The CBC’s winter launch has been the biggest week for new Canadian dramas in recent memory, and has yielded some series that are likely to get a full-season renewal for next fall.

It’s still early to base this on the first ep or two of the four new shows, so let’s save the noisemakers and party hats, but the fact is the pubcaster has brought mostly solid numbers to these shows, and that’s good news. Of course, there is the qualifier that previous audience projections must be jettisoned. Let’s call 600,000 the new million.

That is the 2+ audience figure achieved by opening eps of The Border (710,000) and Sophie (630,000). JPod fell short with 472,000, but more than half of those pairs of eyeballs (256,000) was in the key 18-49 demographic. In fact, the cyber-black comedy outperformed The Border (246,000) in that demo, which means that, unless the Britney Spears set is flocking to the anti-terrorist drama, its numbers are being boosted by the gray hairs, which isn’t of particular interest to advertisers, but the Ceeb will take it.

Most disappointing was the performance of MVP, which drew 383,000 2+ viewers, and 208,000 18-49s. The Ceeb had been hoping to lure at least 600,000 to the puck-bunny drama, but working against it were its Friday 9 p.m. timeslot and a soft lead-in with a repeat of a best-of Rick Mercer Report episode.

The true test will be whether the network is able to increase or at least retain these viewers over the next few weeks. The follow-up ep of The Border managed to hold on to most of its audience, bringing back 599,000.

I know what you’re saying, Ceeb-bashers: these results are inflated by the writers strike and weaker-than-usual competition from CTV, Global and the U.S. nets. Not necessarily so. The Border, for example, went up against CTV’s Dance War, which came with a fair amount of hype.

A bit of clever programming on the Ceeb’s part was launching The Border in the void usually occupied by Global’s 24. The fate of 24 was up in the air even before the WGA strike; the Kiefer Sutherland drama eventually got the green light, and would have gone to air weeks from now, but instead went on hiatus due to the walkout. Ceeb exec director of programming Kirstine Layfield saw an opportunity early on and decided to put The Border on Mondays at 9 p.m., looking to scoop up anyone who wanted their counter-terrorism craving filled in 24’s absence. So far, it seems to have worked.

One year ago, the Ceeb was reeling after an ineffectual ’06 fall launch, and then in January along came eight eps of a little comedy called Little Mosque on the Prairie, which got a full-season renewal and is today the network’s top-rated drama program. Although this latest crop of January debuts isn’t performing quite up to that level, Layfield says ‘so far they’re all looking like good candidates [for renewal],’ although that comment was made before MVP went to air.

The network has taken advantage of Mosque’s strength, pairing it as the Wednesday lead-in to Sophie, the English-language adap of the popular Quebec sitcom Les hauts et les bas de Sophie Paquin, about a woman whose seemingly perfect life falls apart when, pregnant, her boyfriend leaves her. Sophie scored highest among the 18-49s (270,000), and is part of an overall strategy to bring more female viewers to the network. Women are the biggest consumers of television, but, up until recently, Ceeb programs just weren’t reaching out to them.

Another area where the new regime at CBC is improving is in promotions. No matter what becomes of these shows, a fair number of people decided to check out their first episodes, so they must have heard about them somewhere. Layfield reveals that the most money was put behind The Border, ads for which figured in U.S. cable buys, ‘because we figure the people who are watching U.S. cable shows would be interested in a show like The Border.’

Or perhaps you’ve seen Sophie star Natalie Brown’s face plastered all over city subways, or MVP being boosted on Hockey Night in Canada, or the whole bunch in full-page newspaper ads.

The Ceeb is capable of a splashy launch, but then, by the budget-strapped network’s own admission, it cuts back on the promotional support in season two – and one must ask if it’s wise to spend so much money and effort to build a show up to the point where it’s renewable, only to then leave it to its own devices? This, of course, was behind the recent debate between the CBC and Intelligence producer Chris Haddock, who publicly criticized the net for not marketing his show, which – despite strong reviews and interest in an Americanized version from Fox – finished with a weak audience average of 267,000, and 82,000 in the 18-49 demo.

The strong performance of The Border would seem to be the nail in Intelligence’s coffin – north of the 49th, anyway. The two shows are of a type, and The Border, at least based on its first episode, did much better in the same timeslot. For now, though, Layfield is staying mum.

‘We don’t make any of those decisions until about February or March,’ she says. ‘Another few weeks of this and we’ll be able to tell how many of these shows are going to go full-year next year.’