BANFF: NextMEDIA wrapped and the Banff World Television Festival kicked off June 8 with a warning to producers of tough times ahead from crossover keynote speaker Malcolm Wall, CEO of content for Virgin Media of the U.K.

‘No one country is a proxy for the others, but I think we can learn from what is probably the most competitive television market in the world,’ Wall told hundreds of delegates from the digital media and television industries.

As ‘one of the very few’ players in TV, broadband, fixed-line telephone and mobile in the world, Virgin is in a unique position to gather research and resources, he noted. The company posted revenue of £4.7 billion in 2007.

The U.K. has a particularly vibrant broadcasting market, boasting an 85% digital penetration rate, and a rapidly growing VOD market, he said. Following up on trends out of the U.K., Wall warned that although downloading is on the upswing, very little of that is legal, and of that which is, little manages to generate significant financial return.

He predicted that fragmentation and demographic trends indicating that young people are turning increasingly to other media mean ‘linear television’ is likely to lose at least 20% of its market by 2013, and 40% by 2018.

‘More money will shift online,’ he said, ‘and advertising money has, and always will, continue to follow eyeballs.’ This trend promises to bring with it even more downward pressure on production budgets.

In suggesting ways to rise to these challenges and find sustainable production and broadcast models, he called for a shift in thinking, including sweet dreams like encouraging consumers to pay more for content, the development of premium pay event-based channels, and better application of digital rights management, as in the creation of subscription services that offer unlimited use but are not downloadable.

In addition, ‘we also need to improve research for web usage and VOD content,’ he added.

Wall also called for a firmer hand when dealing with the hot-button issue of piracy.

‘Two months ago, I visited Lime Wire and BitTorrent, and I was horrified at the amount of our content available,’ he said. ‘Copyright infringement is a civil offence [in England],’ he said, ‘but stealing copyrighted material is no different than shoplifting.’

Panels at the conference featured mobile, social networking and tips for working with advertisers. And while there was much talk of business models and revenue generation, panelists at ‘The Buying and Selling of Convergent Digital Media’ agreed that there is at present little business case for programming content produced exclusively for new media platforms.

Joseph Ferreira, GM and SVP of the CBS Audience Network, CBS Interactive, spoke of his company’s change in approach toward the Internet, noting that its own websites proved very costly to market and did not attract the hoped-for eyeballs. As a result, the network concentrated on placing its broadcast content on the hottest third-party social networking and web content aggregator sites instead.

For producers looking to attract the marketing force of a broadcaster for online content, his advice was ‘to get an advertiser onboard to underwrite it immediately.’

‘Don’t go out with ‘naked’ mobile content,’ said Stanley Fertig, SVP international for HBO, referring to just-for-mobile or mobile-first programming. If no one has heard of it and you are relying on viral marketing to build awareness, he added, then you are just counting on dumb luck.

Fertig’s participation in a nextMEDIA panel two years ago led to a deal with Bell Mobility, which recently launched the cable caster’s content on its phones.

Also at the fest, The Heavy Corporation announced the launch of Husky Media Canada, a video ad network created for video content across the web, with Corus Entertainment signing on as the company’s anchor partner. Toronto-based Corus will deploy and promote Heavy’s original programming across its sites, on its own channel and over selected Corus-owned radio stations, including 102.1 The Edge and Q107.

Husky Media is a new means of presenting advertising that is more assertive than banners but less intrusive than pre-rolls; a ‘video skin’ that wraps around but does not interfere with programming.

‘It’s with great pleasure that we bring our award-winning, irreverent programming to Corus Entertainment, one of the top Canadian media companies, marking the perfect occasion to launch Husky Canada,’ said David U.K., managing director of Husky Canada.

In addition, the finalists for the 2008 Canadian New Media Awards were unveiled at a luncheon June 8. They include iThentic’s Mobile Stories, Postcards from Crystal from Lifecapture Interactive of Toronto, and Odd Job Jack from Toronto’s Smiley Guy Studios, vying for the statuette for cross-platform excellence.

Up for the social media award are homelessnation.org from Homeless Street Archive, protagonize from Taunt Media, and, from Goodinson Design, Pixton, the user-generated comic strip.

Tapped for company of the year are Moment Factory out of Montreal, Big Blue Bubble from London, Toronto’s marblemedia and Vision Critical out of Vancouver. And up for most promising company of the year are b5Media, Filemobile and Viigo, all from Toronto.

Other award categories include gaming; children’s; culture, lifestyle arts; and excellence in learning and in news/information. In addition, two new awards were unveiled this year – excellence in social media websites, and excellence in social media applications.

The winners will be announced in October.

-With files from Mark Dillon