Amid the thrashing, kvetching, cork-popping and assorted other responses to the Great Canadian Specialty Channel Announcement, it’s entirely conceivable that the whole business has given one organization that warm and fuzzy feeling. That would be the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, this year celebrating its fifteenth anniversary.

The academy was set up to promote the Canadian film industry and, before long, added the television industry to its mandate. It follows, then, that with industry and talent promotion as its focus, the Academy would welcome the new channels as new places to spotlight Canadian product.

Assuming the success of these new networks, the Canadian industry will grow and with it the challenge for the Academy to promote the industry and the people who give it a public face. Teenager that it is, this hardworking, innovative, vivacious organization must now spend a moment reflecting on the accomplishments in its past and plot its future.

Executive director Maria Topalovich recognizes the need to evolve further, to work around the elusive star system – and to that end the Academy is developing ‘a new television showcase for Canadian talent over and above’ the Genies, Geminis and Prix Gemeaux. As well, an image-building, advertising-type campaign is in the works to promote the organization itself.

It won’t be easy. As Topalovich points out, the notion of pan-Canadian hype is an oxymoron, and marketing and promotion are some of the weaker inventory items in (especially film) producers’ arsenals. Still, the Academy must surge ahead, recognizing itself as the engine propelling awareness and public curiosity to know more. Perhaps a little boost for this somewhat daunting mission will come when the specialties lift off in 1995, turning intrigued eyeballs into appreciative patrons of Canadian cultural products.

Speak up! (please)

The introduction to our new Up & Running feature in Video Innovations is much too civil. vi editor Mary Maddever politely explains that vi is about much more than discussing new technology. It’s also about ‘how people are using the new tools at hand.’

Touche. What she doesn’t say, in her understated Canadian way, is that we’d do a much better job reflecting people’s experiences with new gadgets (digital or otherwise) if our readers would give us a few hints.

So, those of you who are no longer techno-nerds, how did you find your way, that first time on a fancy new digi-rama box? What have you learned that could save others a trip to user manual purgatory?

This is no time for a typically Canadian modesty/confidence crisis. Get over it! We want to hear from you.