Ottawa: Producers and other stakeholders came to Prime Time in Ottawa 2005, the CFTPA’s annual conference (Feb. 2-4), to hear from the two government mandarins who hold the most direct sway over the industry. What they got from Minister of Canadian Heritage Liza Frulla and Telefilm Canada executive director Wayne Clarkson were some reasons for optimism as well as some controversy.

After four months on the job as CBC’s executive VP in charge of English television, Richard Stursberg is asking the federal government for $84 million to get back some of the regional glory of the public broadcaster.
In an address to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage Feb. 3, Stursberg said he wants to speed up the pace of change at the CBC to deal with the crisis in Canadian drama, to strengthen the regional roots of CBC TV, and to renew CBC’s commitment to news, children’s, sports and cultural programming.

Vancouver: With his audience numbers in steady decline, Canada’s busiest and longest-running television coroner is getting a new job and new series this fall on CBC.
Dominic Da Vinci, played by actor Nicholas Campbell for seven seasons so far, will move from Da Vinci’s Inquest to become Vancouver’s mayor in the sequel Da Vinci’s City Hall – a move identical to that of the character’s inspiration, Larry Campbell, Vancouver’s former chief coroner and current mayor.

CTV and its partners have landed the broadcast rights to the Olympic Games of 2010 and 2012, ending months of fierce competition against CBC with a record-high bid of US$153 million, roughly CDN$192 million.

Quebec’s movies have again swept the Genie nominations and, this year, going into the silver anniversary of the awards, hold sway over almost all of the key categories, including best director, actor, actress and best picture on the strength of such recent box-office hits as Le Dernier tunnel, Ma vie en cinémascope and Monica la mitraille.

The focus groups have spoken. The life of Jane Black appears to be funny, well plotted, populated with strong comic characters and, on the whole, is likely to click with its target demographic. But the title character needs some work.

In 2004, 4.5% of what Canadians spent at theaters went to Canadian films, up from 3.6% in 2003, evidence that the industry is inching ever closer to Telefilm Canada’s goal of a 5% market share for domestic films by 2006, according to stats released last month by the federal agency.

Park City, UT: For a year that looked slow for Canada at the Sundance Film Festival, with only one feature and seven shorts playing the indie fest, it turned out to be anything but.

Global scored big with this year’s NFL final when 3.1 million Canadians tuned in to Super Bowl XXXIX on Feb. 6, drawing a 13.1 rating with 18-49s in Toronto and 13.8 in Vancouver. And yet, the numbers were down from last year’s big game, which brought in 3.6 million and hit shares of 16.3 with the same demo in Toronto and 13.9 in Vancouver.

Don McKellar’s Childstar won four awards from the Vancouver Film Critics Circle, including best Canadian film, best actor and best director for McKellar. It also took five Genie nominations, including best screenplay (see story, p. 2). But despite such critical acclaim, box-office receipts for McKellar’s second feature are not nearly as positive.

Divine Restoration could also be the name of a series about the rebound of NATPE, and not just one of the hotter-selling titles at this year’s market from Ellis Entertainment.

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.