Forget about dropping a bunch of soon-to-be-weds on an island stocked with single buff guys and Playboy Playmates. In classically understated Canadian style, Alliance Atlantis Communications has dropped eight young people – four men and four women, aged 19 to 29, all single – in a minimalist loft on Richmond Street in downtown Toronto. They will cohabit there for a whole year under the watchful eye of several webcams that will be on 24/7 and accessible at a computer screen near you.

It remains to be seen how Web surfers will take to the reality-based enterprise, which shuns the more base aspects of human nature that make its u.s. counterparts so popular. Heck, nobody even gets voted off the warehouse.

The eight stars are in it together, lofter Jennifer Frances Hedger told reporters at the Jan. 9 press conference launch. Hedger’s bio describes her as ‘leggy’ and having ‘Julia Robert’s [sic] good looks and a tall, lithe frame.’

‘We’re friends,’ she said, describing the roomies she’d known for four days. ‘We back each other up. We’re a team.’

aac’s notes describe the other members of the team, who represent a wide cross-section of lifestyles and ethnicity, as ‘a vixen, a heartthrob, a conscience, an artiste, a rebel, a dude, and a hipster.’ They seemed relaxed and eager to bask in their first media encounter, with the possible exception of David Keystone. The 19-year-old former criminology student, who resembles a young Dustin Hoffman, seemed to be struggling with the philosophical angst of putting the minutiae of one’s life on display for self-promotion. Either that or he’s a gifted put-on artist.

The selection of the lofters followed an involved casting call for U8TV cofounders Zev Shalev (former wonder boy executive producer of ctv’s Canada am), his sister, former ad exec Lili Shalev, and journalist Fiorella Grossi. Their cross-Canada search was not only to find the right faces, but also to suss out what their target demographic would want in a convergent media experience.

The lofters will be bunking down in pairs. Twenty-one video ‘snoopcams’ are positioned throughout the environment – in the bedrooms, living room, corridors and bathroom – recording every second of their lives. The creators admit they want to play up the ‘sensual’ and ‘erotic’ possibilities of the situation – to a point.

‘There will be nothing pornographic,’ explained Zev Shalev. ‘There will be nothing that you wouldn’t see on television.’

There is a ‘showercam,’ but Grossi assures us it will only provide head-and-shoulder peeks.

Each camera is hooked up to a control room and production office adjacent to the loft. Staffed around the clock, the control room is where U8TV producers can select the camera views they want to send out as one of three streaming feeds over the website, with a delay of several seconds. There will be no escape for the U8 guinea pigs, who are given $30,000 and free rent for sacrificing their privacy. They are allowed to leave the premises, but with a videographer in tow.

The website is not only aimed at voyeurs. All of the lofters will be hosting their own tv programs from within the confines of their new home/studio. Three hours of live online programming will be featured daily – shows about health, beauty, cooking, music, relationships, fashion, the Internet and showbiz. Viewers will be able to interact with the lofters via instant message boards.

Daily highlights will be assembled for U8TV: The Lofters, a half-hour series which went to air Jan. 15 on Life Network, and which will run Monday to Saturday as part of Life’s Real Life Stories program block.

When asked what makes U8TV different from other reality-based programs such as The Mole and Survivor, aac chairman and ceo Michael MacMillan responded, ‘Those are just game shows. This is an entire network.’

The website launched on Jan. 15, but not without some bugs in the system. At press time, Mac users were unable to view the interactive video pages, but an onscreen message assured us the site operators were ‘working on a solution.’ *

-www.u8tv.com

-www.allianceatlantis.com

-www.lifenetwork.com