– WTN outranking all but Discovery Channel

Nary a soul would have imagined it two years ago when its overtly earnest schedule was virtually ignored on basic cable, but the Women’s Television Network is holding the number two position amongst the newest specialty services.

According to ACNielsen statistics, WTN is outpacing Bravo!, Showcase, Life Network and CMT Canada, both in audience share and average viewing audience. Discovery Channel is maintaining the status quo in the lead, with the exception of the week of Dec. 30 to Jan. 5 when wtn bumped it down to second place and reached the number one position with adults 18+ (not just women) for the first time.

Audience size for wtn has grown 35% over the last six months, about 40% of which is male.

For the six months stretching from Sept. 5, 1996 through Feb. 16, 1997, wtn recorded an average of 21,000 viewers 18+, below Discovery’s 26,000 viewer average but ahead of third-ranking Showcase at 19,000, cmt at 18,000, Bravo! at 16,000, and Life at 14,000.

In the gender splits, wtn, first amongst women 18+ for more than a year, maintains the position followed by Discovery and Life, then Showcase, cmt and Bravo!, the latter three tied in fourth place.

Discovery has a significant lead amongst men with 15,000 average viewers. Although the male contingent is pumping wtn’s average audience up, it remains second to the basement overall at 7,000 average viewers, ahead of Life at 4,000 but behind Showcase in number two with 10,000, cmt at 9,000 and Bravo! at 8,000.

In terms of audience share, it looks like cmt has taken the biggest hit, long in second spot last year but now dead last according to stats from the first week in February. Discovery is pulling a 1.5 share, wtn and Showcase are tied at 1, followed by Bravo! at 0.9, Life at 0.7 and cmt at 0.5. Data from that first week in January, pre Nielsen’s ratings burp, showed wtn with a 1.6 share followed by Discovery at 1.3 and Showcase at 1.1.

All numbers apply to a 6 a.m. to 6 a.m. schedule, and it’s worth noting that Discovery consistently takes the biggest share of the primetime audience through the week. It’s also of note that unlike the rest of the ’94 licensees, wtn owns the last of the basic cable licences. While it has an equally difficult time drawing attention to its programming, once subscribers cotton on to the return of Mary Tyler Moore, they can make their way over to it without a long conversation with Rogers telemarketing and a bigger cable bill.

That being said, it doesn’t add up to moving from sixth to second. Its critics say the service has gone from too much substance to mostly giggletalk, but evidently something is working.

Susan Millican, vp programming (and cwc’s Mentor of the Year) says wtn is striking a balance between light and serious programming, between comedy strips, current affairs programs and classic movies. But she takes exception to the idea that the Amurikan signature strips are primarily responsible for the ratings rise.

‘Yes, obviously the entertainment programs like Rhoda, Mary Tyler Moore and [the u.k.’s] French and Saunders are pulling numbers, but we’re 70% Canadian so there’s no way we could have had this huge growth if it was just these programs. The Canadian production has been equally if not more responsible.’

Canadiana includes Jane Hawtin Live!, scooped from wic last season and up in the ratings courtesy of wtn’s national distribution, Debbie Travis’ Painted House, which, Millican says, sometimes outperforms Martha, and Open for Discussion, a forum featuring films and documentaries on controversial subjects, backended by a panel discussion.

wtn is spending 41% of gross revenue on Canadian product, over $9 million last year, 83% of which is spent on indie production. ‘We take our investment in Canadian shows very seriously,’ Millican concludes. ‘It’s not just a licence commitment. It’s essential to who we are, to the service we’ve built.’

Leaving the new/old specialties behind for the moment, the latest licensees wrestling for a spot on the fall launch schedule are increasingly frustrated.

‘Negotiations’ with the cable companies continue, although they’ve ended for the Homes Plus real estate channel, which has been negotiated off the Rogers system, clearing channel 37 for a new service.

As the window for a fall launch pr extravaganza shrinks, one idea bandied about is offering the services free for 18 months, then 18 months at half-rate, which fits nobody’s business plan although Global could probably manage.

