The half-hour Monster Warriors makes its debut on Saturday, March 18 at 10:30 a.m., repeating Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m. The series combines live-action with 3-D CGI animation and follows four teens as they attempt to save Capital City from destruction. Target demo is kids 6-11.

BBDO Toronto debuted a Western Canada campaign touting the benefits of cable company Shaw’s high-speed Internet service. Blink a couple of times and you might even miss it. Four 7.5-second TV ads are currently in rotation focusing on the benefits of speed. A direct mail execution created by BBDO’s DM arm, Proximity Canada, uses a piece that delivers the competitor’s message visually within folded layers of information meant to exhibit the usual wait time for downloading content. On the other hand, the Shaw High-Speed Internet service piece gets its message across in one easy fold. Radio spots called High Speed Moments follow everyday scenarios that blitz through storylines, leaving the listener with only the beginning and the end of the story. Other campaign executions include print ads, online banners, retail posters and bill inserts. All elements feature the tagline: The broadband experience. It’s fast. Dom Caruso, chief planning officer at BBDO says the agency created the campaign to appeal to a broader demo, from the 60+ folks to the teenage influencer in the home. Media buys were done by PhD Canada.

Please open the attached link to view BBM’s Commercial Television Tracking Service GRPS by week and month for Toronto and Vancouver covering the broadcast months of December 2004 to December 2005 inclusive. GRPS are based on commercial minute ratings.

Toronto
Vancouver

Consumers give TV advertising top marks in the latest research released by the Toronto-based Television Bureau of Canada (TVB). To gauge consumer attitudes towards all advertising they hear or see, a national phone survey asked participants which one medium was the strongest on measures of effectiveness, influence, power, persuasiveness and engagement. Television advertising came out on top in every instance with newspaper and the Internet running a distant second and third in most cases.
Key findings include:

CHUM has picked up the Canadian rights to Rachael Ray’s new daily, hour-long talk show entitled Rachael Ray. The new series will be based in New York and will not affect Ray’s current appearances on the Food Network. The new show will begin airing on CHUM’s daytime schedule in September. No time slot has yet been released.

W Network is taking viewers on a ride into the unknown in March with four new series about mediums and private investigators. Rescue Mediums follows two psychics as they try to get ghosts to leave the homes they’re inhabiting. The spooky action airs Fridays at 7:30 p.m., beginning March 10. Next up, Psychic Investigators chronicles true stories where a crime was solved by combining high-tech detective work and the paranormal powers of a psychic. It airs Fridays at 9 p.m., beginning March 10. In Crimes of Passion, actress Wendy Crewson looks at stories of ordinary people driven to spontaneous crimes in the heat of the moment. Crimes of Passion airs Fridays at 9:30 p.m. beginning March 10. And finally Derek Acorah’s Ghost Towns finds a medium using a town’s residents’ knowledge to uncover mysteries. The show airs Fridays at 10 p.m., beginning March 10.

The National Geographic Channel is welcoming a new series, Rough Trades, Saturdays at 8 p.m., beginning March 4. The show looks at people brave enough to take on the world’s toughest jobs, from venom hunters to an elite anti-terrorist taskforce. March 4 will see a two-hour special, and then two back-to-back episodes follow every Saturday, beginning March 11.