Sometime in June, Canadian Heritage Minister Liza Frulla is expected to make an announcement that has had broadcasters and TV producers buzzing for much of the last year. The federal government, it is assumed, will make a call as to who should take full control of roughly $250 million in funds directed at making TV shows. Will it be Telefilm Canada or the Canadian Television Fund?

There’s a lot riding on how events unfold in the mountains of Banff this coming June. Not that the organizers of the newly minted Banff World Television Festival will admit it, but it’s true.

Peer-to-peer, Napster-like trading of TV shows is starting to get a toehold in the culture. It’s worth noting now while it’s still just a toe, because the whole foot, and maybe the leg, is going to get a hold within this decade.

Richard Stursberg, CBC’s executive VP in charge of English television, has put drama at the center of his mandate to reform the national broadcaster. But to make significant inroads, he’ll need money, and lots of it.

Maybe certain broadcasters saw the writing on the wall. Maybe certain broadcasters realized that if they continue to let English-Canadian drama deteriorate as they had for the last five years, the federal authorities would wake up one day and ask what the hell is going on around here?

Ottawa: The CFTPA is calling for new strategies regarding the Canadian production sector, following the first marked decline in film and TV volumes published in its annual state-of-the-industry study, Profile 2005.

Now that this nasty business of uncompetitive tax credits is out of the way in B.C., Ontario and Quebec, it’s time for producers to get back to what is really important: lobbying for a new deal to help capitalize their struggling production companies.

For up-and-coming producers involved in Canada’s many academic film and TV programs, the concept of hands-on experience can be fairly straightforward: develop a script, raise some nominal funds, recruit talent and get the cameras rolling – and try to do it all within an allotted budget.

What a difference a year makes. This time last year, when producers convened at the CFTPA’s annual Prime Time in Ottawa, the mood couldn’t have been more somber.

It is an irony, albeit a cold one for West Coast stakeholders, that B.C. was the first of the big three industry centers to mobilize a province-wide industry lobby group, with the formal creation of the Motion Picture Production Industry Association of British Columbia, and yet is the last to see its 11% service production tax credit boosted to a competitive level.

If one were to look for a theme, a string of pearls, that connects the projects of Barna-Alper Productions through a quarter century of production, it would have to be its focus on social justice issues.

Alliance Atlantis SVP of dramatic programming Laura Michalchyshyn, fresh off celebrating the Gemini comedy win for Showcase’s Trailer Park Boys, is heading south to try her hand at picking winners for a U.S. cable outfit.