QuickPlay Media walked away with the top honors at last month’s Canadian New Media Awards – taking the annual fete’s prize for company of the year, beating out Vancouver’s Blast Radius and Calgary’s Elluminate.

MC Alan Park of Royal Canadian Air Farce helped hand out the 15 awards at a 500-guest gala in Toronto on May 29.

Bite TV won the cross-platform award for its short film and animation segments, aimed at young males via TV, online and mobile.

‘It validates that we’re definitely headed in the right direction,’ says Jeffrey Elliott, president/CEO of Glassbox TV, which owns Bite TV. He hopes the win will help efforts to expand Bite’s broadcast providers. ‘We’re using our win to help when we speak with ExpressVu, Shaw and Star Choice.’

James Eberhardt of marblemedia won programmer of the year for work including thisisdanielcook.com and deafplanet.com.

Kutoka Interactive won the best children’s category for its educational Didi & Ditto: The Wolf King, while Canadian Tapestry by ecentricarts took best cultural/lifestyle. Jade Empire by BioWare won excellence in gaming; Sort It Out! by ACCESS took excellence in learning; and CBC.ca‘s Olympic website took the win for news and information.

Other winners included Rocketfuel Productions for most promising new company, a lifetime achievement prize for Webnames.ca cofounder/director John Demco, and educator of the year for Daniel Ouellette.

Meanwhile, a similar awards show recognizing the talents of animation and video game makers is set to roll out on Sept. 14 in Vancouver.

The Canadian Awards for the Electronic and Animated Arts will honor people in three broad categories – electronic games, animation and student work.

Producer and creator Holly Carinci, a Vancouver-area publicist, says the idea came at the suggestion of a gaming enthusiast employee.

There will be 43 awards up for grabs, including best 3D animation, best handheld/wireless game and best animated TV series. Nominations opened June 5; nominees will be announced on Aug. 8.

‘We put the idea out there to some fairly big people in the industry and we had a resounding response,’ says Carinci.

Comparing the new show to the CNMAs, Carinci says that the older awards are more technical and industry focused, while the CAEAAs will hand out awards for such categories as ‘best PC game’ and ‘best direction.’

Gaming companies across the country include EA Canada (FIFA Soccer, NBA Live), BioWare (Neverwinter Nights), Digital Extremes (Unreal Tournament) and A2M (Monsters, Inc.).

A model site

CHUM Television and Yahoo! Canada have launched a website for the new reality show Canada’s Next Top Model.

At //topmodel.yahoo.ca, it features free video clips, podcasts of auditions and interviews, blogs and a photo gallery for downloading to computers and cell phones.

Blogs are available immediately after the show, which airs on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on Citytv stations. Podcasts are available Thursday mornings, though there are no plans to podcast entire shows.

The site was built by Yahoo! Canada and is part of CHUM’s extensive marketing effort for the show, which follows on the heels of the recent season finale of its big sister, America’s Next Top Model. CHUM has pushed CNTM with an off-air consumer ad campaign, editorial integration/support and a 20-week on-air pre-promo campaign across most of the broadcaster’s conventional and specialty stations.

CNTM is produced by Temple Street Productions in Toronto, with local production from The May Street Group in Victoria, BC.

W is for Winner

The South African documentary B Is For Bomb, by Carey McKenzie, has won the Cannes 2006 Online Competition, ending a month of viewing and voting by film fans from across the world.

The contest – held in partnership between the National Film Board and the Cannes Film Market’s Short Film Corner – showcased 10 shorts from six different countries, chosen from about 900 submissions. It drew 44,000 viewings, according to organizers at the NFB, up 308% from last year.

Narrated by a child, Bomb is an alphabetical listing of the hazards of nuclear power. All 10 films will screen at Montreal’s NFB Cinema July 20-23.