The Movie Network will launch a massive three-province ad campaign on Thursday, looking to promote its upcoming free preview weekend and, it would appear, to rattle its saber at competitor-to-be Super Channel.

The TMN campaign will run Nov. 1-9 in Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with print, radio, on-air, out-of-home, online, direct mail and some grassroots teams handing out free popcorn. The preview itself runs Nov. 9-11.

Super Channel, the new arrival on the Canadian pay-TV landscape, is due to launch Friday on Bell ExpressVu, though its ETA on other carriers remains something of a mystery. The startup from Alberta-based Allarco is still in negotiations with the major cable companies, according to a spokesperson, though this week Manitoba-based cabler Access Communications agreed to add the channel on Monday.

Super Channel’s arrival threatens the duopoly of the pay market held by TMN in the east and Movie Central in the west. It has changed its launch plans once already, when its hoped-for Oct. 19 debut was rewritten as sometime in ‘the fall.’

TMN is targeting non-subscribers through bill inserts, direct mail and a half-page cover on Bell ExpressVu’s November issue of Show magazine. In Ontario, it is running a 15-second ad on digital video boards in high-traffic areas including Hamilton’s Main/Dundurn intersection and Toronto’s Yonge/Bloor, Yonge/Richmond, Yonge/Dundas, Yonge/Adelaide, Yonge/Eglinton, John/Richmond and Spadina/Dundas intersections.

Commuter trains in Toronto are also showing a spot on their on-board digital video screens, and more than 400 interior posters will be placed in the trains’ interior cards.

Print executions will feature double-page wraps, banners, half-page and full-page ads in urban dailies and weeklies, including the Halifax Daily News, The Hamilton Spectator, The Record in Kitchener-Waterloo, the Ottawa Sun, the Ottawa Citizen, The Globe and Mail and National Post. Through a partnership with Sharp Electronics, the channel is also offering the chance to win an HD home entertainment package for one subscriber.

From Media in Canada