Dr. Laura's Canadian goose egg

By Susanne Ault -- Broadcasting & Cable, 10/9/2000

Now you see her, now you don't. After just three weeks on the air,Dr. Laurahas been dropped by her Canadian contingent.

As of Monday, Paramount's strip will no longer run on the four Canadian stations that carried it: ckrd Red Deer; bctv British Columbia; ontv Hamilton, Ontario; and cfcf Montreal. All operate under Canadian media company CanWest Global Communications, which owns 11 stations.

At this point, the official word from Paramount is "no comment," but normally, syndicators don't start sharpening the ax until they lose homes in the top two U.S. TV markets: New York and Los Angeles.

"[The decision] largely had to do with small audience delivery and our need to grow our audience leading up to the news.Dr. Laura[running at 3 p.m. on bctv, cfcf and ontv; at 3:30 on ckrd] wasn't meeting our expectations," says CanWest Vice President of National Programming Roy Gardner.

He saysDr. Laura'sreplacement programming will vary from station to station and most likely be temporary.