– New Banff governors
The Banff Television Festival has selected five international television executives and four key Canadian players to join its board of governors.
The two American governors are last year’s winner of the Astral Award of Excellence, Diane English, creator of Murphy Brown, and Vivian Schiller, senior vp and gm of Turner Original Productions.
Kiyoshi Yamakawa, corporate executive vp of Sony Corporation Japan, won the first Outstanding Technical Achievement Award presented at last year’s festival.
Michael Jackson, ceo of Britain’s Channel Four, and Riccardo Tozzi, director of television production for Mediaset spa, in Italy, also join the board.
The new Canadian governors are Alain Gourd, president of Cancom; Peter Herrndorf, chairman and ceo of tvontario; Garry Toth, executive director of the ctcpf, and Ron Waters, president of CHUM Television.
The board of governors selects two of the festival’s major awards – the Global Outstanding Achievement Award and the Outstanding Technical Achievement Award. Winners will be announced in London and Los Angeles later this month.
In other Banff news, longtime sponsor Alliance Communications has signed a two-year commitment as ‘presenting sponsor’ of the Banff Rockie Awards, moving the Toronto-based company into the festival’s Hall of Fame as a ‘distinguished sponsor.’
The Banff festival takes place June 7-13 at the Banff Springs Hotel.
– Emily rates 1.3 million
The Salter Street Films/Cinar Films premiere episode of Emily of New Moon garnered 1,324,000 viewers Sunday, Jan. 11 on cbc, winning its time period against Due South on ctv and 60 Minutes on the Global Television Network.
Also at cbc, Alliance’s pilot Nothing Too Good For a Cowboy drew an audience of 1.4 million, according to the ACNielsen overnights for Jan. 4.
At CTV, Alliance’s Once A Thief returned for 13 more episodes Saturday, Jan. 17 at 10 p.m.
– Behaviour gets rights offering extension
The Montreal and Toronto Stock Exchanges have granted Montreal-based multimedia, production and distribution company Behaviour Communications a seven-day extension of its recent rights offering. The new expiry date is Jan. 30.
The company says the ice storm in Quebec and Ontario hampered delivery of the rights offering prospectus and the processing of subscriptions.
– Chesler/Perlmutter in Betaville
Chesler/Perlmutter Productions (The Hitchhiker, Strangers) will shoot a new 13-episode, one-hour dramatic sci-fi series titled Betaville in Canada. A starting date and location have not been determined.
Toronto’s Alliance Communications holds worldwide distribution rights to the series, described as an ‘edgy vision of the world of the future that explores what happens when the thirst for knowledge leads to sin, and technology meets taboo.’
Created by Lewis B. Chesler, who will exec produce with David Perlmutter, Betaville has been sold to Sci-Fi Channel in the u.s. Canadian and international broadcast rights are still up for grabs.
– ACFC president resigns
John Subotich has resigned as president of the Association of Canadian Film Craftspeople. Neil Sato is now acting president of the beleaguered guild, which is competing with other unions including iatse to represent various laborers in the film and television industry.
– CFTPA online
The Canadian Film and Television Production Association will launch an online resource center at its annual policy conference Feb. 6 in Ottawa.
The Training and Education Directory Website offers info on Canadian film, tv and video schools, internship programs and national job banks, and provides links to international programs.
Produced by the cftpa’s National Training Programme, the online publication is sponsored in its first year by the Ontario Film Development Corporation, the Cultural Human Resources Council and Ryerson Polytechnic University. ted will be self-sustaining through online advertising and maintained off-site.
The service is free of charge and can be found at www.ted.cftpa.ca. E-mail address is info@ted.cftpa.ca.
– New Spin on Superbowl
The estimated Canadian audience of close to four million viewers of the Superbowl will be able to see the premiere of a dramatic, surprise-ending 30-second cgi spot for Midland Walwyn titled ‘Puppet,’ created by Toronto’s Spin Productions for The Wolf Group.
The spot – done entirely in cgi over four months – takes aim at Canada’s big banks and their investment divisions, parodying traditional brokerage ads with their glossy, dramatic images and intimidating voice-overs.
Opening with what appears to be a live-action downtown cityscape of cranes and skyscrapers, the camera swoops wide and downward to the visual payoff: a cg effect of cranes lifting and manipulating the columns of a bank’s brokerage building as if it were a marionette.
Spin creative director Rob Jones served as animation director on the spot.
– YTV wins silver in NYC
YTV News won a silver world medal in the 40th Television Programming & Promotion Competition of the New York Festivals for best teen special. A ytv on-air promotion, ‘Vault,’ also took silver for best editing (Paul Hessel). The competition honors excellence in communications media.
– Canucks on world stage
The Tax Man, an episode from the Imagex/Adner Animation coproduced tv series Politoons, is a finalist in The World Animation Celebration.
The series, created by Halifax producer Chris Zimmer and based on a cartoon illustrated by Bruce McKinnon, consists of 30-second spots in the satirical style of newspaper political cartoons.
Awards will be announced Feb. 21 in Pasedena, California.
Toronto filmmaker Ruba Nadda will have five short films screened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam: Do Nothing, Interstate love story, Wet heals drift through the afternoon, Damascus Nights and The wind blows towards me particularly. The festival runs Jan. 28 to Feb. 8.
– Comedy and Baton/CTV to broadcast Bullard
New specialty channel The Comedy Network has renewed its talk show series Open Mike With Mike Bullard for 25 more episodes, and in conjunction with Baton/ctv will use a new programming strategy to increase exposure to the show following the conclusion of the new specialties’ free preview period.
Starting Jan. 26, Open Mike will move to primetime on Comedy, airing weeknights at 10 p.m. Beginning the same night and continuing through to Feb. 13, the show, produced by Toronto’s Insight Productions, will also run on Baton/ctv at 12:30 p.m.
In other Baton/ctv news, Baton Broadcasting is considering the issuance of an equity offering in the company and has engaged Newcrest Capital to act as its financial advisor.
– Bardel spot chosen for UNICEF campaign
‘Lil Joe and Wily,’ a 30-second spot from Vancouver’s Bardel Animation, will be part of a series of psas titled ‘Cartoons for Children’s Rights’ which will be broadcast throughout 1998 and 1999 to bring attention to unicef’s goal of public awareness of the United Nations Convention of Rights of The Child.
Launched by Jane Curtain and unicef at the Walt Disney Feature Animation Studio in Burbank, California, the campaign of over 100 30-second animated spots is designed to help the world become more informed about children’s rights.
Bardel’s ‘Lil Joe and Wily’ promotes the right for children to play together. The whimsical spot, created and directed by Tom Heimann, Bardel director of animation, and produced by Robert Watts, is one of only three contributions to the campaign by Canadian companies.
The other two Canadian companies involved in the project are Cinar Films and the National Film Board.
– People
Glenn Wong, president of Rogers Cable tv for b.c., is leaving the company Feb. 6 to become president of Electronic Arts Canada, the huge games software company in Burnaby. In his two years with Rogers’ b.c. operations, Wong was instrumental in improving the company’s public image, shaken by the negative-option billing controversy. Vera Piccini will act as interim gm until a replacement for Wong is found.
– Danielle Iversen has joined Ellis Enterprises as sales executive responsible for domestic sales. Iversen was most recently publicist at Alliance Broadcasting. The company has also promoted Bailey Daniels to international sales executive.
– Melanie Farrell has been appointed director, business development language sales for Toronto multilingual television station cfmt-tv, a division of Rogers Broadcasting.