Summertime, and the living is not as easy as it used to be, at least not for execs at CTV and CBC, who this month revealed some of their programming plans for the next three months. Their schedules reflect the increasing competitiveness of the summer season which, no longer a long, hot wasteland of reruns and filler, has this year been crammed with high-draw reality on one side and a smattering of Hollywood and Canadiana on the other.

CBC, which will air the Olympic Games in August and most likely dominate the ratings for those 17 days, seems to be laying low through June and July, the same months in which CTV is unleashing a stampede of tried-and-true reality shows, putting popular airheads Paris Hilton (The Simple Life 2: Road Trip) and Ashton Kutcher (Punk’d) back on Canuck screens, along with another 10 eps of The Osbournes.

CTV has also gone back to the well for more of Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica, The Amazing Race, For Love or Money and – no big surprise here – back to the diamond mine that is Canadian Idol, rolling out this country’s second run of the hit reality format with one-hour eps on three consecutive nights, June 1-3.

CTV’s press material includes the tagline ‘Escape from Reality’ – a strange choice of words for a net that has programmed 11 unscripted shows through the season, plus five MOWs, all of which are based on true and mostly unpleasant stories.

The net has had good luck with Idol – bringing more than three million viewers to the season-one finale – and is hoping that the success will rub off on The Casino, another unscripted series from Survivor creator Mark Burnett and one of the net’s few new acquisitions, set to debut two weeks into June. The show will feature 13 one-hours behind the scenes at the Golden Nugget hotel in Las Vegas. CTV has also bought the new unscripted shows The Ultimate Love Test, The Next Action Star from producer Joel Silver and MTV’s car show Pimp My Ride. It also picked up another 16 hours of the U.S. drama Nip/Tuck.

CTV is also pushing out a number of Canadian-made MOWs through June, including the Jerry Ciccoritti-directed The Death and Life of Nancy Eaton, Prom Queen by Toronto’s Tapestry Pictures and Sleep Murder from Big Motion Pictures in Halifax.

If Casino is a hit, CTV will be scoring points on Global, which did not pick up the series despite running Survivor, The Restaurant and The Apprentice, all by Burnett. Over the summer Global will be between runs of Survivor, one of its few remaining ratings winners following the exits of Friends and Frasier.

Global’s summer starts with a second run of The Restaurant and its four-part docudrama on Maurice ‘Rocket’ Richard. The network also recently announced its Canadian slate for the ’04/05 season, which will again lean heavily on reality and magazine shows, including the Aussie adaptation The Block, Last Chance for Romance by Winnipeg’s Frantic Films and a third season of Train 48. Global has also scheduled U.S. imports for summer premieres, including dramas The Jury, North Shore, Touching Evil and comedy series Good Girls Don’t.

CBC, meanwhile, seems to be saving its strength until the Summer Games, reheating its big-ticket item from last summer, the Steven Spielberg mini Taken, in May, followed by reruns of its dramas Da Vinci’s Inquest and This Is Wonderland in June. Season one of Wonderland drew middling ratings earlier this year, and is likely looking to build an audience for ’04/05.

The Ceeb is also hyping a slate of mostly Hollywood movies, a gambit for which it has been criticized in the past. Sunshine and The Shipping News are the only halfway Canadian films noticeable on the summer sked, programmed alongside such Hollywood fare as Gladiator, Almost Famous and Pearl Harbor. CBC will also air BBC biopics of Winston Churchill (The Gathering Storm, another rerun) and Henry VIII, and has made the curious move of promoting the long-running Brit soap Coronation Street to primetime, citing positive response from a test run during last fall’s British Week.

CBC’s coverage of the Olympic Games in Athens begins Aug. 13. CBC and CTV will reveal their fall lineups shortly, beginning with the Ceeb on May 27.

-www.ctv.ca

-www.canada.com/globaltv

-www.cbc.ca