A year ago this month, it looked like true brand integration and cross-promotions in Canadian film and TV were having a hell of a time getting traction.

In the last issue of Playback, I suggested that Telefilm’s mandate of creating a system whereby Canadian films account for 5% of the domestic box office by 2006 was unrealistic.

Each year Canadian producers come to TIFF in hopes of using the high-profile international festival as a launch pad for their features. The Canadian films presented at TIFF are theoretically the cream of the crop – the best of our national cinema.

Richard Stursberg’s move from executive director at Telefilm to executive VP of English Television at CBC has created a welcome buzz in the Canadian film and TV industry this summer.

As anyone who has attended a production industry confab can attest, your typical English-Canadian producer is male, over 40 years of age, has been in the business for over 10 years and most likely devotes some energy to making documentaries. Now the CFTPA has the data that backs up the anecdotal info.

We’ve been getting a lot of flack recently for a column I wrote last month questioning the sense of supporting seven production centers. I pointed out that nowhere in the world is there a country that supports seven film and TV production centers.

If progressive cultural policy is good business for the tens of thousands of producers, actors, writers, directors and crew who have en masse been contemplating alternative vocations these past few years while production has staggered, then they must all be cheering the results of the June 28 federal election.

With its production operations now almost completely put out to pasture, Alliance Atlantis executives addressed market analysts June 3 with a bullish eye on the company’s future prospects. This despite a $151.7-million third-quarter loss and three aborted attempts at releasing its year-end report, which had raised flags with some industry observers.

Minister of Heritage Helene Scherrer flew 2,400 km from her Louis-Hebert riding outside Quebec City to address the Canadian TV industry June 14 at the Banff Television Festival. She did this in the midst of a hotly contested battle in her own riding, where her own reelection is in jeopardy.

The Ontario Media Development Corporation is keeping the lid on a damning report that portrays Ontario’s production infrastructure as cracking and that is highly critical of both the Ontario government and its agency’s handling of the problem.

At the risk of being accused of being Toronto-centric, I’d like somebody to explain to me the value of having seven production centers in Canada.

Struggling to meet sales targets for The Gospel of John and dealing with the resignation of all but one director, Toronto-based Visual Bible International’s grand plans to produce word-for-word retellings of all 66 books of the Bible by 2015 may have hit something significantly stronger than the walls of Jericho.