Vancouver: While Rogers Communications’ free preview for the new third tier of specialty channels officially ended at midnight on Jan. 17, the cost of trapping means at least three more months could go by before viewers taking a pass on the…

Spurred by a couple of months of information-seeking phone calls, Playback has compiled the co-ordinates of the latest batch of specialty channels, American and Canadian. Report prepared by Pamela Swedko. American Channels – Black Entertainment Television Production contact: Lydia Cole, vp…

Ottawa’s Funbag Animation Studio has completed a deal with Holland-based Philips Electronics subsidiary PolyGram Filmed Entertainment that will see PolyGram invest a 25% minority stake in the five-year-old toon company. Besides the investment, PolyGram will enjoy a 30-day first-look deal for…

Vancouver: An alien force has infiltrated the collective mind and body of Vancouverites and made them crazy. It’s The X-Files – a show that began as a kind of whim for the fledgling Fox network and became a cultural icon of…

The annual Thank You Toronto/Ontario campaign has awarded six Ontario communities with a $5,000 donation each. Recipients are Grandview Children’s Centre Foundation in Durham Region; Carling Youth Sports Complex and Shawanaga First Nations Reserve Recreational Centre, both located in the Nobel/Parry…

‘We really have to stop being invalidated by people who call us idealistic, or naive, or too emotional, or all these other things that are said to silence the brilliance of ordinary people.’ – Kathleen Shannon Kathleen Shannon died Jan….

Ottawa’s Dynomight Cartoons handled layout and posing on Nelvana’s Rupert, not Cinar’s Arthur as stated last issue. …

Files from Utah Fade in: Mormon country, thigh-high snow. A group of film critics exits the theater overwhelmed by excess. The obsessed, possessed, suffering, terrified, depraved, elated, satiated, vulnerable, perverted, yearning, stupid, calculating, and fearless are on screen. Erotica, with a…

– New Banff governors The Banff Television Festival has selected five international television executives and four key Canadian players to join its board of governors. The two American governors are last year’s winner of the Astral Award of Excellence, Di

New Orleans: Nelvana has named Sidney A. Kaufman executive vp worldwide marketing for Nelvana Communications, the Toronto-based company’s u.s. subsidiary. Kaufman joins Nelvana from Total Licensing Services, a full-service licensing and merchandising company which he founded in 1994. He will continue…

After all, if that many people would pay anywhere from $36 to $180 for the fundraising event, surely there was potential for viewers to flock to the cinema. The only snag in the plan was that cbc holds first window exploitation…

Three months behind its launch, the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund has spent more than $2 million on 12 tv programs twinned with a multimedia component. Projects receiving funding in 1997 were Empire Of The Bay, produced by Jennifer Puncher…