A little hard ball is apparently on the horizon with advertisements a la The History Channel popping up in primetime for services that don’t have a distribution guarantee. (‘If you want x, call your cable company.’)

The cable companies are on record saying they’d be pleased to hear what subscribers want. What they won’t want, after seeing an ad on the telly, is a telemarketer’s patient explanation of the analog situation, or being told they have to wait until 1999. Surely this can’t be good thing for the image-challenged distribs. How many people have to call before some of the near-video-on-demand services get bumped to clear some space? Just asking.

What if the Alliance/Shaw Video on Demand proposal wins a licence? Could all nvod channels migrate to the file servers they’re offering to supply the cablecos, leaving 10-plus analog channels for the new specialties, and rendering digital an expensive and arguably less necessary investment, at least in the short term? Maybe, if everyone’s willing to cope with a crumb of ad revenue and no subscriber fees for a couple of years, September’s launch could be 10 or more new Canadian specialties, all free until the millennium.

Hah.

-View from Here renewed

With the March 13 tvontario telecast of Invisible Nations, one of the last of the some 40 documentaries produced through its The View From Here doc stream, comes news that the fund is being renewed for next year.

Although tvo’s Rudy Buttignol, creative head of documentaries, won’t announce the budget or revised access guidelines for a month or two, sources confirm that The View From Here has been greenlit.

The three-year program, which started as a $3-million venture but shrank with budget cuts, expires this spring and will be reinvented as a one-year fund operating on a year-to-year basis. The budget for year one is still being negotiated.

In the meantime, The Invisible Nations post panel is setting up for interesting discussion, pitting u of t economics professor John Crispo, outspoken on a tighter immigration policy, against Vancouver immigration lawyer and Ugandan refugee Zool Suleman. Invisible Nation writer and director Linda Lee Tracy will participate. Ian Brown will moderate, as always.

-Sportscope Plus launch

Theoretically one of the ‘digital 14,’ Sportscope Plus has announced plans to launch in May.

To circumvent the cable conundrum, the Sportscope service, an alphanumeric sports information offering which has been on the air for four years, is being replaced by Sportscope Plus, which has been renamed Headline Sports. It will run, like Sportscope now, free to cable for a yet-to-be established period of time for a yet-to-be-established wholesale rate.

The application was one of the many claiming it wouldn’t cannibalize existing services, but the program slate on deck has a bit of a twist. As outlined, a 15-minute wheel of up-to-the minute sports information will be the bulk of its sked, but a daily current affairs sports program will occupy two hours of evening programming Monday through Friday, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Sports commentary, interviews with key athletes, viewer call-in and taped and on-location reports will be featured. The program will be available to 1.9 million subscribers, up from the 1.4 million subscribers Sportscope was drawing when the Plus application was filed. The additional subscribers come from extended distribution on the Shaw Communications system.

Although long-format product wasn’t frontlined in the application, Headline Sports exec vp Paul Williams says flagging upcoming sports events was always a part of the program pitch, and makes the point that the crtc licensed Headline News as a news network which encompasses current affairs programming.

The new licence is owned 66.3% by Clairvest, 27.6% by First Control, a division of Western Coaxial Cable in Hamilton, and 6.1% by Digimation, a computer software company.

In the meantime, ctv has renamed its regional sports service, S3. CTV Sports Net is the new calling card. Soon joining the ‘formerly known as’ contingent are teletoon, Atlantis Films/Trilogy Entertainment’s Gene Roddenberry’s Battleground Earth, and possibly ctv’s N1 headline news. Too convoluted, too ’70s and battle-oriented, and too non-communicative are amongst the reasons.

-Back to basic

Enough about specialties. Besides Traders, a running tally of Cancon series returning to the mainstream nets next season includes The Outer Limits, Psi Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal and The New Red Green Show, all through CanWest. ctv is in behind a second season of FX: The Series, beginning principal photography in May. wic has signed Madison for a third season (the net-transplant show is now in its fifth season).

