The hardest part about covering the U.S. networks this fall has been keeping up with all the cancellations. Coupling? Gone. Boomtown? Also gone. Skin? L.A. Dragnet? Outta here. The Brotherhood of Poland, NH? The Lyon’s Den? Dead as Betamax.

A handful of others – Karen Sisco and Miss Match spring to mind – are either on hiatus or appear to be teetering.

True, this time of year is always hard on new shows. They have only a few measly weeks to prove themselves during the hyper-competitive ratings sweeps, during which they duke it out with each other and established titles – such as the mighty Survivor and Law & Order franchises – for an increasingly fragmented market. Most of them, usually 65%, don’t make the cut.

But this year, the ‘season from hell’, in the words of Variety, has been more harsh than most – in particular for the Global network, which had picked up the Canadian rights to almost all of those ill-fated series. Only Boomtown belonged to the competition at CTV.

‘It’s been a choppy fall,’ admits Global programming VP Adam Ivers. ‘There have been a lot of cancellations.’

So, what now? Pundits say these things come in cycles – a few years ago the positions of the two nets were reversed, as they may be again in a few years more – and a single bad season will not do any serious damage to a company’s year-end. It’s a punch that can be rolled with, say the experts. But for now, the CanWest Global-owned net and its sister stations have a lot of empty air to fill.

If it doesn’t establish some strong titles in the mid-season, the net will be in a weak position going into fall ’04, like it was this year, and will again be forced to gamble on new shows, says Carolyn Swift, broadcast manager at Genesis Media, a Toronto media buyer. A run of bad seasons would be a more serious problem.

‘Global’s biggest problem is they’re losing Friends next year,’ she says, and, like NBC, has failed to find a replacement. Its most recent heir apparent, Coupling, flamed out after just a few weeks.

‘Everybody was shocked about that. I’m sure it wasn’t a cheap show to buy,’ says Swift. ‘That’s not an easy thing to recoup from.’

Together with the possible loss of Frasier, Global is facing ‘double jeopardy’ in ’04/05, says Sherry O’Neil, managing director at OMD Canada in Toronto.

Networks often prepare for cancellations by securing output deals to get quick, mid-season replacements, or by stocking up on extra shows over the year. When Playback called, Ivers was in the middle of rewriting the Global sked – slotting in U.S. replacements and some Canuck projects. He has high hopes for the mob drama Line of Fire and already has the Joely Fisher-starrer Zoe Busiek: Wild Card filling in for Poland Wednesdays at 10 p.m. Wild Card was shot by the net’s sister company Fireworks Entertainment for Lifetime in the U.S. Global bought it and saved it for a rainy day.

‘We knew we would be able to create an opportunity for it. We feel it will be a good companion piece for Gilmour Girls,’ says Ivers, adding that nets often hold their Canadian content in reserve.

CTV, which refused to do interviews for this story, held back all three of its new Canuck titles – Comedy Inc., Keys Cut Here and Corner Gas – from the fall sked, but recently added Inc. to its Saturday nights. The net has replaced Boomtown with Third Watch, following the lead of NBC.

The rise of short-run reality shows has also made it easier to refill skeds. They are generally cheap and available year-round. Global wrote in Average Joe to some success in November and is using it with Fear Factor, Everybody Loves Raymond and Two and a Half Men (one of its few new hits) to gain ground on Mondays.

‘We didn’t have a significant competitor at Mondays at 10, so we were able to create an opportunity [with Average Joe],’ says Ivers. ‘It’s done surprisingly well. It’s taken a nice chunk out of CSI: Miami.’ The net will air a second run of Joe in January along with Celebrity Mole. CTV, meanwhile, is making buzz with the Paris Hilton reality show The Simple Life.

‘The problem is, how much of it can we watch?’ Swift asks. ‘I don’t think we’re going to be able to sustain the amount of reality we’ve got on the air right now.’

Global programming boss Doug Hoover has also predicted the end of ‘hot tub reality’ even if his schedule doesn’t yet reflect it.

But because reality shows are almost always mid-season replacements – and because some have been tremendous hits – programmers, buyers and viewers are losing interest in the fall. It is not the landmark season it used to be. Although it still yields the greatest number of new shows, ratings winners are as likely to emerge in the off-season as anywhere else. Fox and CTV took this principle a step further this past summer with the early and successful debut of The O.C., and CBC has also saved most of its best material for the new year.

NBC president Jeff Zucker, who recently conceded that most of his net’s fall sked ‘sucked,’ has also openly questioned the wisdom of debuting multiple shows in the fall.

‘The buying season is year-round now,’ says Ivers. ‘About half the shows available to the Canadian marketplace are introduced at the L.A. screenings, the other half come out over the course of the year. The only slow week is the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Otherwise it’s a full-court press all the time.’

-www.canwestglobal.com

-www.ctv.ca

-www.cbc.ca

-www.genesismedia.com

-www.omdmedia.com