Las Vegas, NV: To round off the ascending prominence of Canadians at natpe, the 5th annual Pitch Me! Competition, moderated by Survivor host Jeff Probst, saw Snap Media’s Dave King beat out close to 150 pitchers with Status No, a 13-part magazine/doc series about social activism among young people in the arts.

‘It’s marketing the idea of becoming active to the 18-24 demographic.’It’s like Michael Moore’s The Awful Truth meets mtv,’ said King, whose win entitles him to a battery of meetings with the Hollywood majors.

Trailervision’s Albert Nuremberg, another Canadian offspring, was a runner-up in the competition with a pitch for Next, a tv/Internet converged series of 12 individual mini-shows that, in Survivor-style, get voted off each week until one, which expands into a half-hour pilot, emerges the winner.

The next day, Red Apple Entertainment’s Adam Block won Microsoft’s Interactive Pitch Competition for Bugs, a series about all things creepy and crawly. Block, who beat out 50 pitches, is the second Canadian in a row to win the competition that in this case grants Red Apple execs a two-day trip to Los Angeles to meet with the majors to land an interactive tv development deal.

Canadian Jonathan Block-Verk was the winner last year with an innovative game show pitch, which has yet to materialize into a series. •