Over his many decades in the business, Larry Wolf has seen his fair share of commercial productions. So when the chairman of Toronto-based Wolf Group says he’s never seen anything like the effort and quick turnaround to complete a ‘Canada Loves New York’ spot, you can take his word on it.

For the past several years YTV has been leveraging its expertise in the youth market to produce well-targeted commercial spots for its advertising partners.
Now the specialty channel is making it official. Corus Entertainment-owned YTV has christened its commercial production division Pester Productions and has announced that it will soon begin to cultivate its own roster of directors.
Tim Cormick, director of co-marketing, Corus Entertainment, television, says developing a separate commercial division is the logical evolution for YTV, which produces programming, Web-based products and has a well-respected research arm.
‘We’ve always got our antenna up for what’s working for kids. That would be our main point of difference,’ he says.

For the 14th year, ad industry good-timers came together this month in support of the Bereaved Families of Ontario and its Big Night Out. This year more than 800 people ate, drank and were merry at the Capitol Event Theatre in Toronto, and helped to raise more than $80,000 for the not-for-profit charity, designed to help the bereaved cope with their losses.

Our picture of the year comes from the eye of none other than David Cronenberg. The ac-claimed director loves his tech toys, and on the Toronto set of his forthcoming feature, Spider, he was never without his digital camera. The photograph, which ran on the Oct. 1 cover of Playback, is of actor Ralph Fiennes, who plays the film’s title character.

Days after receiving approval from the CRTC for its $205-million purchase of WTN, Corus Entertainment announced it will be moving the Winnipeg-based women’s channel into its Toronto television facility.

Citing adverse economic conditions, CTV has withdrawn its application for proposed TV licences to serve the Toronto and Kitchener-Waterloo regions of southern Ontario.

Montreal: With limited growth potential for local programming opportunities, more than 200 film and TV producers showed up for a Nov. 12 APFTQ seminar on international financing and coproduction.

The big story in the commercial production industry in 2001 was ‘diversification.’ It is a word that by now should be as familiar to our readers as the varnish on the bar at their favorite pub.

Don McLean, a 40-plus-year veteran of the commercial production industry, is executive producer and president of The Partners’ Film Company, Toronto.

Michael Schwartz and Paola Lazzeri are partners and executive producers at the Toronto-based commercial production company, Avion Films.

Cynthia Heyd is vice-president, director of broadcast production at BBDO Toronto. She has been with BBDO for five years and comes with more than 15 years of both agency and film production experience. Heyd also chairs the Institute of Canadian Advertising’s Broadcast Committee.

Vancouver: B.C.’s new government, awash in cost-cutting initiatives, has challenged the domestic film and television production community to grow to $2 billion by 2004 from $1.2 billion last year.