Astral Media will turn 60 years old during the 2005/06 television season, but it is still thinking young with its Teletoon and Family Channel specialties.

The fall season on Family includes two new teen-aimed series from Canada, while Teletoon continues to court both teens and 18-34s with its post-9 p.m. block, The Detour.

‘After 9 p.m., our content is intended for adults, but we know teens love the programming, too,’ says VP programming Carole Bonneau. ‘With the popularity of Adult Swim [U.S.-based Cartoon Network’s Detour equivalent], producers are making more and more adult-focused content. We’ll always be looking for it.’

For winter/spring 2005, The Detour’s 9 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. block rated highest among English-language specialties, bringing in an average of 21,000 viewers per minute among 12-to-17-year-olds, and 39,000 viewers per minute in the 18-34 demo.

Bonneau hopes the channel can keep its momentum. Teletoon, which Astral co-owns with Corus Entertainment (40%) and Cookie Jar Entertainment (20%), will roll out 13 new series for fall, with nine Canadian-produced originals.

The Detour will feature three of these, including the comedy Sons of Butcher (13 x 30) from Toronto’s S&S Productions. It’s a ‘guy show’ about three dudes who are butchers by day and a rock band at night. Also destined for Detour is Station X (13 x 30), a multimedia show from Montreal’s Cité-Amérique about six Canadian artists sharing a loft, which explores themes ranging from fashion to violence. Also on tap is The Wrong Coast (13 x 30), from Toronto’s Cuppa Coffee, Blueprint Entertainment and Curious Pictures. The stop-motion entertainment news spoof had its first run on Astral’s The Movie Network.

U.S. fare

The Detour will also air new episodes of U.S. fare, including The Brak Show, Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law, Aqua Teen Hunger Force and the fifth season of Futurama.

Bonneau admits that the nine-to-12-year-old set is still Teletoon’s core audience, despite The Detour’s success. First-run, kid-friendly Canadian programs for Teletoon’s fall sked include Portfolio Entertainment’s Carl2 (read Carl Squared; 14 x 30), about a 14-year-old with a clone of himself, airing weekends at 7 p.m.; Delilah & Julius (26 x 30), a weekend afternoon adventure about a pair of globetrotting teen spies, from Decode Entertainment and Collideascope Animation; Gerald McBoing Boing (14 x 30) for preschoolers, about a tyke who only says ‘Boing Boing,’ from Cookie Jar Entertainment, airing weekdays at 3 p.m.; and Planet Sketch (13 x 30), from Decode and the U.K.’s Aardman Animation, which will debut in November in an undetermined slot.

Also premiering this fall are two one-hour specials from Nelvana: Wayside, about the students of a ridiculously tall grammar school, and Dude of the Living Dead, leading into a new season of 6Teen.

Cancon Caillou from Cookie Jar and Spectra Animation’s Kid Paddle will be returning with new episodes. Teletoon will also air its new acquisitions Bratz, Alien Racers, The Life and Times of Juniper Lee and The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy.

To create some pre-fall buzz, Teletoon will run sneak-peek episodes of its new titles throughout August.

On Astral’s Family Channel, the strategy is to ‘hold the course’ and maintain the reputation suggested by its three-year-old tagline, ‘Never a Dull Moment,’ says Kevin Wright, SVP programming for Astral Television Networks and Family Channel.

Two new Canadian programs are on the 2005/06 Family sked, including the live-action comedy series Life with Derek from Pope Productions and Shaftesbury Films. The 13 x 30 comedy is about a pair of teens, brought together through a blended marriage, struggling for control of their shared household. Family began running episodes of Decode’s live-action comedy Naturally, Sadie in June, airing it Saturdays and Sundays at 6 p.m. The second half of Sadie’s first season, another 13 half-hours, will air in the winter. The series is about a 13-year-old aspiring naturalist.

Wright says all the programs for the upcoming season will be rolled out very gradually, so viewers shouldn’t expect a glut of new Family programs come September.

Derek and Sadie account for just two of the 22 new programs Family will launch in the upcoming season. It has acquired new series including Disney’s Brandy & Mr. Whiskers, Power Rangers: Mystic Force, The Suite Life of Zack & Cody and the children’s entertainment magazine show Take 2. It will also air season four of That’s So Raven and the Disney/ABC MOWs Tiger Cruise, Romy and Michele: In the Beginning, Go Figure and Pizza My Heart, among others.

According to Wright, Family has also landed the recently canceled ABC sitcom 8 Simple Rules, starring Katey Sagal (Married… with Children) and the late John Ritter. The series will bypass syndication of its three-season run and begin airing on Family in December.

‘Because of our relationship with Disney, and given that ABC did not renew the show, they’re making it available to us directly from the ABC window,’ says Wright. ‘You can expect quite a bit of noise about us launching it in an interesting timeslot.’

-www.teletoon.com

-www.familychannel.ca