– Happy Anniversary

Now that tvontario has launched its kids’ programming, it has announced its grown-up programs for the fall, and some shows are celebrating milestone anniversaries this year.

The granddaddy of them all, Elwy Yost’s Saturday Night at the Movies, celebrates its 25th anniversary. The season starts Sept. 26 at 8 p.m. with American Graffiti and The Sting.

As it celebrates its 10th anniversary, Human Edge, the longest-running point-of-view documentary series in Canada, will air five North American premieres. Host Ian Brown will start the season with the hour-long doc Taxicab Confessions 4: Cruisin’ Vegas (hbo), on Wednesday, Sept. 23 at 10 p.m., repeated Sunday, Sept. 27 at 10 p.m. tvo will also present Human Edge Late Night, a retrospective of ‘cult classics’ and ‘audience favorites’ on Fridays after midnight, starting Sept. 25.

The View from Here, a series of social issue documentaries hosted by Brown, will celebrate its fifth anniversary. It will air Wednesdays at 10 p.m. starting in January.

Imprint also celebrates its 10th anniversary, starting Tuesday, Sept. 29 at 10 p.m. Mary Hynes will return as host with contributing editors Shelagh Rogers and Gerald L’Ecuyer.

Studio 2, the net’s nightly current affairs program with Steve Paikin and Paula Todd, turns five this season. As Studio 2 approaches its thousandth show, it will start Monday, Sept. 7 at 8 p.m., repeated at 11 p.m. or later.

Under the Studio 2 umbrella, Fourth Reading, a roundtable, current affairs show, returns for its seventh season starting Sunday, Sept. 13 at noon, and an additional 11:30 p.m. slot will be added on Sept. 27. Allan Gregg in Conversation with… returns for its fourth season on Sunday, Sept. 27 at 12:30 p.m. and 11 p.m., repeated Thursdays at 12:30 p.m.

tvo will introduce Diplomatic Immunity, a half-hour program that is a direct spin-off of tvo’s Wednesday edition of Studio 2’s foreign affairs segment, which attracts 100,000 viewers each week. Paikin will host the show, which starts Friday, Sept. 25 at 7 p.m., repeated Sundays at 1 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. and Mondays at 12:30 p.m.

tvo is also packaging and branding its 10 p.m. slot. tvo@ten will have yet-to-be-chosen hosts introducing each show throughout the week.

– Lock ’em up

Showcase will premier eight new episodes of the in-your-face, no-holds-barred prison drama Oz in a new timeslot (10 p.m.), starting Friday, Aug. 21. It previously aired at 11 p.m.

‘We feel we’ll have a bigger audience at 10,’ says Laura Michalchyshyn, Showcase programmer. ‘We had no complaints about the content at 11. We monitored it very carefully.’

It’s currently in a summer run at 10 p.m. on Wednesdays. ‘A lot of [viewers] said 11 is still too late to stay up. Friday nights, people are burnt, tired, exhausted,’ says Michalchyshyn.

Another point, she adds, is that hbo (the originating broadcaster) runs it Mondays, and ‘They’ve had it at 10 p.m. for some time, and again, no viewer complaints or backlash. So we feel there’s precedence that 10 o’clock is an okay time.’

Showcase has also changed its feed. Its Pacific time is now the same as the Eastern time. ‘By going to the later feed,’ Michalchyshyn explains, ‘it simplifies our schedule for all viewers.’

– Cue Celine

On Sunday, Aug. 16, Discovery Channel viewers in Canada and around the world can tune in to an unprecedented, live telecast from the world’s most famous wreck site. Titantic Live, a two-hour program, will air at 8 p.m., and will feature never-before-seen images broadcast from them four kilometers below the ocean’s surface.

(… wherever you are… )

Discovery Channel Canada will be part of the exclusive simulcast airing only on Discovery networks across the world. Discovery viewers in over 100 countries will watch the program, with the help of simultaneous translation to Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese and more.

(… I believe that the heart does goes on… )

Discovery will also produce additional programming that documents the findings of this expedition once the experts have the opportunity to analyze the data and information gathered. These additional programs will tentatively air on Discovery Canada in 1999.

(… once more, you open the door… )

Scientists will also conduct a comprehensive survey of the site with newly developed color digital still cameras capturing more than 24,000 separate images, creating a virtual 3D ‘photo-mosaic’ of the Titanic.

– Some people are so picky

The ‘Heritage Minutes,’ those wholesome bits of history Canadians enjoy on tv and sometimes at the cinema, went before the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council recently, under the Sex-Role Portrayal Code for Television and Radio Programming. The cbsc released its decision this month concerning the psa ‘Rural Teacher,’ based on the painting Meeting of the School Trustees by Robert Harris.

The psa shows a female school teacher justifying her work and methods to the all-male school trustees. (If memory serves, she nails one of them at the end of the psa by trying to make him read from the Bible, thereby revealing the man can’t read.)

The complainant said, ‘this ad… mentioned only women as teachers and implied strongly that Canadians [owed] their education to young women only.’

The Ontario Regional Council ruled the psa is ‘in keeping with the spirit and the letter of the code’s stated intent,’ which is ‘to assist in overcoming systemic discrimination portrayed in broadcasting programming based on gender.’ The council also found it ironic ‘that the complainant raises no voice regarding the depiction of all of the school trustees, the positions of power in the school, as men.’

Cheeky monkeys. Maybe the council is bored this summer, since no one’s complaining about tv repeats.

– Coke did what?

A three one-hour, cbc-commissioned doc series about Coca-Cola will tell ‘the extraordinary tale’ of the soft drink’s ‘cunning and global competition’ and its role in history.

The pr for The Cola Conquest (DLI Productions in association with cbc, the u.k.’s Channel Four Television and Tele-Quebec) declares in Part 1, The Big Sell, ‘With the launch of [Pepsi’s] Michael Jackson campaign in the early ’80s, the cola war explodes.’ Not to mention sets Jacko’s hair on fire.

For Part 2, Cola War and Peace, ‘When the Berlin Wall falls, Coke is there – passing out the `taste of freedom.’ ‘ Probably in cahoots with the folks who brought us pieces of the Wall for $9.99 a bag.

Part 3, Coca-Colonization, documents ‘the dangers of modern consumer culture (read: how to get the French off red wine and on to soft drinks), global American pop culture and of corporate interests on the souls of nations.’

Waiter, I’ll have water.

The doc, which was shot in the u.s., Canada, Russia, England, France, Mexico and China, airs Sept. 7, 8 and 9 at 9 p.m. on cbc.

– Be still their beating hearts

The historic adventure series Sharpe will return to History Television in August and the show’s star, Sean Bean (the bad guy in Goldeneye and Patriot Games), has hearts aflutterin’.

The show first aired last winter, but it was more than warmly received.

‘When you think of the premise of the series – the Napoleanic wars, a young rogue working his way up the ranks of the army,’ says History publicist Tara Lapointe, ‘you’d think that was more male-skewing, but he has a new love interest in every episode and the women are just going crazy for Sean Bean.’

Part of History’s Adventure Sundays programming, Sharpe’s first of 14 two-hour episodes debuted Sunday, Aug. 2 at 9 p.m.