Spawn is an occasional series on the production companies emerging to take advantage of the new specialty channel opportunities.

As the new specialties gussy up for their unveilings, the debutant bearing perhaps the greatest weight of expectation is Alliance/ctv's History Television.

The channel has assumed a strong creative role in its shows and has fostered a cross-Canada perspective which has created cross-Canada partnerships. The channel has also brought production companies with varying kinds of expertise to a schedule heavy on documentaries, a genre at which Canadian companies of all sizes have long demonstrated skill.

History is meant to add value to the projects coming from the independent community, says History vp programming Norm Bolen, who together with History director, program development and acquisitions Sydney Suissa, brings significant experience to the task of assembling the schedule.

The channel has already committed over $5 million in licence fees and is committed in year two to spend $5.7 million on original Canadian programming. As the specialty gains subscribers, that level of production will increase, says Bolen.

He says the broadcaster is drawing on talent from almost all points across the country and inspiring partnerships between established and emerging production bodies. "I think we're adding to regional expertise," says Bolen. "We intend to do more outreach projects over the next few years to try and build a base of producers in the regions who are regularly producing material for us."

Flagship shows like Turning Points from Barna-Alper and New Brunswick's Connections, and Faces of History from Edmonton's Great North Productions represent major creative input from the broadcaster.

Faces of History, a 16-part, one-hour program on interesting dead Canadians, will represent the specialty's largest editorial involvement. The broadcaster has hired a commissioning editor ­ award-winning Toronto producer Shelley Saywell ­ to work "full tilt on creative for the series," in addition to working on other shows and on acquisitions.

Faces will also be a test case for non-broadcast initiatives like cd-roms, Web development, publishing and educational projects ­ the broadcaster has entered into a multiyear deal with the CRB Foundation to exploit the educational and non-broadcast rights for the show.

The idea for Turning Points, which looks at crucial days of Canadian and international history, originated at Barna-Alper and was discussed at mip-tv with a receptive History. To round out financing, Laszlo Barna took the project to Film nb's Sam Grana, with whom he had been discussing other development possibilities, and the two decided it would be a prime project in which to involve a local producer.

Grana brought the project to Connections, a Moncton company with experience in documentary production, and with a partnership agreement where the two companies split episode production, funding from Film nb, the ctcpf, and Ontario, New Brunswick and federal tax credits, the deal was done.