In our Jan. 22 issue, Playback began reviewing new Canadian programming launched mid-season on some major Canadian nets. So far, we’ve looked at ‘the second season’ highlights on ytv and ctv.

Post-holiday changes at cbc include the payoff of a ‘long and difficult decision’ to move Da Vinci’s Inquest away from The West Wing. Executive director of programming for cbc, Slawko Klymkiw, says it all came down to this: ‘We moved Da Vinci to Tuesday [at 9] from Wednesday [at 9] because West Wing was gathering steam. The audience profiles were becoming more similar. Da Vinci had been averaging 750,000 or so in the ratings but it was going down little by little.’ So, move over Nick Campbell, hello David Suzuki and The Nature of Things.

‘Also,’ he continues, ‘we’d been having a historically hard time on what to put on Friday at 9. We had Cowboy and had one-hour comedy specials’ These Arms of Mine had been on hiatus, but it’s back Fridays at 9.’

Klymkiw says the pubcaster has also decided to begin airing Canadian-heavy music specials later on Friday nights and may move one into primetime just before the Juno Awards. Earlier the same evening, cbc is premiering half-hours Edgemont Road (Water Street Productions) and Our Hero (Decode Entertainment) as its youth dramas between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. ‘I think it’s going to take a long time for people to come to it [this mini-block], but we’re dedicated to it. I think it can transcend the competition’.We want to skew somewhat younger [at that hour] than we have in the past.’

With the Sullivan sitcom pr off the schedule as of last month [‘sitcoms are the toughest business in the world’], Klymkiw is introducing The Broadside on Monday, March 5. It’s a half-hour spoof of historic situations starring pr’s Diane Flacks. Also on the comedy front, Klymkiw is anticipating a special called Talking To Americans, an extended version of the popular segment of the same name on 22 Minutes.

Forthcoming cbc movies of note include Sturla Gunnarsson’s Scorn, the Bernie Zukerman production The Marilyn Bell Story and Catalyst’s family film Virtual Mom.

Klymkiw also sports an insightful plan to counter-program the Oscars with a night dedicated to Coronation Street.

So far, so good this year, he concludes: ‘We had an incredibly good first half of the season. This is the first year of our transformation plan and most of the changes will be [next] October.’

Global Television’s vice-president of Canadian production, Loren Mawhinney, says mid-season at the orange moon network reflects ‘a concentrated effort to go after half-hours. We’ve experienced a great deal of success with them.’

Global got a bit of a jump on the official start of mid-season by launching its Peace Arch music industry satire Big Sound on Dec. 11. Initial press notices have been generally favorable, with a bit of wait-and-see tossed in. Mawhinney says some members of the crew came with strong experience gained on the set of the hbo tv biz satire Beggars and Choosers.

First up after the holidays was Blackfly, a historical farce of cliched proportions starring Ron James and produced by Salter Street Films. Launched Thursday, Jan. 4 at 10 p.m. in the killer er slot, Blackfly was in tough competition and Mawhinney reports modest success in Week 1 in the Toronto and Hamilton, on markets. Still, she says the hope is that Blackfly will catch on in the slot the way Traders did, using the ‘safe haven’ of a post-Christmas start date, with the big net launches well over.

All things being equal this fall, Mawhinney says she will give an earlier season debut to Barna-Alper’s one-hour cop drama, Blue Murder. The series was introduced Jan. 10 with a 9-11 p.m. pilot and then moved to its regular slot, Wednesdays at 10 p.m., as of Jan. 17. Law & Order is the big challenger at that hour.

‘It’s another high-quality ensemble piece in the same way that Traders was. It’s got a wonderful film noir cast and I’m very confident’ of its chances, Mawhinney notes.

In the instant tradition of Making the Band, Global is creating its own would-be teen music sensation with a show called Popstars, set for a drum roll, one-hour debut on Feb. 4, to be followed by 12 half-hours. Featuring what Mawhinney calls ‘Canada’s first all-girl band,’ Popstars is produced by Lone Eagle Entertainment.

It’s not clear what the broadcast date will be, but Global is going to air four hour-long installments of Titans, a doc series from David Paperny Films, based on the book by Peter C. Newman. Mawhinney thinks it may go to air in April. And another maybe, for the summer, is Deja Dead, an mow starring Dana Delaney as the Temperance Brennan character from the book series by Kathy Reichs. Set in Montreal, Deja Dead is about a divorced forensic anthropologist trying to prove a series of murders are the work of one killer. •

-www.cbc.ca

-www.canwestglobal.com