Here is Playback‘s Friday package of news briefs items, designed to be consumed at lightning pace.

Host news

Montreal’s Chloe Wilde has been chosen as a new Much VJ via a multi-faceted talent search which wrapped this week. The 24 year old will begin her new job on MuchMusic next month.

Broadcast news

Discovery has disclosed that season two of dynamite factual property Pyros from Vancouver-based Omnifilm Entertainment is to premiere Sunday May 26 before moving to a permanent time slot of Thursday starting May 30.

As well, Global is touting that Rookie Blue (left) season four, will begin in simulcast with ABC on Thursday May 23. Rookie Blue is produced by eOne and ICF Films.

Love it or List It, a factual property series produced by Big Coat Productions for W Network, has hit the 100th episode. The milestone program will take to the air June 3.

International sales

DHX Media this week secured a deal with Viacom Media Networks, licensing season six and renewing seasons one and two of Johnny Test to Nickelodeon Germany. According to DHX, the deal means Nickelodeon has now secured all six seasons and 117 episodes for the territory.

Breakthrough Entertainment is headed to shop its full program catalogue at the Busan Contents Market. The market takes place May 9 to 13 in Busan, South Korea.

Foreign service

Beauty and the Beast, a re-telling of the modern day fairytale and lensed in Toronto by Whizbang Films for U.S. cabler CW, has received a second season order. It stars Kristin Kreuk and Jay Ryan (right).

Awards

Canuck director Jonathan Holiff’s personal documentary about Johnny Cash, My Father and the Man in Black, has in recent weeks picked up two more festival award wins. In the past week it was named best documentary at the Memphis International Film Festival and received the Orson Wells Award at California’s Tiberon International Film Festival.

Tom Turnbull, the president and co-founder of Toronto’s Rocket Science VFX, this week received a BAFTA craft award for his company’s work on Titanic, an internationally co-produced mini-series about the fateful ship that was broadcast on the CBC in 2012. The award was in the television craft: visual effects and graphic design category.

Station launches

Asian Television Network has added yet-more offerings to its expanding roster of Asian-based television stations. This week it announced it is launching five channels in collaboration with India’s largest terrestrial broadcaster Doordarshan, popularly known as DD.

Said to be one of the largest broadcasting organizations in the world in terms of the infrastructure of studios and transmitters, the Canadian offerings are DD India, DD News, DD Bharati, DD Urdu and DD Sports.

Earlier this year ATN launch a Sikh and “Brit Asia” channel. With these additions it now offers more than 40 specialty channels, most targeted at Canada’s Chinese and South Asian communities.

Festival news

The annual mental health-focused Rendezvous with Madness Film screenings will take place May 5 to 11 in Toronto. The Canadian short films receiving national, North American or world premieres there are: Joe, from filmmakers Rich Williamson and Patrick Collins; 3, from Toronto-based Mexican filmmaker Mariana Osuna Perez; The Vegetable Game from Stephen Hosier and Portraits of Extraordinary Minds: Workman Arts Documentary Project, a series of docs from a variety of filmmakers, including Lucy Drummond, Paulette Andrea Hamilton, Gerrie Mackenzie, Will Sabado, Annette Seip, Monika Szopinska and TK Workman.

Netflix-related news

Juice, a Toronto screen-entertainment industry digital supply-chain company, has been awarded preferred vendor status from Netflix. It is said to be the only Canadian company to achieve that standard, however at least one Canadian company, Deluxe Toronto, has achieved a lower Netflix certified supply standard, Playback learned. The standards have to do with the digitization of files for the VOD service.

Transmedia

The producers of transmedia properties Seth On Survival and Your Lupine Life have released what they say is the in a series of interactive e-books, Archie Hartigan and the Frost Wolf. The title was written by and stars Ephraim Ellis as the supernatural survivologist Seth Greening, and was edited and produced by the Seth On Survival creators Torin Stefanson, Ephraim Ellis and Teri Armitage. It is available for iOS devices including iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch for 1.99 on the iTunes store.