Don’t expect Peter Viner to stray too far from the Asper family fold now that he’s ended nearly 30 years working at CanWest Global Communications.

A disagreement about the level of blood and gore in Skinwalkers was one of the things that kept the Ontario-made werewolf picture on the shelf eight months longer than expected, say its producers. There was also trouble mounting an expected spring release and, more recently, the unappealing prospect of opening amid the buzz of The Simpsons Movie.

The mayor of Toronto donned a hardhat and tightened the bolts on a girder at Filmport on Aug. 8 – a small step towards completing the forthcoming megastudio he and the local industry hope will restore the city as the country’s top production center.

Philip Keatley, who helped develop the hugely successful series The Beachcombers and cop show Cold Squad, died of lung cancer on Aug. 6.

OTTAWA: The headhunting firm Egon Zehnder International has been hired by the federal government to look for a new president and CEO of CBC, to replace Robert Rabinovitch, whose second term ends in November.

• The National Film Board has appointed Claude Joli-Coeur as assistant commissioner at the NFB. Joli-Coeur, who was interim commissioner prior to the arrival of Tom Perlmutter, will also remain director of business affairs and legal services, a position he has held since joining the NFB in 2003. Also at the board, Luisa Frate is the new administration director, taking over for Maryse Charbonneau, who has retired after 22 years.

• CBC has signed a three-year deal to air Toronto Raptors games – putting Canada’s only NBA team back on network television for the first time in four years. The deal with owner Maple Leaf Sports Entertainment includes up to 10 regular season games in the coming season, and up to 20 each in the 2008/09 and 2009/10 seasons. The Raptors also have deals in place with TSN, The Score and Rogers Sportsnet for 2007/08. Games also run on the team-owned Raptors NBA TV digichannel.

The story ‘Raymont on the Border’ in the Aug. 6 issue reported that The Border was shelved by CBC after the Sept. 11 attacks. In fact, the project was pitched after 9/11 and remained in the works throughout.

A key reason Discovery Channel is so happy with the online aspect of its $20-million Mars mega-project is that it had Toronto interactive firm QuickPlay Media involved from first discussions through to final script.

The opening of Guns – the new, two-part miniseries from director David ‘Sudz’ Sutherland – will seem familiar to viewers in Toronto when a six-year-old girl is gunned down on Yonge Street.