While the fall tv season launches are packed full of hype and hope, less media attention is paid to the mid-season and limited-run series. For media buyers, missing the big hoopla bandwagon isn’t necessarily the kiss of death, they aren’t concerned when new shows air. They want the audience. This leaves hope for the large number of mid-season and limited-run Canadian series on the new skeds this year.

One of ctv’s two new drama series this season is a mid-season replacement. The one-hour Flesh and Blood (Sarrazin/Couture/ ctv) will air on Tuesdays at 10 p.m. after a primetime lineup of American sitcoms. The program’s start date is yet to be announced, but W5 will air in Flesh and Blood’s future time slot this fall. Alliance’s Power Play, a 13 one-hour comedy/drama hockey series, will take the Thursday 8 p.m. slot starting this fall.

Canadian series returning to ctv are 13 episodes of Due South in a new time slot on Wednesdays at 8 p.m., 15 episodes of Cold Squad on Fridays at 10 p.m., 22 episodes of Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict on Saturdays at 7 p.m. and 22 episodes of Nikita on Saturdays at 10 p.m.

Added to seven other Canadian mows or miniseries on the sked are three tv movies which appear to have been greenlit by ctv, increasing its financing contribution.

The Sheldon Kennedy Story (Sarrazin/Couture/Bradshaw MacLeod), Class Rebellion at Burger High (Accent Entertainment) and Proof Positive (Fundy Production Associates/Roy Krost Productions) were shut out of ctcpf eip funding and not expected to proceed, but have now been marked by ctv as ‘anticipating production in 1998.’

ctv vp dramatic Canadian programming Bill Mustos says ctv has upped its equity stake in the productions in order to counter their lack of Telefilm support.

Double Exposure, also caught in the funding crossfire earlier this year, will return to the airwaves on Saturdays at 6:30 p.m. The number of episodes is yet to be announced. Canadian House & Home (BBS Productions) will debut in September, airing Monday through Friday at 1 p.m. and Saturdays at noon and 12:30 p.m. Pamela Wallen will host Maclean’s tv, a weekly half-hour news show airing at 11:30 a.m. on Sundays.

ctv has nine new and seven returning u.s. primetime programs. Among the new shows the broadcaster is expecting to be hits are Felicity, a coming-of-age drama described as an Ally McBeal goes to college, which will take over Due South’s former slot on Sundays at 7 p.m. Sports Night, a sitcom about a nightly cable sports program produced by Imagine and Touchstone, is skedded for Tuesdays at 9 p.m., following Spin City.

‘Established hit’ Veronica’s Closet, starring Kirstie Alley, is also new to the lineup and will appear on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. between Drew Carey and er.

As expected, Global will be airing a slew of American programs starting this fall. ‘Global has made its fortune buying up top American programming and discovering what North Americans want to watch,’ says David Cairns, president of media buying op David Cairns & Company, ‘and that’s largely American comedies and teen dramas or soap operas.’

Global is especially optimistic – note the time slots – about two new u.s. shows, Feelin’ All Right, a sitcom about adolescents in the ’70s, which Doug Hoover, vp of programming and acquisitions, says will air between The Simpsons and The X-Files on Sundays, and All My Life, starring Christina Applegate, airing between Friends and Frasier on Thursday night.

‘Unfortunately,’ says Sunni Boot, president of Optimedia, ‘we pay far greater attention to American programming. Wrongly so. [But] they get the higher ratings.’

Global’s Canadian programming includes Bob & Margaret, an animated primetime sitcom, which will air this fall. Based on the Oscar-winning short Bob’s Birthday, Bob & Margaret is produced by Nelvana in association with Global.

The remainder of Global’s Canadian lineup – Protocol Entertainment’s Code Name: Eternity, an adventure series; the two-hour pilot Justice, created by Alyson Feltes (the series won’t start until next season); Insight Production’s Hockey Boys and Crescent Entertainment’s drama series Outpost – won’t appear until early next year or later.

‘I’m not advocating second season,’ says Boot, but ‘this time of year, there’s so much hype out of the u.s. that, in a way, I think a strategy which says we’re going to allow our Canadian shows to debut later… is a smart one.

‘I think a Canadian show, at this time of the year, is really playing second fiddle – and I think we’re so wrong in this – to the American hype and the minds of media buyers and television viewers. If you look at TV Guide and any of the newspapers, they’re all full of the new American programming. That’s unfortunate.’

That hype, however, doesn’t necessarily steal all the ad dollars.

‘The fall is usually where they spend the most, but it’s been decreasing over the years,’ Boot says. ‘January and February used to be the big lull, but now with rrsps it’s a really heavy buy season.’

She adds that ‘a good advertiser today will commit 60% of the dollars up front from September to August,’ but changes are made all the time. ‘More and more advertisers are saying, `No I’d like to wait and see,’ and they enter at appropriate times,’ she says. ‘It’s a much, much more competitive market between cable and everything else. You don’t have to place your monies ahead of time.’

‘People are in buying all the time,’ says Cairns, ‘it’s just that to get into the new shows… media buyers have a lot of work to do over the summer, but the buys continue over the fall.’

The percentage of buys varies by category, Cairns adds, explaining that the cough and cold season is heavy in the December through March period, the car industry tends to be active all year, and the beer industry is very heavy in the summer. He guesses that 35% of spending in September to December is due to back to school, Christmas and ‘it’s where the new shows are.’

