– Saturday night’s alright for WIC

WIC Western International Communications’ struggle for presence on the programming landscape is getting a leg up from its Saturday night dedication to the strange and wonderful. Ratings for chch-tv’s Dark Skies and Profiler are obliterating ctv’s Canadian contribution to the paranormal with Poltergeist and giving Global’s Psi Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal a run for its money.

Profiler and Psi Factor, both in the 10 p.m. slot, are trading places week by week. Psi Factor edged the competition Nov. 16 with a 5.7 rating in the 25-54 demo over Profiler’s 3.9 (all ratings are for the Toronto/Hamilton market via ACNielsen People Meters). Roles reversed the week before with Profiler scoring a 3.9 rating in the same demo over Psi Factor’s 3.6.

Despite Dan Aykroyd’s robot-like delivery, Psi Factor, produced by Atlantis Communications, is reportedly exceeding expectations overall with numbers like a 4.8 in the 18+ category Nov. 16, outperforming Global’s higher-profile Cancon offerings like Atlantis’ Traders, which drew a 2 in the same demo that week.

As of mid-November, Dark Skies was pulling a 6 rating in the 25-54 demographic, a 5 in 18+.

At the other end of the spectrum, ctv’s Poltergeist, airing on the odd Saturday night it isn’t pre-empted by skating, pulled a 0.4 rating in the 25-54 demo Nov. 2, a 0.8 in the 18+ group, down from its 1.5 in the 25-54 category and 1 in 18+ back on Oct. 19 (skating took over Nov. 9 and 16).

All of the above will have competition from Discovery Channel come Dec. 9. Gillian Anderson’s Future Fantastic, a bbc sci-fi skewed series hosted by The X-Files costar, hit the wall running in its Friday 9 p.m. slot this season up against X-Files and then Millennium. The full nine episodes are going into second rotation in a new window Saturday nights at 9.

As for the bigger draws – X-Files, Millennium, and, dare we say it, The Outer Limits – the X-Files/Outer Limits package continues to bode well for the Canadian contingent, with the Atlantis-produced Outer Limits pulling a 10.5 rating Nov. 17 in the attractive 25-54 demo.

Millennium, on the other hand, bottomed out of the top 10 for the first time that same week, landing in 11th place on the chart. Maybe it’s Patricia Herdman and bad press. Perhaps paranormal overload. Or maybe it’s another small victory for wic. Its broadcast of Dallas: J.R. Returns, taking on Millennium that week, drew a 7.8 rating in the 18+ category, a 9.1 in 25-54, heads and tails above ratings for chch’s regular Friday night offerings.

The truth is out there.

-U.S. nets tred softly

Lack of discernible breakaway hits this season is manifesting itself in small program orders from the u.s. nets for new episodes of this season’s original crop.

With the exception of nbc, which ordered a full 11 episodes of all its new puppies including The Jeff Foxworthy Show (Global), Something So Right (Global), Men Behaving Badly (Baton) and Suddenly Susan (wic), both abc and cbs are showing measured confidence in this year’s rookies.

abc has anted up for five more episodes of Townies (Baton) and Life’s Work (Baton) and four each for Relativity (wic) and Dangerous Minds (wic). For its part, the Eye Web has already axed Steven Bochco’s Public Morals (wic) and Almost Perfect (ctv), but put its money behind Pearl (wic) and Moloney (Global), with the latter getting short order.

cbs’ Cosby (Baton) is huge, with three new episodes for this season ordered and 22 already cued for next. abc, with a new comedy in the works starring Arsenio Hall and Jim Belushi and a legal drama from Chicago Hope and Picket Fences creator David Kelly, is reportedly crazy about Sabrina and Clueless (both Global). nbc’s The Pretender and Profiler got nine new episodes each. Dark Skies is lined up for an extra seven.

-Hey now, Sanders is back

Those of us not satiated with Ken Finkleman’s luscious satire can put The Larry Sanders Show back on the to-watch list this winter, but only if TMN – The Movie Network is part of the cable package.

