Three… two… and one.

The crane camera nosedives – coming in low across the studio, past a twirling acrobat – as the lights come on, spraying purple and green in all directions. The house band, set against a backdrop of downtown Toronto, is two bars into the opening theme when host Enis Esmer comes bounding out and the announcer booms, ‘Get up and relax! It’s The Toronto Show.’

Esmer lands stage right, smiling, and launches into his opening banter, joking with the crew – this is just a rehearsal – about himself, the guests and the new show. It is late August, a few weeks until the launch of upstart station Toronto 1 and this, its late-night variety show.

‘They hate the word ‘variety,” whispers creative producer Luciano Casimiri, meaning the staff at T1 and its parent, Craig Media. ‘They keep wanting to call this a ‘talent showcase,’ but that makes it sound too amateurish.’

Esmer, already known to station brass as ‘The Keener,’ was hired a few weeks ago. At 24 – stocky, with short black hair and a bit of chin fuzz – he is a vet of Second City and seems naturally entertaining, even as he plays to a near-empty room. He is smooth but not slick, cheerful but not a cheerleader.

He is also not a talk show host. The Toronto Show has no desk, no couch, and is not driven by any single personality. It is variety, the kind of singing, dancing, something-for-everyone televised big top not much seen on North American airwaves since the salad days of Tommy Hunter or the Osmonds.

‘You could go to four different clubs and see four different acts or you can watch our show,’ boasts Casimiri. ‘It’s like the shows on Telelatino. Without the whorey girls.’

And without chairs. The show is going for a casual, party-like feel and, so, the audience, talent and six camera operators will all mingle on the main floor, in front of a low stage. Guests for the opening week include former Kids in the Hall Dave Foley and Scott Thompson, the Zero Gravity aerialists, Arabesque dancers and Jann Arden.

Casimiri, a veteran showrunner who came over from This Hour Has 22 Minutes, is working with musical producer Billy Bryans, ex of The Parachute Club, and local prodco Breakthrough Films and Television. The show will debut Sept. 25, six days after Toronto 1 goes to air on channel 52, cable 15. The $35-million station will step into the middle of Canada’s most competitive market on Sept. 19, at 7p.m.

‘We’re launching at the absolute perfect time,’ says Drew Craig, head of Craig Media, back at T1’s east Toronto headquarters. ‘It’s a natural start to the TV season.’

Craig, having fought a prolonged regulatory battle for the T1 licence, has put together a massive print, radio and transit campaign to hype the new conventional station, Toronto’s first in three decades. Toronto 1, or CKXT, will air from atop the CN Tower and from a rebroadcast transmitter in Hamilton, covering an 80-kilometer radius across southern Ontario. A high-definition signal will also go out on channel 66.

He and station GM Barbara Williams have been busy this summer, recruiting talent from across Canada and the U.S. and hitting up local advertisers. T1’s main selling point is that the city’s other, larger stations – the Rogers-owned OMNIs, Citytv, CFTO – reach, and charge for, most of Ontario. T1 is more local and area advertisers, says Craig, have responded well to the pitch.

‘There’s a huge appetite for change and a new approach to local television,’ adds Williams. ‘The city is so different. The demographics, the cultural makeup, the size are all so different from when each of the existing stations launched and I’m not sure any of them have really captured that change. It’s been same old, same old, same old for 30 years.’

T1 has programmed a mix of locally made, culturally diverse shows with syndicated U.S. fare – running talkers with Wayne Brady, Sharon Osbourne and Ellen Degeneres in the day, after its in-house morning show, Toronto Today. Newshounds Ben Chin and Sarika Sehgal, working under exec producer Zev Shalev, will anchor the ‘glossy’ evening news, Toronto Tonight, and weeknights will wrap up with Last Call, an experimental talk show. Series about Asian, Caribbean and native culture are slated for the weekend, along with programming borrowed from Craig-owned specialties MTV Canada, TV Land and the soon-to-be-launched Stampede.

The station is also looking to score points in sports by carrying Toronto Raptors games and Monday Night Football, and will also air movies most nights at 8 p.m., a direct challenge to the movie-centric City and its primetime staple Great Movies.

T1’s evening news will run at 7 p.m., sidestepping the competition. ‘Our intention is to get people who missed the six o’clock,’ says Shalev. ‘Our sense is that that audience is a little more sophisticated, a little more urban.

‘We’re not an ambulance-chasing shop,’ he adds, explaining that his news team will aim for deep, issues-driven stories, presented in a slick and entertaining format.

Toronto Tonight has also taken over the station’s flagship status, which had gone to The Toronto Show. T1’s variety hour has also been quietly scaled back to three nights a week – Thursday, Friday and Saturday – not five as originally planned.

Williams shrugs off the change. ‘We backed off a little,’ she concedes, ‘but relative to the boldness of the project I think it’s inconsequential.’

It’s not easy, she adds, to staff a variety show these days. Esmer, for example, is considerably ‘greener’ than his coworkers. ‘It’s not like there was a dozen hosts to choose from,’ she says, ‘but he’s an expert performer and well-connected to the comedy world… He’s funny, warm, accessible, smart. I think he’s going to be a real star for Canada.’