Porn TV station coming to Canada

Television started with the 'Baby Blue' movies, then went on to "The Naked News," and "The Playboy Channel," and now we present........ ta daaaaaaa!

"The Porn Channel!"

MONTREAL – Television network owners don’t usually strip naked and cover themselves in chocolate for a Valentine’s Day photo shoot, but Quebec’s own queen of soft-core, Anne Marie Losique, doesn’t see why one can’t.

“It was fun,” she said of the pictures. “And I hate to be pigeonholed.”

A wild-child who’s been producing popular sex shows in the province for over a decade, Losique is preparing to roll out her new adult entertainment channel — Vanessa TV — across Canada next fall.

It will be a blend of light and sexy fare, hard-hitting documentaries and late-night pornography, she said.

“It’s not a porno channel — it’s not only that,” she said. “It’s all genres, like reality shows, cooking shows, lifestyle shows, but in a sexy way. It goes from soft-sexy to hard at night.”

The producer and TV personality launched the venture in Quebec last October and is promising to fill Vanessa TV with plenty of Canadian content.

“English Canada is already well-served with Playboy, Hustler, Penthouse TV all that,” she said. “We really want to bring a Canadian channel, with that sense of being shot in your backyard.”

She brushes off the idea Quebecers are more sexually free than their prudish Canadian counterparts.

“We’re 50/50 here, like in politics,” she said. “There’s part of Quebec that’s very open and part that’s not at all towards sexuality and nudity.”

In fact, English Canada may have a secret interest in the erotic — many of her shows got financing outside Quebec.

“Yes, you have the right-wing conservatives, but it’s not all like that,” she said, noting there’s a growing soft-core scene in Toronto and Vancouver.

The company has already optioned a Toronto-based reality show about a pizza delivery boy who opens a porn studio in his parents' basement.

“I actually like that show very much,” she said. “It’s a bit fun and really represents our channel.”

In Quebec, Losique has cultivated a playful media personality — staging a giggly interview with actor Ben Affleck while sitting on his lap, and starring in mockumentaries lampooning her own bimbo alter ego.

In person, she shows flashes of the business acumen that made her the owner of a successful production company.

Three months at the helm of Vanessa TV quickly taught her there’s an untapped international market for soft-core erotica, she said.

“I’ve always known I had a niche in the French market — in France, they buy everything I do,” said Losique. “But even worldwide, it’s a niche that’s not exploited.”

It’s a hurdle for a network seeking to fill 24 hours of airtime, but a possible money-maker for the production house she co-founded with a former boyfriend.

She’s also considering producing her own documentaries on the darker side of sex and the sex industry. But for now, the sex vedette is choosing to keep things light and focus on the upcoming launch.

“We like to have a little humour,” she said. “I love Hustler’s motto: ‘Relax — it’s just sex.’”