Canadians may be more inclined towards the hockey, curling and other icy events of the Winter Olympics, but this summer more Canadians were watching the Olympics unfold in Athens than did when the Summer Games were hosted in Sydney, Australia four years ago.

A National Hockey League work stoppage this fall would be a body-check to the CBC, but whether the public broadcaster will be slightly bruised or put on the long-term injury list is a question mark.

Fahrenheit raises AAC’s profits

Just five years after Cirque du Soleil Images was formed, the production arm of the Quebec performing arts phenomenon has produced its first live television special to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Cirque du Soleil. The live show, performed and recorded July 11 for the finale of the Montreal Jazz Festival, not only dazzled the 200,000 music lovers gathered in the city’s downtown streets and more than 500,000 Canadians watching the live show on CBC, but also forged new international partnerships and distribution avenues into Germany and France for the young Montreal production company.

* CBC’s head documentarian Mark Starowicz, creator of The Journal and executive producer of Canada: A People’s History, has been named an Officer of the Order of Canada.

After a long battle with aphasia, Jean A. Pouliot, founder of French-language television outlets TVA and Television Quatre Saisons, died on Aug. 8 in Montreal. He was 81.

Alliance Atlantis has unveiled the fall programming for its slate of specialty channels, including the lineup for its newest, Fine Living Canada, set to launch Sept. 3.

Black keynotes history confab

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.

Marsha Henry is a lawyer in the Knowledge Management department of the Toronto law firm of McMillan Binch LLP.

There were a couple of omissions in the Aug. 2 Post Quarterly feature ‘Canucks help post summer blockbusters.’ Toronto-based Dave Asling Miniature Effects was the miniature effects supervisor on the Twentieth Century Fox feature I, Robot, while Toronto’s Deluxe Sound & Picture provided dailies and sound mixing to the Alliance Atlantis release Resident Evil: Apocalypse.

Canadians still love their Olympics. In a recent online poll of Playback readers asking ‘Do you plan to watch the Summer Olympics on CBC, TSN, Radio-Canada and RDS?’, 71% of respondents voted yes. 18% answered that no, they don’t watch much TV in the summer, while 11% replied that they were more excited about the forthcoming World Cup of Hockey.