Forget high-tech bugging and computer hacking, a new application available in early November will make it easier for advertisers, buyers, and planners to get the skinny on their competitors’ deep, dark TV secrets.

When Susanne Boyce strolls the floor at TV trade show MIPCOM, Oct. 4-8 in Cannes, she won’t be worried about les Joneses. CTV’s president of programming says that if you are going to win the program acquisitions game at the international entertainment content fair, you can’t fret about the competition or latest focus group results. You have to break rules. ‘You have to play to win,’ Boyce explains. ‘It doesn’t always mean you do. You have to stay focused.’

BBM and Nielson reports, showed that Thursday night’s season premiere of CSI (9 p.m.) pulled in almost four million viewers, which translates into a new record audience in Canada (for that program), surpassing Canada’s gold medal win in the World Cup Hockey Championship Sept. 14 (CBC 3.83 million viewers).
CSI also surpassed the season premiere of Survivor: Vanuatu, which aired on Global/CBS with 3 million viewers. Following the season premiere of CSI was the medical drama ER (10 p.m.), which also took top honours for Thursday night – nearly doubling the audience of Global/CBS’s Without a Trace. On Nov. 4, CTV will be adding tween favourite The O.C. series to its Thursday night line up beginning at 8 p.m.

Beginning Oct. 11, Global TV will be broadcasting in High Definition Television (HDTV) with the network initially offering six hours a week of primetime programming in the new format. Further HDTV programming will be added to the primetime sked as it becomes available.
Global’s HDTV programming will be available to Rogers Ontario customers on channel 286 effective Oct. 14 and on Express Vu channel 801 beginning Oct. 11. Programs available in the new format are: Las Vegas, LAX, Gilmore Girls, Without a Trace, One Tree Hill and Crossing Jordan.

For the first time, MIPCOM, the global TV and entertainment market held from Oct. 4-8 in Cannes, is opening its doors to the mobile entertainment industry. In partnership with MediaPlay International (and sponsored by Ericsson), a full day of conference entitled ‘TV goes mobile @ MIPCOM’ (on Oct.6), will present three panels highlighting the emerging mobile content market and the growing connections between the mobile and television industries. By global research estimates the mobile video market will attain $4.7 billion by 2008, with over 150 million mobile video users.
Leading mobile operators and service providers including O2, Orange, Ericsson and Red Fig will share their early business experiences with attendees and mobile TV broadcasters Endemol, MTV, ProSiebenSat.1 and Keshet will showcase their latest initiatives on mobile content. The strong focus given to mobile at MIPCOM 2004 will be continued at MIPTV – MILIA 2005 next spring.

Even if you know absolutely nothing about the new CTV series Instant Star, you could probably piece together its basic story by skimming the resume of exec producer Stephen Stohn. Go on, give it a shot. Stohn was a musician and songwriter back in the ’70s, he produces this country’s most popular teen drama, and moonlights as a lawyer for Canadian Idol. Stohn has represented the finalists on both seasons of the summer-long karaoke contest and has had a front-row seat as the likes of Ryan Malcolm and Kalan Porter were thrown head-first into the glittery snakepit of the music business.
‘Now I’m bringing it all together in one show,’ he says with a laugh, a half-hour drama about a 15 year-old singer – Jude, played by Vancouver’s Alexz Johnson (Selling Innocence, So Weird) – whose otherwise normal life is taken over by the demands of fame after a winning turn on a reality show. The $8-million series – which still has sponsorship opportunities with product placement and integration – has been speeding through production at Toronto’s Epitome Pictures since spring, and debuts on CTV early next year, building on the success of both Idol and Degrassi: The Next Generation, another Epitome show. CTV ran a sneak preview of the first two Instant Stars right after the Idol finale, luring more than a million of Idol’s 3.3 million (2+) viewers through the 9 p.m. timeslot.
The characters will need fleshing out, but the brisk pace and glam lighting helped smooth out the rough spots, enough that teen viewers will probably look for more when the regular season airs in January in its 8 p.m. slot. The second ep saw some better character development and a less crowded story.
It is not surprising that CTV has jumped on the series. Instant Star combines elements from two of its most successful homegrown shows and, if it catches on, will keep Idol fans tuned in (and thinking about reality TV, no less) during the winter hiatus.
There will also be an Instant Star CD, due in stores just prior to the series’ debut, featuring a dozen or so songs from the show – and plans are afoot for marketing tie-ins with radio and retailers. The CD will be carried by The Orange Record Label, which is distributed in Canada by Universal, and sold online via puretracks.com. Every episode includes one song, or part thereof, performed by Johnson and cowritten with a team of musicians, including Juno winner Lisa Dalbello, Marc Jordan, Christopher Ward and Damhnait Doyle. ‘An album a year, 12 songs a year and hopefully very accessible,’ says Stohn. ‘And we’ll keep pumping them out. None of this ‘waiting five years until the sales have trickled off’ business.’
Stohn notes that a lot of teen- and hipster-aimed shows (Smallville, The O.C., etc.) are taking advantage of music tie-ins – either by turning out their own CDs or by plugging particular bands – but says the Star approach is different, in that its music gets worked into the narrative, often during key scenes. Instant Star has also been picked up by the youth-aimed The N in the U.S., paving the way for a powerful marketing push from its parent MTV.
http://www.epitomepictures.com
http://www.ctv.ca

After taking the UK and Europe by storm, Canadians now have had a chance to experience the reality format of the show Wife Swap for themselves. The series made its North American debut on Sept. 26 at 7 p.m. on CTV but now moves to its regular Wednesday night slot at 8 p.m.
The final three episodes of Nip/Tuck season two, return to the CTV schedule on Sept. 30 (10 p.m.), Oct. 5 (10 p.m.) and the season finale is on Oct. 8 (10 p.m.). ER, Law & Order: SVU and Medical Investigation are pre-empted on these occasions due to the U.S. election debates.