The surprisingly high viewership of last year’s Scotiabank Giller Prize broadcast has prompted a multi-channel leveraging of the literary event, which returns to CTV on Nov. 6.

The network and its family of channels are planning extensive programming around the 2007 Giller special — in hopes of repeating last year’s success. The 2006 Giller drew the largest audience in the event’s history, reaching more than 1.3 million on CTV. Over half a million viewers caught some part of the show, drawing an AMA of 351,000, according to BBM Nielsen Media Research.

The 2007 Giller will air live on Bravo! Tuesday, Nov. 6 at 9 p.m. ET, with host Seamus O’Regan (Canada AM) bringing together literary elites, celebs and book lovers. It will be re-broadcast on CTV the next day — at 10 a.m. ET and 8 p.m. ET — and will also be accessible at bravo.ca and giller.ctv.ca.

In the days leading up to the live show, an array of complementary programming will air on CTV, Bravo!, BookTelevision, Star!, CTV Newsnet and CP24. As well, CTV and Bravo! will air encore broadcasts of the 2006 eTalk profile with prize founder Jack Rabinovitch.

O’Regan will also sit down with the five short-listed authors in a series of CTV-produced half-hour interviews, which started airing on multiple channels on Oct 29. eTalk started daily segments on the Giller beginning Oct. 26.

From Media in Canada