The Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television has chosen former Bay Street media and entertainment lawyer Sara Morton as its new CEO. She took office on July 3.

Norman Jewison, Moses Znaimer and Gordon Pinsent were among the industry icons on hand at Toronto’s Drake Hotel on June 26 to be inducted into the inaugural Canadian Film and Television Hall of Fame, organized by Playback.

• Paul Atkinson is the new chairman of the Toronto International Film Festival Group. Atkinson will sit on the 24-member board alongside four new directors – filmmaker Deepa Mehta, Bell Canada executive William J. Fox, UCS Forest Group CEO Warren Spitz and Constance Sugiyama, senior partner at the law firm of Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP. Atkinson has been on the TIFFG board since 2004 and is also its campaign co-chair.

Peter Liba, longtime executive at CanWest Global and former lieutenant governor of Manitoba, died early in the morning of June 21 at his family’s summer house near Clearwater Bay, ON. He was 67. Liba was for many years executive director of corporate affairs at CanWest, a job he left in 1999 for his political post. He returned to the company in 2005 as chairman of CanWest MediaWorks Income Fund.

• Decode Entertainment has sold the pay-TV rights for Franny’s Feet to Disney Channel in Germany. The entire 78 x 11 series has also been picked up by Cartoon Network Korea and renewed at Cartoon Network Taiwan. A line of Franny’s toys, games and other merchandise is due to hit stores in 2008. The Toronto shop has also sold its 65 x 30 series Naturally, Sadie to Nickelodeon UK, ABC in Australia, Ireland’s RTE, UAE’s E-Vision and ATV in Hong Kong.

As the dust settles on the two top networks’ upfronts, CTV looks to have made stronger fall schedule acquisitions than Global, but it will be hard-pressed to maximize its schedule because of a number of shows airing out of simulcast and the loss of the Citytv stations, which it was forced to sell by the CRTC.

The Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design has an edge when it comes to turning out digital media minds, if the recent Canadian New Media Awards are any indication. Three students from the Vancouver school swept the nominations in the event’s Emerging Innovator of the Year category, with Jason DaSilva ultimately taking home the prize.

What’s the magic formula that feeds and nurtures the Quebec feature film industry to hit after hit – and has for the past decade? The latest example of its seemingly inexhaustible surge came the Canada Day weekend, when Alain DesRochers’ thriller Nitro opened to $1.2 million on 124 screens in its home province.

If your life were to end at 3 p.m. tomorrow, what would you regret not doing? That’s the question producers of CBC’s new No Opportunity Wasted asked the thousands of people from across the country who applied to face their fears on national television.

Amaze Film + Television (Saint Ralph) has started shooting its next feature, Finn on the Fly, a family comedy about a Frisbee-playing dog who is turned into a human by a science experiment gone awry. It is filming in Regina and Moose Jaw, SK until early August, starring Matthew Knight (The Dresden Files), Ana Gasteyer (Mean Girls) and Ryan Belleville (Life on a Stick).

Sturla Gunnarsson (Beowulf & Grendel) starts work this month on Flight 182, a documentary about the Air India terrorist bombing that killed 329 in 1985. Gunnarsson says that only now, after the many inquiries into the bombing, can the full story be told. The two-hour doc, produced by 52 Media and Eurasia Motion Pictures, is set to air early next year on CBC.

The headline-grabbing scandals of many of today’s young celebrities are the inspiration for a new feature set to shoot in Alberta. Cat’s Cradle, produced by Skyline Motion Pictures of Edmonton, is the story of a young, wholesome pop star named Cat who becomes a notorious pop tart.