The future of new media content looks rosier in the wake of new funding recently announced by Bell and Telefilm Canada.

The Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund announced earlier this month that, going forward, it will receive more than $1 million in additional, annual contributions from Bell ExpressVu, owing to recent changes by the CRTC to the ExpressVu licence.

ExpressVu was previously required to pay a 5% share of its pay-per-view revenue to various independent funds, including the CTF, but last month won approval to put its entire 5% into the Bell Fund, which backs television projects that are enhanced by interactive components.

Producer Stephen Stohn of Epitome Pictures (Degrassi: The Next Generation, Instant Star) says his company is thrilled with the new infusion of cash.

‘Going forward, we’ve now got new technologies like webisodes, mobisodes and other interactive features that U.S. broadcasters are undertaking and that we’re starting to undertake,’ says Stohn. ‘So having the support of the Bell Fund helps propel producers into this future, which is just going to become more and more the future of television.’

Meanwhile, Telefilm’s Canada New Media Fund has backed another 51 projects covering a variety of platforms such as wireless, game consoles, DVD and CD-ROM.

Among the wireless winners is Toronto’s marblemedia, which has two projects, CONtxt and The Art of Seduction, in development.

‘CONtxt is an interactive wireless and cultural-content destination for audiences of performance-based events or exhibitions,’ explains coproducer Matt Hornburg. ‘Using emerging mobile voice-recognition interactivity, CONtxt audiences will have exclusive content available for them to explore through voice commands and accessible to them wherever they might be.’

The Art of Seduction, meanwhile, is a series of 10 micro-movies, directed by prominent Canadian filmmakers, which will be released on cell phones.

‘The exciting thing about this project is that the first-window broadcast will be on cell phones and then online,’ says Hornburg. ‘Broadcasters such as Bravo! have committed to then broadcasting the shorts on television as a second window, which is an unprecedented content delivery strategy designed to prove as a possible model for the future of short-form content in Canada.’

Hornburg and partner/coproducer Mark Bishop feel it’s vital for marblemedia to also engage the wireless platform for content development.

‘We want to tell stories and produce integrated brands in which the content created is delivered to audiences in new and exciting ways,’ says Bishop. ‘Wireless is an emerging platform which we feel is a core component of our business moving forward.’

www.telefilm.gc.ca

www.bellfund.ca