Pushing online technology and creating specific sponsored programming, Palliser Media is a fully integrated boutique combining high-tech television, creative development and marketing planning strategies, moving the production industry in a new and unique direction.

Michael Schwartz and Warren Sulatycky of Avion Films started up Palliser a year and a half ago to fill a niche in a market where few local companies were doing what they had in mind, and that is producing short, sponsored vignette series for television which are informative as well as entertaining.

Although owned by the same two men and under the same roof as Avion, Palliser is a separate entity with its own staff of marketing, media sales and public relations people, creative producers and graphic designers.

‘When the whole arts funding scene fell through, with everyone cutting back, I had projects and the money attached to them was gone,’ explains Sulatycky, executive producer at Palliser. ‘I looked at the availabilities of how I could continue to function as a producer and sponsored programming seemed like a good way to go.’

Generally 90 seconds in length and 100% Canadian content, Sulatycky says vignettes make a lot of sense as a beneficial marketing strategy.

‘They are not meant to replace commercials but to wrap around them, enhancing your time on air,’ he says. ‘The cost tends to be all over the board – $125,000 to $350,000 for 13 episodes – and a targeted media buy, which is usually the cost of one commercial alone.’

So far Palliser has produced Picture This, a vignette series on photography for Minolta which is airing on the Life Network, and an rrsp-season-driven, 13-episode series on CBC Newsworld called The Financial Advisor, sponsored by Spectrum United Mutual Funds.

Since each vignette has a commercial attached to it, the sponsor is paying the network for that airtime but not for the time the vignette is shown.

Although the present plan is to establish the young company, cash-wise, on the vignettes, the team at Palliser is busy designing an interactive soap opera for AOL Canada.

Palliser signed an agreement with aol last summer to produce the first online soap for its site, which will run live for six hours a day. As the user interacts from their home or office, a writer at Palliser will be on the other end working with them to direct the plot.

While most existing online shows are text-based with poor quality video, at Wellington Arms the story is updated daily, there is a different drama going on in each room, and rather that just reading what shows up on the screen, the user is writing it as they go.

The Wellington Arms itself is an old dilapidated apartment building which users can walk through, pick out and decorate their own rooms, hang out at their buddy’s place or go down to the Republic, the club in the basement, for a virtual drink.

Twenty stock characters inhabit the building, which Sulatycky refers to as a ‘funkier version of Melrose Place,’ and it should be ready for visitors by this summer.

‘We are making a breakthrough and keeping a very close eye on the technology because it’s the technology which supports it all,’ says Sulatycky. ‘People sit around thinking out all these great entertainment ideas but the hardware isn’t there yet, so the only way our ideas can work is to have a really close tie with some of the multimedia companies that are developing the technology.’

With the advent interactive entertainment Sulatycky believes television is eroding, and at Palliser they are anticipating the arrival of an online future by designing themselves as experts in entertainment-based Net products.

‘The next generation of tv is going to be combined with these other mediums (tv, phone and computer) one way or another,’ he says. ‘Some time down the line we will be taking the benefits of story, the best of television drama and comedy, and figuring out ways of making them work together online. It’s going to be interactive, so why not push it now and see what happens.’

Like all projects coming out of Palliser the soap is sponsored, and although Sulatycky will not reveal at this point by who, he will say they ‘are going after large traditional commercial clients.’

‘It’s a great opportunity for a sponsor to get in on the ground floor because we can design the site with the client in mind. They can help with the creation and affect what it looks like.’

What the creative designers at Palliser have done is design a variety of templates for different sponsors to be able to promote and sell product information. For example, if the first scene contains a street and the sponsor is a record store they can put that particular record store on the virtual street.

In order to keep costs down, Sulatycky is essentially building an online division within Palliser.

‘If I went and contracted the work it would cost $150,000 to design and manage the sight for a year. With an in-house designer, writers and hardware, I can keep my costs down to $75,000 for the first year. That would be the hub, I could then do other series because I’ve created the wherewithall to do other work.’

And that is exactly what they are doing as a second online interactive production called Big Musky Lodge is currently in the works.

Big Musky Lodge is the online equivalent to a murder-mystery weekend where you are the visitor at an old coastline resort gathering clues to find out whodunit.

Although Palliser has taken a keen interest in the Internet, and sees online production as being half of its business in the future, for now, revenues come from the advertising agencies who are still spending money on television.

Presently Palliser is gearing up to shoot 65 30-minute episodes of Table for Two, a ‘gourmet anti-talk show,’ which will be shot on steadycam in the kitchen of the King Edward Hotel. After the series is finished shooting, they will be shopping for sponsors.

The guests at the table will be a plethora of celebrities with international appeal who are spending some time in Toronto working on the many movies being shot here.

‘The King Edward is a great place to shoot it,’ says Sulatycky. ‘There is a chef’s table set up and it’s an incredible huge, cavernous, noisy, clanging place with about 100 staff working away in the background.’

The show’s host and coproducer, Canadian model Joanne Merrill, will talk to the celebrities over their favorite dishes and about what they do with their spare time, what they like to eat, and their favorite wines.

With the pilot being shot in May, Sulatycky is planning to take Table For Two to the Banff Television Festival and, on paper, to mip-tv.

Right now the Galloping Gourmet-style show is being pitched to a number of broadcasters here as well as in the u.s. And since most of the celebrities who will be lunching at the table will be American, at Palliser they believe the show will sell easily to the States and other foreign markets.

Shooting two or three a day to keep costs down, Table For Two will cost anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000 per episode.

‘To make these shows work we have to be creative on the budgeting and production side, not go for ideas that are going to break the bank,’ Sulatycky says. ‘The longer-format programs that we are developing are for the specialty channels.’

Part of the agenda for Palliser is to have multiple series going on the specialty channels, ideas that are exportable because the money available from these channels only covers the cost of production. ‘The only way for a show to work is to sell it internationally,’ Sulatycky says.

Table for Two, Wellington Arms and sponsored vignettes series are just some of the projects in the works right now behind the big green doors at Palliser’s Wellington Street headquarters; but if all goes as planned for the ambitious executive producer and his creative crew, they will be leading the way to a new age in production.