– The Canadian Association of Film Distributors and Exporters, the Canadian Film and Television Production Association and the Association des Producteurs de film et television du Quebec have jointly written a letter to the Ministries of Heritage and Industry stating opposition to the possibility the new tax credit could be eligible for Canadian-content service productions.

cafde president Dan Johnson says the letter was written because ‘foreign interests indicated they wanted non-Canadian interests to have access to public funds for productions shooting in Canada that did not necessarily originate in Canada.’

– A historic agreement between the National Film Board and Famous Players will see nfb shorts screened at movie theaters at least four times a year. The first program kicks off on Sept. 29 when two animated musical shorts – Beth Portman and Susan Crandall’s Cactus Swing and Chris Hinton’s Blackfly – will accompany the Walt Disney family comedy The Big Green on approximately 80 screens.

– Baton Broadcasting has filed an application to the crtc seeking approval to deliver an independent tv service to Pembroke, Ont., the Ottawa Valley and the National Capital Region. The application responds to the crtc’s Public Notice 1995-118 calling for applications following submissions from two Toronto-area broadcasters. Service would be provided by converting chro-tv Pembroke to an independent station and assuring carriage on the basic service on Ottawa cable systems. chro is currently a CTV Television Network supplementary affiliate.

– Videoway Multimedia, a production, marketing and sales subsidiary of cable/broadcast company Groupe Videotron, will launch Quebec’s first all-infomercial channel starting Nov. 1. InfoPub will broadcast on cable to more than one million basic subscriber homes and will be rolled into the future pan-Canadian infomercial network.

– Ivory Tower Studios, Southern Alberta’s first full-scale studio and feature film production complex, will open in the summer of 1996.

Located on the Siksika Nation an hour east of Calgary, the facility will house two 15,000-sound-foot soundstages and telecommunications uplinks for off-site post. The facility, a partnership between the Siksika Nation and Beverly Hills-based production financier Christopher Crutcher, plans to produce 10 features annually.

– Quebec Superior Court has ordered Television Quatre Saisons to pay $791,000 to Films Rozon for not honoring a broadcast contract for programs originating at the 1990 Just For Laughs Festival.

The deal goes back to mid-1990 when tqs and Rozon signed an agreement to broadcast seven shows from the festival. The judgment says tqs acted in bad faith when it unilaterally withdrew from the agreement, citing financial difficulties. Rozon later sold the show to Radio-Canada.

– Cambium Releasing has sold 65 episodes of The Time of Your Life to the Nostalgia channel in the u.s. and placed Christopher the Christmas Tree and Nilus the Sandman – The First Day in syndication through Seagull Entertainment.

As well, the company recently added 50 episodes of the human rights magazine series Rights & Wrongs to its catalogue. Produced by New York-based Globalvision, the series is currently airing on pbs.