While issues of access are complex in the making of any documentary, when the sports industry is involved the process can be particularly labyrinthine. Big-name sports celebs have to be tracked down through a maze of agents and sports associations, and…

Canadian tv series production activity in Ontario rose to $279.6 million in 1997, up 62% from last year’s $172 million tally….

Shaftesbury Films is bringing Mordecai Richler’s Jacob Two Two Versus The Hooded Fang to the big screen as a live-action musical budgeted at over $5 million….

The Canadian Television Cable Production Fund License Fee Program is debating a ‘Distinctively Canadian Programming Incentive’ clause for inclusion in next year’s program guidelines. The incentive plan would require a reduction in funding levels across the board, while projects deemed ‘distinctively…

Bravo!fact, a fund sponsored by Bravo! specialty channel, has announced its latest round of awards, which offer up to 50% of the production costs (capped at $25,000) of two- to six-minute arts videos covering a variety of disciplines….

Greenlight Film and Television is partnering with a trio of u.k. producers and broadcasters cbc and bbc to develop a $10.3-million, half-hour series, Fungus the Bogeyman, a live-action/animatronics combo….

‘We literally had to hop, skip and jump across the country,’ says producer Virginia Thompson of the havoc unstable provincial funding mechanisms played during the four-year effort to bring The Incredible Story Studio to the small screen. The launch is slotted…

Details remain sketchy, but Playback has learned that tvontario’s bid to form an independent not-for-profit corporation reportedly includes a distribution and marketing partnership with the private sector which names Atlantis Communications and Discovery Channel parent Netstar Communications as contenders for the…

The fourth run of MIP-Asia is set to go Dec. 4-6 in Hong Kong with eight Canadian stands booked as of Playback press time. The number is relatively unchanged from last year’s nine booths, reflecting a hung jury on the benefits…

Protocol Entertainment is looking beyond its hit kids’ show Goosebumps to a new series, Young Heroes, half-hour dramatizations of famous figures kids look up to….

The Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television has switched gears in its approach for the upcoming 18th annual Genie Awards and shepherded six national broadcasters into a collaborative promotional alliance. The awards event will serve as the centerpiece of a broader…

Although Disney Channel offered to greenlight another order of Insight Productions’ hit teen series Ready or Not, John Brunton declined, deciding the characters and storyline had been stretched far enough after 65 eps….