He says spending drops in January and February and in the summer, with rrsps probably the only category which is ‘really heavy and active’ in January and February, but ‘that’s a booming category.’ In general, he says, ‘prices drop because demand drops. But if you want to do any mutual fund buying for Jan/Feb, you better do it in September or October.’

The media buyers agree that cbc produces high-quality programs, which is more Canadian than it has been in the network’s history.

‘We are in process of replacing 1,000 hours of u.s. programming Monday to Friday,’ says Slawko Klymkiw, cbc’s executive director, network programming, ‘and by this fall, almost all of those hours will have been replaced.’

The ’98/99 slate includes a new 13 one-hour drama, DaVinci’s Inquest (Haddock/Barna-Alper), debuting Monday, Oct. 5 at 9 p.m. Black Harbour (Wednesday at 9 p.m.), Riverdale (repackaged into two episodes in one hour on Thursdays at 7 p.m., repeated on Sundays at 11 a.m.) and Emily of New Moon (Sunday at 7 p.m.) will return this fall.

Traders, however, is not on the primetime schedule. ‘I’m not sure what we’re going to do with Traders,’ explains Klymkiw. ‘We do not have an arrangement on Traders yet for another season. We still have a lot of inventory left from this last contract, so we have not made a decision on Traders, but it’s certainly not in [for] the fall.

‘Before one writes there’s less drama,’ Klymkiw cautions, ‘there’s actually more drama. Just simply, we’re loading a lot of it in January.’

cbc’s second-season dramas include six one-hours of Cover Me (Alliance/Peter Lauterman), 13 one-hours of Nothing Too Good for a Cowboy (Alliance/Milestone) and 26 half-hours of Pit Pony (Cochrane Entertainment), which will begin in January.

Media buyers agree that cbc’s Monday nights will be strong. The sked starts at 7 p.m. with Royal Canadian Air Farce; SketchCom, a new 13-part series from producers Roger Abbott and Don Ferguson of Air Farce; This Hour Has 22 Minutes; Casting Couch (a.k.a. The Industry), a six half-hour satire of the Canadian film industry, starring Rick Mercer; and DaVinci’s Inquest.

Media buyer Cairns says Rick Mercer is ‘a real talent’ and ‘someone who can draw audiences in and get talked about.’

‘I think Monday night looks like a strong night for them,’ says Boot, ‘but they’re up against a phenomenal powerhouse on ctv [Melrose Place and Ally McBeal]. I think the audience is going to be split more between ctv and Global. I would have maybe flipped the two nights, but then again, I’m just a frustrated programmer.’

She adds, ‘The comedies, you need to seed them. You need to find trial for them, and I wouldn’t put them up against the strongest competition.’

She does say, however, that shows like David Suzuki’s Nature of Things (Thursdays at 8 p.m.), although pitted against Friends, will do ‘very, very well. They’re different audiences.’

The cbc has ‘themed’ some of its primetime schedule. Mondays are mostly comedy; Tuesdays are entertainment/information; Wednesdays combine lifestyle, comedy and drama; Thursdays drama and information; and Fridays mostly comedy and a doc series.

‘I don’t like themed nights as a media buyer,’ Boot says. ‘What I like is audience flow, [but it’s okay] if themed also equals audience flow, which I think Monday is. I don’t think [On the Arts] leading into the Health Show leading into MarketPlace [on Tuesdays] is audience flow.

‘One thing that runs in Global’s favor,’ Boot adds, ‘is they know how to program. They know audience flow very well, so I think the programs that end up there are pretty good, as I do with ctv and Ivan Fecan. They do that very well.’

Other new cbc comedy shows include six half-hours of Dooley Gardens, a sitcom starting in January, starring Mary Walsh and Andy Jones (codco); The Cathy Jones Special, a one-hour sketch comedy show, which will air later in the season; The Bette MacDonald Show, a six half-hour sketch comedy show starring Bette MacDonald and written by Ed MacDonald (This Hour Has 22 Minutes) and stand-up comic Tim Steeves; and The Broad Side, a six half-hour program depicting women in history, created by writer/producer Jane Ford (Material World) and playwright/actor Diane Flacks.

The only non-Canadian shows airing on cbc in the fall are Mr. Bean (Fridays at 7 p.m.), The Wonderful World of Disney (Sundays at 5-7 p.m.), Coronation Street (weekdays at 3 p.m. and Sundays at 8:30-11 a.m.) and The Simpsons (weekdays at 5:30 p.m.).

Despite the high quality of cbc programming, media buyers say the six-part half-hour series which dominate cbc’s schedule can sometimes be difficult to establish an audience and buy advertising time for.

‘You need to get into that first show or second show to follow it along,’ Cairns says, ‘and a lot of people don’t have that patience anymore.’

From a media buying perspective, the short airtime makes it difficult, says Cairns. ‘We use past history to a certain extent, how a show has performed, so if it’s only on for six episodes, all you can really do is estimate how well it will do.’

Although the cbc is following the American broadcasting model, six-part series are a financial challenge for Canadian producers.

‘Creatively, I imagined doing 13 shows,’ says Peter Lauterman, creator and executive producer of Alliance’s Cover Me. ‘When we found out it was going to be six, I had to rethink what I wanted to do for a full season…. [Although] it was a challenge, it pushed me into a certain shape that’s very good for doing six [episodes].

‘But I think not all shows are like that. Some shows are totally episodic; they’re totally self-contained. The downside is – and I think this is very relevant to any discussion of these partial pickups – you have less opportunity to amortize your costs… in building your sets and all that, which means less money to put on the screen. So, that’s the worst part about it – the amortization issue.’