Vancouver: P.S. Films is making the move from special event television producing to series producing with not one, but two, shows.

One series, Dream Seekers, is a Vancouver-based talent showcase akin to Ed McMahon’s Star Search. Featuring new musical talent from b.c., Dream Seekers will declare a winning act in 26 episodes to begin airing this fall on vtv and other ctv stations. The series will be hosted by former Madison star Enuka Okuma and acts will be judged by industry professionals.

Production runs until Nov. 7 at the CBC Vancouver studios.

The Jim Byrnes Show, meanwhile, is 26 episodes of the jazz personality and his musical friends such as Farmer’s Daughter and Long John Baldry entertaining folks on a set made to look like a bar. The Byrnes show, another vtv licence, will include comedy skits and is set to air in Vancouver in a late-night slot on Fridays this fall. Production also runs until November.

Prior to the move into variety series, the partners of P.S. Films produced special variety projects like the Rob Carriere Christmas special, the musical event featuring Leon and Eric Bibb and the Variety Club Telethon.

The principals of the Vancouver company are Pat O’Brien, Shel Piercy and Dan Carriere.

– Bruckheimer does TV

Blockbuster action flick producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s first foray into television movie-making continues until Sept. 14 at Lions Gate Studios with the production of Max Q, a Disney Television production for abc. It airs Nov. 19.

Starring Bill Campbell (The Rocketeer), the ‘bigger-than-usual’-budget mow is about a space shuttle rescue.

And Don’t Look Down, a Wes Craven story about a woman who develops vertigo, shoots until Sept. 18 and will air on abc Halloween week. No cast was set at press time for the production, which will be shot all on location.

– Cold Squad hot with Geminis

Cold Squad’s b.c.-based actors took 50% of the nominations in the dramatic series guest role categories for the 13th annual Gemini Awards announced Aug. 11.

Christopher Bolton, Tom McBeath, Lynda Boyd, Patti Harras and Gabrielle Rose were each nominated for their acting turns in five different episodes of the homicide drama, the first Canadian primetime series emanating from Vancouver.

Cold Squad garnered three other nominations – best drama, best director (Anne Wheeler) and best actress (Toronto-based Julie Stewart) – in becoming the most-nominated b.c. production.

b.c.-based talent was recognized in tv miniseries and movies: The Sleep Room, three of the 11 nominations; Major Crime, two of seven nods; and Vancouver-based Phil Savath’s production of neo-Nazi-themed tv movie White Lies, three of six nominations.

Eyes of a Cowboy pilot producers Peter Graham and Jana Veverka were given a nod, as were Butterfly Beyond Boarders documentary makers David Springbett and Heather MacAndrew. New chat tv host Vicki Gabereau is also up for a Gemini.

For the first time, the nominations were read live in split feeds from Toronto and Vancouver – which is to reflect the growing influence of the West Coast in the Canadian television industry.

In all, b.c. was represented in 23 categories – a little more than one-third of the overall categories – for trophies to be handed out at the galas in Toronto Oct. 2, 3 and 4.

But while b.c. was well represented with nominations for actors and program hosts, the province was acknowledged in only three of the 14 so-called technical categories, such as photography, picture editing and sound. mgm series Stargate SG-1 (Stargate SG-1 Productions) and Poltergeist (PMP Legacy Productions) were nominated for best visual effects.

At the nominations announcement, funding agency British Columbia Film pledged for the first time to provide travel grants to nominees traveling to Toronto for the Geminis parties.

– Once a thief

New to the local production lineup is the small-budget, deferral-heavy independent feature Daydrift by Jetset Productions and husband-and-wife producers Ryan Bonder and Margot Dear.

Inspired by a trip they made to France during which they lost their camera equipment to a thief, the film is about a disillusioned photographer who loses his gear just days before a gallery show. A mysterious courier shows up with an undeveloped roll of film, which when developed transports the protagonist on a journey of discovery.

The cast includes locals Jed Ress, Enuka Okuma, Jillian Fargey, Jim Thorburn and Megan Leitch.

The project, written by Bonder, will spend a week shooting in Kamloops in early September and will be pitched to the Toronto International Film Festival selection committee in 1999.

– Anchors away

Oh, the waves of change. In the past few months, Vancouver’s news anchors have been doing a do-si-do. Here’s the latest.

Jennifer Mather quit her weekend news anchor job at bctv in July when the newsroom strike concluded. But despite ongoing speculation in the gossip press in Vancouver, she has yet to confirm her decision to replace Suzette Meyers at Global Vancouver, who has already left to pursue independent documentary production.

Mather is supposedly joining Russ Froese as co-anchor of Global’s supper-hour news Sept. 1.

In the meantime, Simi Sara is pulling cohost duties until an official replacement for Meyers is named at Global.

Meanwhile, Monika Deol – the former MuchMusic vj and founding vtv news anchor – has confirmed speculation that she won’t return from maternity leave, which began about three months after vtv signed on a year ago

Instead, bctv’s Mi-jung Lee – herself returning from baby leave – will take over as co-anchor (with Paul Mennier) of vtv’s main newscasts. Kimberley Halkett, who had been vtv’s late-night anchor, left two months ago to take a Washington, d.c. bureau post with an American network.

bctv’s morning anchor Jill Krop has been named as Mather’s replacement for bctv’s weekend newscasts and Lynne Colliar is now the morning host.

And longtime CBC Vancouver anchor Kevin Evans left broadcasting all together earlier this month to take a government relations job at the Vancouver office of the Retail Council of Canada.

– To spurn and object

Bellingham, Washington border station kvos television program To Serve and Protect has been given the heave-ho by Surrey City council and the Surrey detachment of the rcmp.

After a motion passed in city council chambers, no longer will the ‘real cops’ program producers and cameras be invited to ride along with constables on the job because of council’s opinions that the program creates the impression that Surrey is ridden with crime.

Program producer Dan Forrer calls the decision shortsighted and says that Surrey stories in the last season – the fifth – comprised 20% of the crime show’s content.

‘They’ve made a decision that [crime in Surrey] is all our fault,’ says Forrer, who adds he has good working relationships with other rcmp detachments in the Lower Mainland. ‘It’s small-minded and tells me that Surrey hasn’t grown up as a city.’

The sixth season of 22 hours of To Serve and Protect begins airing on kvos and stations in Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Toronto this September.