MONTREAL: In March, Pixcom Productions’ CEO Jacquelin Bouchard and its senior management bought out equity shareholder Investissements Desjardins, which remains an important investor in webcasting subsidiary Inpix Media. The buyout is the culmination of a five-year repositioning plan.

Bouchard’s strategy is to develop a wide array of production services including primetime and specialty domestic TV programming, international factual coproduction, webcasting and new media, as well as post-production and engineering, and advanced technology services for international broadcast clients.

In Bouchard words, ‘We have 220 workstations [installed] in our studios. We have 80 permanent employees in our combined companies, and this year we mailed out about 2,000 T4s.’

The privately held company has emerged as one of the most active not only in Quebec, but in Canada, with top-line annual business revenues in the order of $30 million.

Pixcom is partnering on an ambitious new slate of international documentary coproductions. The company is beginning its 15th year of operations.

‘We’re starting to see the benefits of our efforts and the success of Insectia (13 HDTV half-hours and 26 in all coproduced with Cineteve, France). As a result, we have excellent relations with Discovery,’ says Bouchard.

‘The important thing for us, particuliarly in international, is to just really listen to the broadcasters, that’s really a key, and find out what they’re doing,’ says Mary Armstrong, head of international production at Pixcom. ‘But certainly they want quality.’

Bouchard says making an investment in high-end, limited factual series like the Pixcom’s new three-hour, $4-million ‘species odyssey’ series with Transparence of Paris helps clients create special events.

‘Client needs go from one end of the scale to the other,’ he says. ‘Some need to fill slots with [reduced] prices, but there’s always a market for ‘the one big good idea’ and budgets follow suit, like the species odyssey series with France 3, where the broadcaster and coproducer (Transparence, Paris) consider there’s a long-term potential for high-end exploitation. And they put their money where their mouth was.’

2001/02 coproductions

New international coproduction series shooting this summer and fall at Pixcom include:

* Technopolis, a majority Canadian (80/20) coproduction with Paris-based VM Productions, is 10 one-hours surveying the technology that drives modern international cities. Forty per cent taped outside the coproducing countries, Hong Kong and Toyko, Sweden and the U.S., the series is licensed by Discovery Canada and Canal D. Funding sources include Telefim Canada and the CTF – Licence Fee Program, on a budget of $2.2 million;

* the 13-hour series Performance, a ‘science of sports’ series licensed by Discovery and Canal D, with funding support from the CTF and a budget of $220,000 an hour;

* a three-hour primetime ‘species odyssey’ minority coproduction with France, featuring extensive CGI and dramatized sequences a la Quest for Fire, to be shot on location in Canada and around the world this fall. The budget is close to $4 million. ‘Right now we’ve got Radio-Canada and we’re negotiating with a couple of English [Canadian] broadcasters. And France 3 is heavily involved in this baby as investors,’ says Armstrong.

New business with Australia

‘The other thing we’re doing is a coproduction with Becker Entertainment of Australia,’ she says. ‘We were happy to meet them [at Banff 2001]. They are great, great people. It’s three hours and it’s another evolution story, the eternal battle between ‘man and bugs’ called Bug Wars.’ Licensees on the $1.5-million show (now in financing) include Discovery Canada and Seven Network in Australia. Pixcom has several other international coproductions in development including extended series and one-off factual projects with partners in France, the U.K. and Australia.

‘We’re lucky at Pixcom because we produce internationally [and] we can produce in both official languages, and if you look at the way Technopolis, Performance and Insectia are constructed, with both original English and French versions, we can get solid licences in both languages,’ says Armstrong. ‘If you do a heavy interview subject you can only do it in one version, but we’re not doing shows that way.’

Pixtv.net

Pixcom has made important investments in partnersip with credit union subsidiary Investissements Desjardins in the past six years in its new media company Inpix Media. Pixtv.net, the company’s multi-thematic webcasting channel, uses content from Pixcom’s own library of TV productions, as well as video extracts sourced from other international producers including VM Productions. Normand Belisle heads up Inpix Media.

The post division, QUARTZZ, houses seven Avid editing workstations and employs between 20 and 25. Pixcom also operates a production mobile.

Bouchard has long held a wide-ranging interest in technology.

The company provides engineering and technological services for the broadcast of major international events including the World Cup of Soccer for TF1; the Olympic Games since 1996 for France Television (Atlanta, Nagano and Sydney and Salt Lake City next year) and cable network Eurosport; and sub-feed services for Formula One racing for broadcasters TF1 and RAI in Italy, for more than a decade.

‘It’s a highly specialized field and we pretend to be the best east of Toyko,’ muses Bouchard, former co-chair of the APFTQ producers association.

Pixcom acted as host broadcaster (contracted by the government of Canada) at last fall’s summit of the Americas in Quebec City.

20 hours of Quebec TV

Local TV production out of Pixcom, in the order of 20 hours a week, much of which has been renewed for 2001/02 includes for Tele-Quebec, cultural mag Les Choix de Sophie, the literary mag 100 Titres, Cultive et bien eleve and a live Offenbach rock-‘n-blues revival special; the Radio-Canada teleroman Freddy (26 one-hours); and a couple of tele-theatre (stage drama) productions. The house also produces Idee Maison, a renovation show for Reseau TVA.

On the specialty side, production includes the seventh season of Le Gout de Monde and social trends series/magazine Jeux de Societe at Canal D; the high-tech mag Revanche des Nerds, hosted by Patrick Masbourian and broadcast by Z; and the flagship, weekday history mag Histoire a la une, with popular host Claude Charron on Historia.

-www. insectia.com

–//www.pixtv.net/