Vancouver: Canadian audiences will have another homegrown, primetime soap opera to get lathered up about should chum finally get its long-held wish for a Vancouver television licence.

The broadcaster wants to produce at least 100 episodes of a Vancouver-set soap that would also air on other chum stations.

That and other deal sweeteners are being offered to the crtc as the latest Vancouver/Victoria television licence sweepstakes were officially kicked off Dec. 16.

The crtc will hear the applications by Winnipeg-based Trinity Television and Craig Broadcasting and Toronto-based chum and cfmt-tv Feb. 21 in Vancouver.

ctv (when it was known as Baton Broadcasting) won the last contest in 1997 and started the conventional station vtv. It was a quarter century earlier when Global Television won the licence for what is now known as Global Vancouver.

chum is hoping third time is the charm and is offering again a Citytv-inspired station for Vancouver.

Operating on channel 42 with a 430,000-watt transmitter on Mt. Seymour, chum Vancouver will be available over the air in Vancouver and on cable in Victoria and lower Vancouver Island.

Along with the soap, chum promises more than 30 hours of original local programming per week (including 12 hours of local non-news programs and two hours of local magazine-style cultural programming). It will create 128 jobs.

For independent producers, chum Vancouver is promising to dedicate $16 million to prelicense a minimum of seven b.c.-produced movies per year for seven years. chum says it will also invest at least $1.5 million over seven years for feature film script development. The company also plans to spend an additional $12 million to promote the films.

chum also promises to offer a single weeknight newscast for the Chinese and South Asian communities and 15 hours of local ethnic programming.

In another applications, Craig is looking to clone its A-Channel concept operating in Edmonton and Calgary for the Vancouver Island market.

‘For a market of more than 700,000 people that includes some of the fastest growing communities in the province, we believe that Vancouver Island is significantly underserviced and underrepresented by existing television media,’ says Jim Nicholl, executive vp of A-Channel on the Island.

The Craig proposal promises a full-service station with more than 21 hours of locally produced news and information programming each week.

For local producers, Craig says it will invest $56 million on made-in-b.c. programming, including $13-million on independent film and documentary production. A-Channel on the Island, which will create 136 jobs, will operate on channel 53 through a 779,300-watt signal and rebroadcast transmitters that would serve Vancouver Island.

Trinity, a registered Canadian charity which currently produces religious programs such as Its New Day and Light Talk, proposes to operate a 24-hour English-language religious station on channel 66 using an 18,000-watt signal based in the Fraser Valley east of Vancouver.

The call letters for the primarily Christian station would be cfvt and the market is estimated to be 825,000 people.

The station, modeled on Vision tv, will also air programming for Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist and Jewish faiths.

Trinity’s proposal calls for 24 hours of original Canadian religious programming, half of which will air in primetime.

Over the seven-year licence term, Trinity plans to invest $9.5 million in new programming. In all, Trinity will air 80 hours of religious programming per week.

The fourth applicant is cfmt, a division of Rogers Broadcasting, which proposes to establish a cfmt-style multilingual station for Vancouver and Victoria.

Called lmtv, the station will be a free, over-the-air signal operating on channel 42 in Vancouver through a 30,700-watt signal and in Victoria on channel 53 through an 18,400-watt rebroadcast transmitter.

Forty percent of the programming will be in English and the balance will be aired in 15 other languages. Fifty percent of the schedule will be Canadian, with the majority of it produced in b.c.

Among the new productions will be two primetime, daily newscasts for the Chinese and South Asian communities. The station will create 100 new jobs.

Michelle Edge of the Vancouver office of the crtc says there is no guarantee that the regulator will approve any applications. She says it will take six months after the Feb. 21 hearing for the crtc to render a decision.