Boasting a strong fall season with top shows for the 18-49 demos in the Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary markets, Global Television is heading into 2008 with several new shows on the mid-season slate and a list of returning titles. Following news media reports of progress in negotiations between Hollywood writers and producers south of the border on Wednesday, Global put timeslots to several — but not all — of its imported U.S. titles returning in January.

The new Canadian original on Global’s mid-season slate is The Guard, a series set to hit the schedule on Tuesday, Jan. 22 in the 10 p.m. ET/PT timeslot — leading out of ratings winner House. The first on-air promo will appear during the season finale of Survivor on Dec. 16. The $20-million show shot in B.C. stars David James Elliot (JAG). It was formerly called Search and Rescue and follows the heroes of the Canadian Coast Guard Search and Rescue team in the Pacific Northwest.

Global ordered 13 episodes, to be shot in Squamish, BC, though production went on hiatus in November because of the weather, according to publicist Bill Vigars. ‘It was going to be insane to try and shoot through the winter, so they stopped production at the end of November after completing eight. They’ll come back April 1 to finish the initial five of the 13,’ he says. The series was originally set to debut in the spring.

‘The week after we closed, the production office flooded. The river overflowed,’ he adds, ‘so nobody would have been able to get to work anyway.’

Global also has a four-hour documentary series, The Limelighters, about artists at the Performing Arts Lodge in downtown Toronto, set to premiere on Jan. 3 in the 10 p.m. ET/PT timeslot. On Jan. 5, the net will premiere the true crime docu-series True Pulp Murder at 10:30 p.m. ET/PT. Global’s also planning to unveil New Amsterdam, Canterbury’s Law and Swingtown — titles familiar to media buyers from the upfronts earlier this year — in the mid-season, although specific dates and timeslots haven’t been decided.

The returning primetime fare will include new seasons of Survivor, Prison Break, Big Brother and NBC’s Donald Trump-a-thon follow-up series Celebrity Apprentice — for which producer Mark Burnett recently signed eight sponsors for product integration: Kodak, Dial Corp., Vera Wang by Serta, Quiznos, OVC, Crocs, Nederlander and Pedigree. Celebs set to compete on the show include Gene Simmons, Vincent Pastore and Stephen Baldwin, to name a few.

Global is also heading into the new year relying on new eps of established shows including Back to You, Bones, ‘da Kink in my Hair, Las Vegas, My Name Is Earl, Shark, The Simpsons and the net’s prized possession, House, which it says is averaging 2.8 million viewers per ep and may just hold up against CTV’s returning juggernaut, American Idol.

The net’s main special event — heading into the new year without the Super Bowl this time around — is the 50th Grammy Awards, which will go to air at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Sunday, Feb. 10.

From Media in Canada