– DTH futures for sale

As the era of a Canadian dth service is purported to be approaching, Lindsay, Ont.-based Star Choice has retained Bunting Warburg as exclusive agent for the sale of up to $20 million of equity in the company via a special warrant offering. Star Choice plans to begin offering a dth service in the first quarter of this year.

In the meantime, while Telesat Canada gears up for a February deadline to submit a new dth satellite solution, the company has signed a contract with l.a.-based Hughes Space and Communications to provide its flight dynamics system for use in controlling the orbit of Hughes satellites. The first delivery of Telesat’s software-based system is scheduled for January 1998.

-Hot Docs! ’97

Hot Docs! ’97 has whittled 327 entries down to 73 nominees for this year’s festivities, including Peter Lynch’s Project Grizzly and Magnus Isacsson’s Power in the best feature documentary category.

Running March 18-23 in Toronto, the best and brightest docs will be chosen from the nominees, which number 60 from Canada, seven from Europe, four from the u.s. and two from Australia.

Execs confirming their attendance at The Financier’s Club, a program designed to match producers with potential buyers, include bbc Fine Cut’s Nick Fraser, Discovery u.k.’s Chris Haws, Canal+’s Anna Glogowski, and Channel 4’s Jacquie Lawrence.

The Canadian contingent includes Discovery president Trina McQueen; Bill House, Telefilm Canada’s director of Ontario operations; Rudy Buttignol, creative head of docs at tvontario; Marie Natanson, senior commissioning editor for cbc’s Witness doc unit; Brad Pelman, Sullivan Entertainment’s vp acquisitions and home video; nfb executive producer Don Haig; and CBC Newsworld Rough Cuts senior producer Jerry McIntosh.

From the American market are Geoffrey Barnes, abc documentaries; Thom Beers, vp, executive producer, Turner Original Productions; Amy Briamonte, manager of special programming, a&e; and Carole Tomko, director of development and programming, Time Life Video and Television.