Music: {allcanada} Shaw launches specialty channels

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

{allcanada} Shaw launches specialty channels

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Increasingly Shaw Media's specialty is specialty.

And keeping with that TV theme, Shaw announced at its upfront presentation on Wednesday that it is launching two new specialty channels this fall.

Lifetime, a partnership with the U.S. channel of the same name, will bring to Canada shows such as Jennifer Love Hewitt's The Client List, in which she plays a sexy masseuse. And History 2, or H2 for short, is exactly what its name suggests. Jennifer, meet Stalin.

Channels such as Showcase, History Television, HGTV, The Food Network and Slice are driving Shaw's TV business, as the challenges facing Global - and all traditional broadcast channels, actually - increase.

And when a Canadian original sci-fi drama like Continuum with Rachel Nichols attracts a debut audience of 900,000 people on Showcase, as occurred last weekend, it confirms the power of specialty in 2012. The fact is, had Continuum launched on Global, it surely would not have done as well.

"You're right, and it's a compliment to understanding what a specialty channel can be," said Barbara Williams, Shaw's senior vice-president of content. "It's an old idea to think if it isn't on the big network, it must not be good, or it must not be important, or we must not care.

"We're doing 865 hours of brand new Canadian content in 2012-13, across all Shaw Media platforms, and that's a huge number. I always rather would see a monster hit on the right platform than an okay hit on what technically is the bigger platform."

That's not to stay Williams would turn down a big hit on the bigger platform. In that regard, Global's biggest-buzz U.S. acquisition is the modern take on Sherlock Holmes titled Elementary, with Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu.

Other new Global imports include Vegas, Last Resort, Chicago Fire, Go On, Guys With Kids, The Job and Save Me.

Plunging deeper into the daytime talk genre, Global will add The Ricki Lake Show and The Jeff Probst Show. Lake appeared at the Shaw event, as did LL Cool J of Global returnee NCIS: Los Angeles.

Shaw also announced that The Real Housewives of Vancouver will return for a second season on Slice, and the Canadian news magazine show 16x9 is switching from Saturdays to Fridays on Global.