These 23 new licensees mean murky days for all, including producers.

With the exception of the fab four destined for analog – teletoon, The Comedy Network, The History & Entertainment Network and N1 Headline News – all in start-up mode with some idea of what programming they’re in search of and their independent production needs, everyone else is pretty much in limbo until the cable companies come up with a tangible plan.

What follows is an outline of all the licensees, including detailed information on the four guaranteed a Sept. 1 start-up.

For the 13 English-language services granted a licence to negotiate with cable, projected spending on Canadian programming and independent production is on paper, but with the caveat that the numbers are written in sand until a subscriber base and a launch date nailed down.

CTV services

At this point, there’s not a whole lot of hiring going on in the ctv sports department yet. Like the rest of the masses, carriage issues are paramount as is working through proposals that will maximize economies and efficiencies of scale for the new services and the ctv facilities already up and running.

With respect to all of ctv’s new operations, hiring is expected to start in two months.

S3 regional sports

It’s a whopping investment in Canadian sports programming if S3 gets off the ground, with Canadian programming expenditure projected at $156.7 million over the licence term, $22.1 million in year one.

The Molson Companies and LMC International, a u.s. company active in the direct-to-home delivery of sports pay-per-view in the States and other markets, are onside with ctv for S3, joined by Rogers Communications. ctv will take 40% of the company, the other partners 20% each. ctv will control the company subject to a voting trust agreement with Molson.

S3 will target four different regions of the country – east, central, west and Pacific. Programming includes the likes of all regional sporting events, including but not limited to local hockey, baseball, volleyball and soccer. Canadian content comes in at 60% of the broadcast day, 50% in primetime, with 54% of the previous year’s gross going into the Cancon programming kitty.

As per its licence, no more than 67% of the programs broadcast in each region each week can be broadcast on any of the other service feeds. At least 27% of the programming on each feed will cover the under-represented sports categories such as amateur-league competition and sports with women and children participating.

In each region, ctv is looking to establish long-term relationships with a variety of independent sports programming producers. The daily S3 Sportscast alone is expected to generate $2.3 million in revenue and the equivalent of 39 additional full-time jobs in the production industry.

At least 42 new full-time positions in programming, engineering, traffic, advertising/promotion and administration will be created in addition to the equivalent of 39 full-time freelance positions to support the production of regularly scheduled sportscasts.

S3 has a basic monthly rate cap of $0.78 per subscriber when distributed as part of the basic service.

Sports/Specials Pay Per View

Sports/Specials Pay Per View, already licensed for dth satellite distribution, is the only service in the English-language batch out of the running for an analog spot. As a condition of licence, it may be distributed only on digital, but may see the light of day on Star Choice Television Network or ExpressVu sooner than others licensed this round through its dth ppv licence awarded last December.

ctv, controlled by Baton Broadcasting, is the controlling shareholder in Sports/ Specials with 60% of the voting interest, followed again by Molson and lmc.

Canadian content is set at 20% of the total hours of Sports/Specials’ programming. Its contribution to the program sector will be 5% of gross revenues to a funding agency still to be decided. Expected injections run $17,000 in year one, $150,000 in year two, $443,000 in year three and $837,000 by year seven.

Sports/Specials is prohibited by licence to acquire exclusive or other preferential rights to any ppv programs exhibited on its service. Projected expenditure on acquisition of broadcast rights to Canadian events in year one is $49,000, $337,000 in year two, $1.1 million in year three, peaking at $2.1 million in year seven.

The ‘big events’ service will focus on sports programming or coverage of specials on news or other live events like boxing, wrestling, the G7 summit, or world figure skating packages. Some documentaries may run under the guise of the ‘official’ film about an event.