Toronto-based Loten Media and Saskatchewan’s Partners In Motion have inked a deal to coproduce a 26-part children’s stop-motion series, Dear Tildy, which features a kangaroo and her zany neighborhood friends whose travels take them across the map.

Aimed at the six- to nine-year-old market, Dear Tildy features 10 minutes of stop motion and three minutes of live action per episode. The animation is being directed by Dave Thomas in Toronto (who created the series with Wendy Loten), while script and design work will take place in Saskatchewan. No writers have been brought on board as yet.

scn has licensed the 26 by 15-minute series and additional Canadian broadcast partners are being sought, says Partners ceo Ron Goetz, who is exec producing the series. Deals are being finalized with German and u.s. broadcasters. Compass International of Toronto is distributing the $3-million to $4-million program.

Loten is currently producing Suzuki’s Nature Quest, a nature-adventure series for ytv.

Partners’ productions include Disasters of the Century and A Soldier’s Voice, both for History Television.

* Great North wheeling and dealing at Banff

‘When you put a producer, a broadcaster, a banker and a public funding agency on the same team – it’s a winning combination,’ says Great North Productions’ Andy Thompson, who brought the art of deal-making to the Banff golf course when he teamed up with Discovery Channel’s John Panikkaar, the Royal Bank’s Robert Morrice and Telefilm Canada’s Danny Chalifour. The foursome emerged the winners of the First Annual Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television – Banff Television Festival Golf Tournament.

Another Great North team emerging at Banff: the Edmonton-based company has joined up with GRB Entertainment of Studio City, California to form a new production company, GRB Great North Entertainment.

The two companies have worked together on numerous projects over the past few years and decided to formalize the relationship, says Thompson.

GRB Entertainment, led by president Gary Benz, produces and distributes factual programming and was recently acquired by German media company Axel Springer, which now holds a 51% stake in grb, a supplier of programming to Fox, Discovery Channel and Fox Family.

Under the terms of the deal, GRB Great North will produce a minimum of 25 hours of reality programming per year, focusing on series and specials.

The new company is based in Edmonton and all projects will be produced in Canada with Canadian talent. GRB Entertainment will maintain worldwide distribution rights to the jointly produced programs, while Great North International will oversee North American distribution.

Upcoming GRB Great North projects are High Seas Rescue, three one-hours for Learning Channel and Discovery Canada; season two (13 one hours) of Storm Warnings for Discovery u.s. and Canada; and Life and Dare, three one-hours produced for Life Network and The Learning Channel slated to begin production within a few weeks.

* A-Channel expands

Craig Broadcasting is bringing the A-Channel branding to Manitoba and setting up a digital broadcasting studio in Winnipeg.

A-Channel Manitoba will sign on Sept. 17. The launch will see the revamping of the channel to conform with the on-air look and programming of A-Channel Edmonton and Calgary. This will include a new two-hour local morning show, Big Breakfast, and one-and-a-half hours of local news in primetime.

gm Shane Neufeld says the station is hiring on-air and in-house producers and will also need to bolster its technical staff.

For the first time in its 13-year history, the Craig station will have a Winnipeg base, with the opening of a storefront design studio in the historic Old Steam Building in the Forks market district.

The new site completes a province-wide programming and production network, which also includes facilities in Portage la Prairie and Brandon. Neufeld says with the rebranding comes an enhanced mandate to provide Manitoba with expanded regional coverage of over 20 hours of local programming per week.

* Shirley Holmes IV a go

Credo Entertainment has confirmed that season four of The Adventures of Shirley Holmes (coproduced with Vancouver’s Forefront Entertainment) will go ahead after some financial rejigging to deal with budget shortfalls when the series was offered lower Canadian Television Fund allotments this year.

To make up the reduced government funding, the budget has been trimmed from $6.4 million to $5.4 million. High production values will be maintained through deferrals and by taking producer overhead and fees out of the budget, says executive producer Kim Todd.

She adds that all involved stretched their resources to the limit (including ytv, which stepped up its licence fee) to ensure an additional 13 episodes were greenlit, bringing the series to the magic number of 52 episodes. mtn has taken a second window and bbc and Fox Family buy the finished shows as acquisitions.

Production begins Aug. 16 in Winnipeg.

*MidCan, Meeches team up

MidCanada Production Services and Meeches Video of Winnipeg have formed Eagle Vision Inc. Aboriginal Television Productions.