In the u.s., more episodes are to be had of Moloney (CanWest), bringing it up to 22 courtesy of cbs. Ditto jag (CanWest/cbs), which is showing double-digit gains in both the 18-49 and 25-54 demographics. The program will move to Fridays at 8 p.m. as of March 28, foreshadowing cbs’ return to Friday family night next season. Millennium is down 33% amongst adults 18-49 in the u.s. compared to The X-Files in that slot last year, and the programmers smell an audience. A ‘Welcome Home’ marketing campaign is in the works.

Speaking of families, the shapeshifting of kidvid fare next season in the u.s. is giving Global and Baton the shakes.

After losing 38% of its kids’ audience to the combination of the Fox Kids Network, Warner Bros., The Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon this year, cbs is resorting to alternative scheduling, vetting all live-action Saturday mornings with five new series including a kiddie version of Wheel of Fortune. Overall cbs will reduce its entire children’s lineup to three hours from five hours next season, which will meet its educational/informational quota. Fox Kids’ average viewership is up 10% this season. WB Net is up 6%.

Fox Kids’ Saturday morning slate of seven new programs includes the first animated series from DreamWorks Television, Igor, and Nelvana’s Sam & Max, which is getting a primo slot at 10:30 Saturday mornings. The ’97/98 season will be the first that Fox will be without Warner animated product. wb has moved all its animated series onto its own web, expanding its cartoon stash to 19 hours per week versus 10 last season in its kids’ program blocks.

In adult primetime, ghost themes are floating with programs including Forever Yours, about a sad guy who meets a beautiful ghost, in development. Paul Haggis is slated to exec produce through Universal Television. Pray he’s too busy on the set of EZ Streets after cbs comes to its senses and inks a 26-episode deal.

In the shorter term, the May sweeps 3D silliness is gathering steam. nbc is running a 3D 3rd Rock From the Sun. abc is running 3D minutes in Drew Carey, Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Spin City. Both nets are using incompatible technologies. In the States, Coke is distributing the 3rd Rock focals; Wendy’s is distributing the glasses for the last three which belong to Baton, Global and ctv respectively. No word on who, how, or how much it’s going to cost to move the apparatuses up here.

Less interactive will be a May episode of er directed by Batman and Robin director Joel Schumacher.

In the even shorter term, actor/writer Jon ‘You’re so money and you don’t even know it’ Favreau will star as a Monica love interest on Friends March 13. Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-de-sac and A Walton Easter are up later in the month. John Boy becomes a daddy. Grandma through Elizabeth are back on the mountain to reprise their original roles.

Alliance Communications’ Hunchback of Notre Dame will air March 16 on ctv and Turner Broadcasting in the States. The mow was produced in association with Turner Television Network and Adelson/Baumgarten Productions. Family Channel has the exclusive rights to Hey, Hey We’re the Monkees, telecast the same night at 9:45 p.m.

-Kids these days

Wrinkles, be damned. A better sign of age is the inability to decipher a MuchMusic program announcement.

With an exclusive on the release party for Howard Stern’s Private Parts March 6, Much sent in an outline of attendees. Porno for Pyros played with someone named Flea. Stern, described as ‘radio genius, family man, clown, dork, tiny-penised moron and the Anti Christ,’ sang with someone called Rob Zombie of something called White Zombie. Post-party clingons included a Flavor Flav. Tony Bennett and Kevin Bacon were cold comfort. MuchMoreMusic never looked so good.

Other entertaining fax fodder, a&e coming across with a rare, wayward paragraph on a press release for Scams, Schemes & Scoundrels. Scams, a two-hour look at history’s most outrageous cons featuring the likes of The Man that Stole the Eiffel TowerTwice, is produced by Vancouver-based Ark Films with president Alan Morinis exec producing.

Wrapping the release: ‘Scams, Schemes and Scoundrels was produced in Canada via a unique Canadian production fund. This fund is the result of an agreement made with Les Reseaux Premier Choix/Premier Choix Network’s Canal d and a&e. All net proceeds that a&e receives from the licensing of its programming, format and trademarks to Canal D have been earmarked to fund the development and production of original Canadian programming.’ Sweet.

The program has its world premiere on a&e March 30.