Much fuming and grumbling ensued early this year when none of the private nets bought into the Gary Shandling vehicle. But Baton Broadcasting System, tmn and bbs’ The Comedy Network have struck a deal which will change the status quo next month.

In an interesting twist for tmn, the pay-per-view network has first-window rights to the 13-episode new season, which begins Jan. 3 and will run Fridays at 8:30 p.m.

In June, bbs will take the series where it will wedge back into its old Friday at midnight slot. When The Comedy Network launches in September, Larry will run as a daily strip.

The joint venture, a three-way deal between a ppv, commercial television and a specialty channel, is what bbs president Ivan Fecan calls ‘a Canadian broadcasting industry first’ and what tmn president Lisa de Wilde says is an example of ‘a new paradigm of broadcast cooperation.’

Larry Sanders dominated the CableACE Awards last month, with awards for best comedy, acting, writing and directing. The series has 12 Emmy Award nominations pending, more than any other comedy series.

In other specialty programming news, Life Network, filing three new specialty channel applications prior to the eligible services additions deadline Dec. 4, has picked up exclusive national rights to the new season of Cottage Life Television.

clt, heading into its fifth year, has bounced about on a number of stations over the past four years including bbs, CanWest Global and Life, with audience numbers sometimes hitting 200,000-plus.

The program is produced in-house by Tony Armstrong (The Polar Grail) and will launch nationally on Life beginning Jan. 6 in the 9 p.m. slot Mondays and at 8:30 p.m. Saturdays. Cottage Life, the magazine from which the program spawned, celebrates its 10th anniversary next year.

-Hooked on Christmas

‘Tis the season to scuttle regularly scheduled programming.

Christmas junkies – surfacing as early as Nov. 17 for the Santa Claus Parade, which ranked 12th on the ACNielsen People Meters and aced an audience 2+ 9.1 rating for Global – will have no shortage of telly fodder over the next month.

bbs/ctv and Global have their usual volume, including Canadian-produced contributions like Cambium Entertainment’s Nilus the Sandman: The Boy Who Dreamed Christmas and u.s. blockbusters like Hook, which ctv is running second play on Boxing Day in simulcast with abc.

For its part, cbc is turning its all-Canadian primetime into all-Christmas, all-Canadian primetime for the 22nd, 23rd and 24th, with the latter running straight through to 2 a.m. Its New Year’s Eve comedy lineup, which drew incredible ratings last year, is back, opening with Double Exposure, back-to-back hour specials of Royal Canadian Air Farce and This Hour Has 22 Minutes, four episodes of Mr. Bean and capping with codco un-censored.

Vying with The Grinch and Frosty for kids’ attention, Global is hitching its wagon to the u.s. brouhaha surrounding The Balloonatiks special.

The program, which will air Dec. 14 in the 8 p.m. slot, features five wacky animated balloons, Flator, Airhead, Squeeker, Bouncer and L.A. Tex, and will be supported by a media blowout including television, newspapers, comic books, merchandising and the Internet. A series is likely not far behind. The half-hour special is budgeted at $877,500.

-Relativity

If CanWest’s third-quarter numbers look over the moon this season, the financials for the u.s. nets’ third quarter provide a little Canadian context.

According to the Broadcast Cable Financial Management Association in the u.s., abc, nbc and cbs pulled gross sales to date this year of $3.5 billion, up from $2.6 billion this time last fiscal.

Sports contributes to the majority of the increase where sales accounted for $1.3 billion of the jackpot, including nbc’s $918 million advertising hoohaa for the Olympics. News sales flatlined at $268 million, daytime is up 20% to $402.4 million and kids’ programming down 29% to $24.3 million as advertisers went to Fox and specialty bound to Warner Bros. and Nickelodeon. Not particularly inspiring for the Canadian private nets as teletoon revs up.