As Playback goes to press, there are some things we know about Super Channel, the new pay service set to launch Nov. 2, and there are things we don't.

Let's start with what we do know. We know that specialty television veteran Malcolm Knox, president and COO of the start-up, is not getting all that much sleep these days, as he prepares for the most ambitious undertaking of his career - the on-air launch, from a standing start, of the first pay licence to be awarded in two decades.

We can check out the Super Channel website (www.superchannel.ca), national ads should be about, and the on-air branding, programming and schedules are coming together.

In an exclusive interview, Knox offers us a sneak peek of the service itself. He describes Super Channel as "an entertainment service" offering a broad range of programming on six channels - two high def (HD) and four standard def (SD).

Flagship channels HD1 and SD1, which will have mirrored schedules, will carry premieres and major movies. SD2 will be guy-oriented, offering extreme sports, anime, horror, gaming and edgy documentaries. SD3 will be more female-oriented, with Bollywood Saturday night, and foreign and art-house films, and SD4 will feature exclusively Canadian fare. The second high-def channel will be a compilation of HD-available programming from the others.

We know, surveying the press releases, that the service settled on the Super Channel name as recently as Oct. 2. It was referred to as the one-word Superchannel up until and including Oct. 1.

There's a lot of history in that name. Super Channel is owned by Edmonton-based Allarco Entertainment, which is controlled by chairman and CEO Charles Allard, scion of Dr. Charles Allard, who in 1982 launched an early Canadian pay service called Superchannel. Allard's company was acquired by WIC Western International Communications in 1994. In the late '90s, the company was broken up, and Superchannel went to Corus Entertainment, which then rebranded it as Movie Central. Knox was the service's VP of Edmonton operations at the time.

"It's not about the history," Knox says regarding the new service's familiar moniker. Instead, he calls Super Channel "simply the best choice" to describe what the service is offering. He declined to name the other candidates, except to say, "The world of naming is a very complicated thing. You think you've come up with a wonderful name and you find out that someone in France is using it as a photocopier."

So Super Channel it is.

On to unknowns. We wondered if there is enough quality programming out there that's not already tied up by incumbents (and former duopoly holders) The Movie Network and Movie Central, and whether the entrée of Super Channel will increase programming prices.

Knox assures that "there's absolutely enough programming to go around." In Canada, he points out, there will be three pay services including Super Channel (two, if you take into account that TMN and MC share programming and split the country between them), while in the U.S. there are more than 40 pay channels.

"We've positioned ourselves to be complementary to the other services," he says. "Sure, if we're competing for a particular program it might have an impact on the price, no question. However, we're focusing on that which has not been acquired, and suppliers are very happy to do business with us."

So far Super Channel has output deals with MGM (which brings titles including Rocky Balboa), Channel 4, Maple Pictures, Starz (pay-TV network number three in the U.S., behind HBO and Showtime, both of which have deals with TMN and MC) and smaller entities such as Open Door.

Programming we can expect close to launch time includes the Emmy Award-winning miniseries Broken Trail, and series such as Burn Notice from Fox, WB's The Closer, Starz Media's Head Case, NBCU's daytime sudser Passions (which is already running in preview mode on Bell ExpressVu on channel 329), and Peep Show from Channel 4 in Britain.

Some of the questions that remain, however, are doozies.

How much will Super Channel cost the consumer? Knox says we'll find that out on Nov. 2 when Bell ExpressVu, which is delivered to 1.8 million Canadian households, starts taking orders.

When and where are the other carriers going to launch it? Knox says negotiations are taking place.

And what about all those promises to the CRTC and the Canadian production industry: the reinvestment of 100% of Super Channel's profits in Canadian programming (if it ever turns a profit) in addition to 32% of annual revenues, the $1 million per year marketing budget, $2 million in script and concept development, the upfront licence fees, and creative development executives in each province?

The creative development offices are scheduled to open when the channel goes to air, Knox says. And all that work for Canadian producers? He says he has "a stack of contracts sitting on my desk right now." But it will take some time to show up on the screen.

"Do the math," he says. "The time it takes to commission it and get it produced is a year, a year and a half. As we grow, we'll be doing lots of prelicensing, and working with the production community."

Some independent producers have expressed concerns that another broadcast licence would water down the already-strained financing system. It's going to take a number of years to find out if that is the case, since Super Channel's Canadian Television Fund envelope doesn't even exist yet.

It sure looks about as pricey as a start-up can get, though, which leads us to the biggest question of all. Is there room in the pay market for another player?

In opposing the awarding of a licence, Astral (which owns TMN) and Corus told the CRTC that their comfy profit margins are due to their exclusivity, and the market cannot support a third player in pay. Knox and Allarco, predictably, differed. "We felt the growth of digital, especially on the cable side, creates room in the marketplace," says Knox.

And while the CRTC obviously sided with Allarco, whether that's the case or not will remain unknown for a while yet.

Contact Tamsen Tillson at tamsen@vianet.ca