This can’t be comforting for content producers.

“We don’t use that term,” Maria Hale, VP, head of TV programming and production at Corus Entertainment, said about transmedia at the X-Summit conference in Toronto.

Addressing a panel on what Canadian broadcasters talk about behind closed doors, Hale said the business of telling stories across multiple platforms and formats goes back to the origins of entertainment and that transmedia is actually business as usual for Corus brands such as Nelvana and Kids Can Press.

“Transmedia has existed forever. Most of the movies we’ve watched were first books,” she said, noting that what’s changed in the last decade is content producers now use digital tools in so-called transmedia storytelling.

Hale’s comments on transmedia storytelling led a discussion crossing a range of digital media subjects, including the CBC’s 2010 attempt to engage new media audiences with a 3D broadcast of Hockey Night in Canada – an experiment that may not happen any time again soon.

“The audience was in the hundreds,” Alan Dark, executive director of CBC media sales and marketing, told the X-Summit panel.

The pubcaster brought a new experience to Canadian hockey fans, but too few of them had 3D TV sets to engage with the medium.

And the CBC had to double its manpower and camera shots to air the HNIC telecasts in 3D.

What’s more, the CBC sees little additional revenue from 3D telecasts, at least for now, as opposed to HDTV and it’s appeal for advertisers.

“The cost of 3D is a huge issue for us. We foot the bill for HD. We won’t do the same for 3D,” Dark said.

The discussion also verged into social media, which the panelists discussed as being more important than ever to IP marketing strategies.

“In our budgets, it’s the last place we cut. It’s a 52-week relationship, not a four-week campaign,” Peter Furnish, VP of marketing at Astral Television Networks, said of the broadcaster’s commitment to social media marketing.

Where once broadcasters focused their digital strategy on driving audiences to a website, now it’s about connecting with audiences, and then interacting with them via social media.

Andrea Gagliardi, GM and senior director of broadcasting at Rogers Digital Media, said social media figured from the start when the broadcaster started rolling out its Canada’s Got Talent franchise, garnering interest in the show from the casting phase.

“We opened with registration for auditions [and] social media was a big part of that,” she said.

The X-Summit conference continues through Wednesday.