of children’s programming and into general drama.’

Some additions to wtn’s schedule are the Donny and Marie show, not their old variety show, but a brand new weekday, daytime talk/variety show, produced by Dick Clark. wtn has the Canadian network exclusive on Donny and Marie, and Millican says wtn viewers have said they wanted an alternative to the network soap operas.

As part of Romance Sundays, 26 half-hour episodes of a travel series The Best Place to Kiss are being produced exclusively for wtn and will be shared with the Travel channel in the States.

Returning to wtn are 26 half-hours of Debbie Travis’ Painted House, which pbs picked up about two months ago, A Repair to Remember, You Me and the Kids and Bonnie Stern Cooks. Stern will also be hosting a new 26 x half-hour program called The Agony and the Ecstasy of Entertaining. The Sunday Night Sex Show and Jane Hawtin Live also remain on the schedule.

New Canadian prods

History will be airing a host of Canadian-produced programs including commissioned docs during the Monday night History Presents series.

On the slate are Lake Superior: In the Shadow of the Gods, produced by Russell Floren of Lynx Images in Toronto to air Sept. 14; on Nov. 8, Deadly Sins, produced by Michael Mclear of Toronto-based Screen Life; and coming in early 1999 are the tentatively titled The Great March, produced by General Assembly, Ottawa; The Strike, about the 80th anniversary of the Winnipeg general strike, produced by David Paperny of Paperny Films, Vancouver; and Northwest Assignment, a two-hour doc by Ron Goetz of Partners in Motion, Regina.

Suissa, says History is trying to do about eight feature-length commissions this year, and another two or three commissions are waiting on funding.

History will delve into comedy with 13 half-hours of History Bites, a skit comedy show, which will be hosted, written, produced and directed by Rick Green. It debuts on Oct. 10.

Returning with 52 half-hours is It Seems Like Yesterday, hosted by Rick Mercer. It will air weekdays at 10:30 a.m., 11:30 p.m. and 4:30 a.m., moving from its current time slots, 12:30 p.m., 7:30 p.m. and 7:30 a.m.

Also returning is 14 one-hour episodes of Faces of History, produced by Great North; 13 one-hours of Turning Points of History, produced by Barna-Alper Productions. A Scattering of Seeds, produced by White Pine Pictures, will air 13 half-hours starting early January 1999. Thirteen half-hours of HistoryLands, produced by Good Earth Productions, and Witness to Yesterday, produced by and Toronto’s The Film Works and Fredericton’s Cinefile Productions, will both air February 1999.