No one has heard Cal Millar utter the words ‘U.S. network series’ recently, nor will they hear him mention the words anytime soon.

The Channel Zero topper is no conventional broadcaster, even after he and longtime business partner Romen Podzyhun acquired Hamilton, ON station CHCH-TV, along with Montreal’s CJNT-TV, from Canwest Global Communications for $12.

‘At the end of the day, we didn’t come up with something new. We sort of went back to what TV used to be, to what CHCH used to do – local news and long-running movies,’ he said after replacing the E! sign on CHCH’s Jackson Street entrance, and its U.S. series-heavy schedule with an all-news format by day and comfort movies at night.

Millar insists the new-look CHCH puts the TV station in a better place than its former incarnation as an E! channel. In better times, the southern Ontario station was profitable with U.S. series and a local news-gathering operation. But the current TV ad slump exposed the CHCH model as the budget for American programming exceeded commercial revenues, turning profits into steep losses.

Canwest told the CRTC earlier this year in a regulatory filing that CHCH stood to post around $40 million in revenues in fiscal 2010, and a staggering $29.1 million loss. The culprit: $57.5 million in total programming costs, of which $47 million was for American programming. That left just $10 million to cover Canadian programming costs, including local news-gathering.

All of which suggested to Millar that there was gold in local news which, besides being self-sustaining financially, was popular.

Take the former CH Morning Live newscast on the former E!-branded Hamilton TV station hosted by Annette Hamm and Bob Cowan. Before the newscast started at 5:30 a.m., American-originated E! programming drew around 6,000 viewers, negligible for a conventional broadcaster.

Then the audience grew to around 80,000 for the CHCH morning news show, only to dive back down to 6,000 viewers when CH Morning Live signed off at 9 a.m. and E! shows and other American programming returned to the schedule.

‘When the news finished, the audience fell off a cliff,’ Millar says.

So he decided there was potential in acquiring CHCH if Hamiltonians were given more of the existing local news shows on the local TV station through the entire day, before kicking over into movies in primetime and overnight.

Millar concedes there are no guarantees in conventional TV these days. And he’s aware of critics, bigger players who sneer that you buy U.S. series, expensive as they are, to keep audiences glued to your schedule.

It’s not like Millar is swearing off American shows, just those output deals with Hollywood suppliers that hang like anchors around the necks of bigger broadcasters than himself.

And Millar’s the first to admit acquiring the former E!-branded TV stations was no breeze. Channel Zero faced a nail-biting climax to the months of deal-making and technical preparation that preceded the handover of CHCH and CJNT from Canwest on Aug. 31.

A judicious CRTC was late in blessing the change of ownership, doing so late Friday afternoon on Aug. 28, and with two financing conditions attached.

Suddenly Channel Zero bankers were pressed into service completing final documentation.

‘We were flying at that point,’ Millar recalls.

Then there were the technical challenges.

‘People worked incredibly hard, but there was no time for testing,’ he adds, as Channel Zero decided to go cold turkey without Canwest’s continued technical assistance as of 12:01 a.m. on Aug. 31.

‘Our guiding motif was, we can do it, not sure how, and it’s only TV and no one will die,’ Millar recalls.

He needed his humor. Around 10 p.m. on Sunday night, Aug. 30, the new CHCH promos were completed and technicians in Toronto and Hamilton were poised for the live cutover at 12:01 a.m.

In the next two hours, lawyers for Channel Zero and Canwest were trading final documents so that the CHCH broadcast licence could come out of escrow to complete the change of ownership at midnight.

Finally, Channel Zero technicians started flipping over at 12:01 a.m. on Monday morning.

Millar recalls the hiccups with the HD signal, audio synching and screen frames. That’s where the cable and satellite TV carriers, whose relations with broadcasters are strained at the best of times, raised their game to complete the cutover.

‘I was sweating buckets. You want it be perfect. But you’re also surrounded by a bunch of professionals who insist on doing it right. And the BDUs jumped through hoops to get it done,’ Millar remembers.

Despite the early days for the new-look CHCH, is Millar happy with the audience ratings so far?

‘The answer is yes. It’s still early for us to pop the champagne. It takes a little longer for audiences to develop. But what we hoped would happen, has happened,’ he says. ‘At 9 a.m., people aren’t turning off the channel or the TV. If you’re watching an ongoing news story, you’re still with CH,’ Millar adds.

And all without U.S. network series. Rival conventionals should know such optimism.