For the first time in its 48-year history, CHUM Limited is no longer led by a member of the Waters family. Eighty-one-year-old founder and controlling shareholder Allan Waters stepped down on Dec. 2, passing day-to-day control of Toronto’s radio and TV powerhouse to newly appointed president and CEO Jay Switzer.

Montreal: Distrib Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm reports the Charles Biname historical adaptation Seraphin – Un homme et son peche has set an opening week record for a Quebec film at the box office with receipts of $1.6 million. The film opened on 123 screens, ranking number one over the Nov. 29 to Dec. 1 weekend and bringing in just over $1 million, or 34% of the total take. Over the Dec. 6-8 weekend, Seraphin, still in top spot, pulled in an additional $787,000 for an opening 10-day take of $2.4 million.

Nelvana cuts continue

Once touted as the perfect equation for a successful diginet, Toronto-based PrideVision TV, owned by Headline Media Group, was forced to close its Church Street studio Dec. 13, losing seven staff, leaving it with a total of eight full- and part-time staff at its King Street headquarters.
Launched in fall 2001, targeting the niche gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered market, the station has struggled to grow beyond its current subscriber base of 20,000.

Episodes one and two of The Eleventh Hour both got clocked – bringing less than half a million viewers to CTV and casting doubt on the future of Canada’s only new English-language drama. Just 404,000 Canadians tuned in for the Nov. 26 debut, followed by 456,000 on Dec. 3.

Toronto-based Alliance Atlantis Communications and New Line Cinema have renewed their distribution agreement through to Dec. 31, 2005. The agreement gives Alliance Atlantis’ Motion Picture Distribution Group rights to New Line and Fine Line motion picture product in all media in Canada. The agreement with New Line, an AOL Time Warner company, was first signed in 1989 and was last renewed in June 1999. Financial details were not announced.

The recently issued CRTC Broadcasting Policy Monitor Report 2002 indicates a slight increase in total revenue for private conventional English-language TV to $1.52 billion in 2001, almost all derived from the sale of advertising and commercial airtime. Revenues for conventional TV have remained essentially flat since 1998, while revenues for English-language pay, pay-per-view and specialty TV continue to grow steadily, increasing to just over $1.2 billion in 2001, a 17% hike over 2000.

Guy Maddin’s critically acclaimed Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary adds the International Emmy for best arts programming to its growing list of awards. It was one of only seven programming awards presented at the 30th annual gala held in New York City Nov. 25.

A study released by Statistics Canada on Dec. 2 reflects the findings of the CRTC Broadcasting Policy Monitor Report that specialty television and pay-TV services are having a dramatic impact on the Canadian television industry, cutting into the market share of conventional television.

Canada’s film industry will have to adjust to major changes on the European coproduction scene. That is one of the key messages to emerge at Immersion 2002: Europe, a feature film coproduction and financing networking program held last month in Paris and produced by Telefilm Canada. Thirty-four Canadian producers participated in this year’s program (65 applied), joined for the first time by 45 European film producers.

Canada’s two principal coproduction partners in 2002 are again the U.K. and France, accounting for more than 80% of all coproduction activity.

Vancouver: Weird Homes and Weird Wheels information series producer Yaletown Entertainment has signed a new five-year, 50-picture output agreement with genre film producer Lloyd Simandl of North American Pictures.