For the first time, Slice is showing movies, and the channel is celebrating its regulatory victory with a back-to-back block every Sunday, and an ad campaign to promote it.

The channel, along with several others, was granted a flexibility credit from the CRTC to program categories it had been prohibited from programming before. Previously Slice was restricted to airing only factual content.

The first pair of movies will air Dec. 5, starting at 6 p.m., with 13 Going on 30 and 50 First Dates. Except for the back-to-back Ocean’s movies on Boxing Day, all the movies scheduled so far are romantic comedies. The Sunday night movie nights will continue for the foreseeable future.

There are sponsorship opportunities available for the movie block.

The ad campaign started this week and is targeted at 25- to 54-year-olds. TV spots and online promos on Shaw Media’s specialty channels, as well as Global, will run for three weeks. Those will be complemented by Ontario-focused radio ads on Boom, Virgin and CHFI, among others, and interactive program guide ads, Solange Bernard, director of marketing strategy, lifestyle channels, Shaw Media, tells MiC.

‘We’re leveraging our Shaw Media assets to get national reach,’ she says, ‘and radio is specific so we can get a targeted buy to our female audience, which is the core demographic for Slice.’

The creative and media buy were handled in-house by Shaw Media.

The channel also created a special movies page on the Slice site to show the schedule.