Humbled Super Channel has filed for creditor protection to better its chances against pay-TV leaders Movie Central and The Movie Network.

‘We want to make it clear to our customer base that Super Channel is not bankrupt or in receivership,’ Malcolm Knox, president and COO of the channel’s parent Allarco Entertainment, said in a statement to the pay channel’s 220,000 subscribers.

‘Operations continue without interruption and employees continue to work towards providing top quality service to consumers,’ he added.

Knox also told program suppliers that Super Channel has suffered in hard times, but will emerge strengthened from creditor protection under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act.

‘We intend to continue operations without interruption and our customers can continue to rely on Allarco Entertainment throughout this restructuring period,’ he said.

Super Channel is privately owned by the Edmonton-based Allard family which pioneered Canadian pay-TV with Superchannel, the forerunner of Corus Entertainment’s Movie Central.

Allarco’s relaunch of the Super Channel brand has proved far less successful. The upstart pay-TV network had $139 million in debt and $69 million in assets at the time of the filing on Wednesday with the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta.

Allarco first secured a national pay-TV licence for Super Channel from the CRTC in 2006 and launched in November 2007 in a bid to erode the duopoly that Astral Media’s TMN in eastern Canada and Movie Central in western Canada have enjoyed since 1986.

Knox argued Super Channel has been thwarted by insufficient promotion from cable and satellite TV carriers to recruit new subscribers.

‘Our biggest challenge has been accessing consumers through distribution undertakings that have become increasingly powerful vertically integrated companies which no longer take CRTC decisions seriously,’ he said.

At the same time, Super Channel’s supply deals with MGM, Channel Four, Lionsgate and U.S. pay network Starz have done little to compete against the movie, TV series and sports programming that plum output deals with Showtime, HBO and the major studios bring TMN and MC.