The NHL hockey playoffs are underway, and once again beer advertisers are going full throttle to capture the attention of a predominantly young, male demographic that will be glued to TVs for two straight months.
For creative teams and directors, this time of the year can be akin to Oscar season, with innovative beer spots revving up reputations and earning accolades and awards. For production houses, it is also a time to beef up bottom lines as budgets for other categories are bedraggled, partly because of over-dependence on U.S. advertisers mired in an uncertain economy.

The Canadian Television Fund is reporting massive oversubscription levels in all program categories, including drama, where demand in dollar terms is more than double the available resources.
The new high tide in rejection points to an accelerated ‘process of dismantling Canadian-made TV,’ says the CFTPA.
CTF says funding available for the spring round is $172 million, or 51% of demand.

Paul Gratton doesn’t think Decoys will sweep the next Genies. Or the Geminis. Or the festival circuit. The sci-fi comedy, which wrapped a six-week shoot in Ottawa early this month, is not meant to win critical praise or little gilt statuettes. No, it has bigger plans.
‘This was designed from day one to address the need for Canadian box-office hits and, most importantly, it’s designed to be the first of several CHUM-branded theatrical releases,’ says Gratton, VP/GM of CHUM’s Space: The Imagination Station.

It has been just over a year since Glenn O’Farrell took over as president and CEO of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters and, as such, he has rarely been far from the front lines of the many issues and debates in the radio and TV industries.
Under O’Farrell, the CAB has launched a very vocal campaign against signal theft and, recently, a massive multi-year study of ethnic diversity while continuing to lobby policymakers in Ottawa for greater funding and fewer restrictions.

After 12 years, director Richard D’Alessio has left Imported Artists to join director Pete Henderson and executive producer David Cranor as a partner at new Toronto prodco Brown Entertainment, which launched in February.
D’Alessio says the move is an opportunity to help build a shop that will focus on a distinctly Canadian sense of humor and he hopes it will fill a previously vacant niche in the Canadian industry by fixing on a specific comedy identity.

Toronto’s Avion Films recently signed a deal with The Institute, which adds Avion director Tim Hamilton to the L.A. prodco’s roster for U.S. representation. The deal makes Hamilton one of two directors represented by the six-month-old company. The reciprocal deal also gives The Institute’s Michael Bay, director of U.S. blockbuster Pearl Harbor, Canadian representation at Avion.

War and pestilence haven’t yet had an apocalyptic impact on Canada’s film and television production volumes – U.S. producers are more interested in the ongoing ACTRA contract negotiations – but protracted assaults on both Iraq and the killer pneumonia SARS could curb the long-term production trends.

Ontario’s ‘made for TV’ budget turned out to be a ‘to be continued’ cliffhanger late last month, when the province postponed its decision on proposed changes to the Ontario Film and Television Tax Credit. The budget, delivered by Finance Minister Janet Ecker amid a storm of controversy to a studio audience at a Brampton, ON factory, made only one change to the province’s equity investment rules despite recent lobbying by the CTFPA and other groups for changes that include hiking the OFTTC by an additional 13%, up from 20%.

Alliance Atlantis Communications and Miramax Films have extended their long-term output distribution agreement through to Dec. 31, 2006.

Organizers of the Toronto International Film Festival this month announced plans to move the festival, and its many year-round events, to a new $120-million home in 2006. Construction is slated to begin next spring on Festival Centre, a five-storey theatre-and-condo complex in downtown Toronto and, with luck, the ribbon will be cut in time for the 31st TIFF.

While war in Iraq kept some Americans away and SARS fears kept the Japanese grounded at home, the French broadcasters were doing business at MIPTV 2003, held March 24-28 in Cannes, which netted a $200,000 deal for Toronto distributor Oasis International.

Stealing Time Editing is gearing up for expansion and a major surge in work volume after the relatively small Toronto post house was selected by Young & Rubicam over some of the city’s larger post facilities to be the primary post-production supplier on creative produced for the agency’s client Priszm Brandz.