You may have had your flu shot, but are you ready for Idol fever?
Both Canadian Idol and American Idol are set to return to the CTV lineup in 2005. American Idol will premier Tuesday, Jan. 18 with a two-hour episode and will be followed the next day with a one-hour episode in keeping with its traditional bi-weekly Tuesday/Wednesday 8:00 pm timeslots. The usual judges will be back for the fourth instalment of the series that promises many William Hung-esque performers to kick off the season.
Meanwhile, CTV and Insight Productions are currently finalizing plans to begin production on Canadian Idol‘s third season which kicks off with the show’s largest audition tour (last season featured nine cities). The auditions begin in February with the season premiere slated for sometime this summer. Last season saw ratings increase 14% over the previous year with an average audience of 2.2 million, and an audience of over four million for the Sept. 16 finale. Audience participation was also extremely high in 2004 for CI – in total, 32 million votes were cast by viewers, though apparently none of them were to complain about Canadian pseudo-celebrity Ben Mulroney who will return as host. There has been no confirmation yet regarding sponsorship and brand integration deals with the show.

Forget The X-Files, Beyond, a new Canadian series premiering next month on Space explores real-life mysterious phenomena through eye witness accounts, re-enactments and raw film footage as well as interviews with scientists, medical experts and religious experts.
The series is hosted by William Marshall, and each half-hour show will explore spooky topics such as poltergeists, mind control, and aliens. The launch episode examines luminescent orbs, the sightings of eerie glowing spheres that float through the air and have even entered people’s bodies.
Beyond is slotted for Wednesday nights at 10 p.m., beginning Jan. 12 on Space.

Known for its innovation in retailing and quirky advertising, Ikea is now moving into content production with Space For Living, a new weekly television series set to debut on HGTV in April.
The show’s attitude is fun, friendly and relaxed. Although Ikea product and its budget-friendly living philosophy play prominent roles, the program goes well beyond simply a way for Ikea to peddle its wares. Space For Living offers insight into a world of creative living by combining travel, home décor, art, design, and lifestyle into a half-hour show. Segments were filmed in Vancouver, Montreal, the greater Toronto area, and around the world in places such as Chicago, Paris, Milan and Stockholm. Viewers are given a feel for each country through a vignette of the city and its people.

With today being day 85 of the lockout, and the season all but abandoned, networks and advertisers have settled on Plan B and are embracing alternatives to reach the traditional hockey viewer demo.
There may not be one clear replacement that produces the level of engagement and audience composition of an NHL broadcast, but the viewers who were once watching hockey are not hiding in fallout shelters until the lockout ends; they are just watching other things, and that has forced media buyers to get creative in their pursuit of hockey’s once coveted audience.

Martha Stewart is returning to Canadian television with new exclusive programming airing on Alliance Atlantis’ Life Network. Life will air a series of Martha holiday-themed specials beginning on Dec. 18 and will also begin airing new episodes of Martha Stewart Living weekdays starting Jan. 10. The original series has been reformatted with new material but will retain most of the elements from the pre-trading scandal era of the show.
Stewart has big plans for after her scheduled release from prison in early March. CNN has reported that NBC and Martha Stewart are close to finalizing a deal for a prime-time reality series to be produced by Mark Burnett (of Survivor and The Apprentice fame). Stewart and Burnett are also teaming to develop a new syndicated show similar to the old Martha Stewart Living which was effectively cancelled in the U.S. after her conviction in May.

Citytv in Toronto will air a one-hour tribute to its co-founder Moses Znaimer Jan. 5 at 8 p.m. Znaimer’s vision of local and interactive television, in real-time with real people, along with his ‘studioless’ TV concept became a format that has been picked up by numerous countries.
With multi-ethnic on-air talent that reflected the city it served, and an informal streetwise attitude, the station soon became well-known. It was the beginning of an empire that includes stations as diverse as MuchMusic, CablePulse24 and SexTV-The Channel, all started under Znaimer’s watchful eye. Done very much in Znaimer’s signature style, the tribute will take the form of a staff dinner with the man and include footage from the early days of Citytv.

The CBC has greenlighted two drama projects for pilot episodes. North/South is a show about the complex social and business issues related to the Nova Scotia construction industry, and 49th and Main is a story of a medical practice opening up in one of Vancouver’s most diverse neighbourhoods. Only one of the shows will see the light of daytime TV.
The process to find a half-hour serial drama that would ‘change the face of daytime TV in Canada’ began in May with the goal of creating a series that would portray life as it might unfold in a Canadian neighborhood. The single episodes of both programs will be completed by mid-February with the expectation that the chosen series will begin its run sometime later in the year.

CTV’s next Signature Series movie is Choice: The Henry Morgentaler Story, airing Jan. 5 at 9:00 p.m. The two-hour biopic tells the story of Dr. Morgentaler’s challenge of Canada’s abortion laws. Its January airdate coincides with the 17th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision to change the law and with the 35th anniversary of the doctor’s decision to perform abortions.
An Ipsos-Reid poll conducted from Nov. 12 to Nov. 22 discovered that, out of a random sampling of 461 Canadian women aged 18-34, only 28% could correctly identify Canada’s best-known abortion doc.