Meeches principal Lisa Meeches is the creator and producer of the long-running aboriginal magazine show Sharing Circle, which airs on the Craig Broadcasting stations, scn and tvnc. The upcoming eighth season will be produced under the Eagle Vision banner and has also been licensed to the soon-to-launch Aboriginal Peoples Television Network and the last 150 episodes of Sharing Circles are also repackaged for the new net.

The latest installment of the Sharing Circle series will see Meeches joined by cohost Tina Keeper.

MidCan exec producer Kevin Dunn is heading up Eagle Vision with Meeches. MidCan will provide technical, production and marketing support for the company’s new projects.

Projects in development at Eagle Vision include an aboriginal women’s biography series, Grandmother Turtle; a magazine series, First Sports; a storytelling program, Legends; and a health show, The Medicine Wheel.

Dunn says a yet-to-be-determined percentage of profits from the new company will be funneled into a fund to develop aboriginal filmmakers.

MidCan recently completed PanAmanica, a series for the cbc celebrating the arrival of the Pan American Games to Winnipeg. Projects in development include a half-hour dramatic comedy set at a diner. A pilot of Breakfast All Day has been produced for CBC Manitoba.

MidCan is working with Bundy Productions and GFT/Paquin on Camp Wiganishie, a kids’ music/ variety series starring children’s entertainer Al Simmons. Nancy Trites Bodkin has written the pilot.

In development with Craig Broadcasting is a 13 half-hour consumer electronics info series titled Hi-Fi Guys.

MidCan and Dennis Foon are developing a half-hour docudrama on teenage gambling titled Chasing The Money, which combines scenes from Foon’s play of the same name and interviews with kids struggling with gambling addictions.

An organic lifestyle series is also on the development slate.

* Latest CFCN investments

The latest round of CFCN Production Fund money has been handed out to Alberta projects with combined budgets worth over $7 million.

Scriptwriter development funding was awarded to Theresa Wynnyk for Women On The Edge and to Ted Boniface for Tarry A While.

Producer development money went to Real Time Films for Boom, Interstate 80 Entertainment’s No Money Down and Chaos A Film Company’s Truth Hurts.

Equity investment dollars were handed out to Alberta Filmworks’ North of 60: Movie ii, Burns Films’ Way Downtown, Fortune Films’ From Script to Screen, Millennium Folk Films’ The Last Hill Tribe of the Twentieth Century and Northern Lights Productions/Credo Entertainment/Clear Water Media’s The End of Evolution.

The next application deadline for the CFCN Production Fund is Thursday, Sept. 2. Over the past three years, this fund for Alberta-based producers has triggered $40 million worth of production.

* Alberta summer slate

Alberta Filmworks’ latest installment in the North of 60 Movies, Trial By Fire, will shoot Aug. 5 to Sept. 1 on the Lynx River set in Bragg Creek, Alta. and on location in Yellowknife, nwt.

Upcoming Calgary shoots include The Virginian, a feature produced by Georgian Bay Production Company, which goes to camera July 6 to Aug. 14.

Just A Kid, a children’s series from Riverwood Productions, entered principal photography June 8 and continues until early December. The project is for ytv and Nickelodeon and is about a 13-year-old girl who moves in with her relatives. Producers are Helene White, Jana Veverka and Tony Thatcher. The cast includes Lindsay Felton, Cynthia Belliveau, Jeremy Foley and Ken Tremblett.

Although Albertans are all abuzz about rumors that a movie to star Madonna has been scouting in Alberta, the provincial film commission says the location shoot as yet has not been locked down.

* New board

Westwind Pictures/Film Crew Productions’ Michael Snook has been elected chair of the Saskatchewan Film Producers Association. The board of directors for the coming year (’99/2000) also includes Kevin DeWalt of Minds Eye Pictures (past-chair), Gail Tilson of Independent Moving Pictures (secretary), Susanne Bell of Heartland Motion Pictures (treasurer) and Tri-Media Productions’ Tony Towstego.

* Schmoozing U.S. prods

Five American production company execs had a whirlwind tour of Manitoba’s production community earlier this month as part of Manitoba Film & Sound’s sixth annual U.S. Producer Tour to attract offshore production to the province.

Phoenix Pictures’ Edward Teet (Oliver Stone’s U-Turn, Swept From The Sea and Oscar-nominated The Thin Red Line), vp production at nbc James R. McGee Jr., independent producer Jay Heit (Trimark Pictures’ Inconvenienced), Atlas Pictures’ Denny Kennedy, and Showdown Productions cofounder Terry O’Rourke took part in the June 1-4 event. So far, several location scouts have resulted from the tour but no shoots have been firmed up.