After losing the independent film channel licence to Salter Street Films back in December and then again to Alliance Atlantis Communications in February, Lisa de Wilde, president and CEO of Astral Television Networks says, "We’ve moved on."

"We figured out that with our first pay-TV window of international independent movies, we can do a lot of what we wanted to do with that niche through our main network, so that’s where our strategy is focused."

Then, of course, why would de Wilde bother dwelling on past losses an hour before heading off to the company’s Montreal headquarters, from where, as it was later discovered, Astral was quietly inking a deal with Corus Entertainment to buy the remaining 50% interest in Family Channel?

It’s no wonder de Wilde was so reticent on the subject.

As one of the key players in the Canadian broadcast industry, de Wilde continues to spearhead pay and PPV television expansion in Canada, strategize for the acquisition of new specialty services and help augment Astral’s involvement in triggering Canadian production.

Recently, the company hired Michelle Marion to the newly created position of director, Canadian independent production. The new role was formed specifically to enhance Astral’s participation in production beyond its previous role as an ad hoc equity investor and pre-buyer.

"Michelle’s become our ambassador to the Canadian production community so we can be more systematically involved in the creation of movies"so we can pick up the process and be the partner that our dollars allow us to be with the producers," says de Wilde. "The money we pump into programming is a direct function of our growing subscriber base."

Over the past couple of years, DTH has been driving the growth of Astral’s TMN-The Movie Network and Super Ecran. In fact, DTH accounts for almost half of Astral’s one million pay subscribers.

"Pay-TV is a digital driver. It makes very compelling the purchase of a satellite dish and movies are the number-one category of TV viewing," says de Wilde. "As cable begins to roll out digital the same phenomenon is happening. I think there’s been some really good learning from the DTH experience – packaging, selling top-down, pricing in an all-in approach, and not asking the consumer to buy the technology but rather selling them the software, the programming."

Also, every home that has a digital cable box to view pay-TV is one more home for the new digital specialties to sell into for their September launch.

De Wilde, however, thinks it will be a long time before the digital platform completely replaces analog.

While it is beneficial for pay-TV to migrate to digital as it "solves our piracy problem, improves picture quality, allows us to offer 5.1 Dolby sound and 24-hour multiplex channels, in the case of analog specialties the win-win situation isn’t there, yet," she says.

Always looking for additional ways to creatively support Canadian moviemaking, de Wilde is launching a book-optioning arm in the fall that will be managed by the Harold Greenberg Fund, the English-language portion of which de Wilde also oversees.

The new initiative came out of a conversation de Wilde had with Robin Cass (Triptych Media) in Banff last summer.

"I’ve always been a big fan of Canadian authors and what I’ve realized is we can play an additional role in helping Canadian producers pay to option the rights to Canadian written works, with a view to transforming them into screenplays to make Canadian movies," says de Wilde.

Starting this fall, Astral has earmarked $300,000 a year for the next seven years to support the initiative.

With the new $100-million Canada Feature Film Fund kicking off in April, de Wilde is keen to find ways to leverage those new dollars.

"Larger budgets are going to put us on a different level and there’s a new obsession about marketing films and we would like to play a role in making that marketing machine a powerful one."

Likewise, de Wilde intends to start having regular screenings at the Astral offices to help expose new talent.

On the topic of marketing and exposure, Astral has also just launched an overall rebranding campaign, which coincided with the launch of season three of The Sopranos on TMN.

Taking what the company calls a "lifestyle" approach to its pay services, it has repackaged its channels to make it easier to navigate.

The new programming environment is a multiplex model, like HBO, with a TMN1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

TMN1 will feature big-draw movies and series, the second and third tiers will offer counter programming, the fourth will broadcast indie films and the fifth will target a younger audience.

"We embarked on an exciting process of discovery to find out what was similar between our French and English networks and to allow us to understand how we can become a bit edgier and appeal to a younger demographic," says de Wilde.

Astral’s subscriber base is currently in the 35 to 54 age range.

The timing of the rebranding initiative is very much tied into the September launch of the new digital specialties, of which Astral has none in Category 1.

With de Wilde at the head, the company tried to fetch three must-carry licences- Cinefest (an independent film channel in partnership with Global), Technology and Romance – but to no avail.

The company was, however, granted a Category 2 licence for Cinemania (to be renamed Cinepop), a French-language classic movie channel for which Astral is currently negotiating carriage.

"It could be very nicely marketed with Super Ecran," says de Wilde, whose experience with channel licensing goes well beyond her place as a pay and specialty exec.

A former legal counsel for the CRTC, Winnipeg-born de Wilde has seen the grass from both sides of the regulatory fence and still fully endorses the commission’s role in ensuring a Canadian broadcast system.

"I believe a CRTC devoted and obsessed about building a distinct Canadian broadcasting system is one of the cornerstones of a successful industry," says de Wilde. She admits that as the environment changes, government policy is forced to adapt and says the agency should have a chance to reinvent itself as well.

"Fundamentally, we need licensing. It’s by licensing that we create geographic territories, and that’s what allows us to maintain a Canadian system on a North American continent." *

-www.astral.com