All around the world countries are grappling with the issue of whether their existing copyright legislation can cope with the challenges of the digital economy.
Canada is no exception. Industry Canada and the Department of Canadian Heritage have just released two consultation papers regarding the most pressing areas – digital issues and retransmission rights. If you want to comment on these issues, you must submit your comments by Sept. 15.

Montreal: Lots of high-level European coproduction action at Transfilm this summer, with two projects in front of the cameras, the Gerard Pires (Taxi) action film Heist and Yves Simoneau’s historical blockbuster miniseries Napoleon, and a third project, Carole Giacobbi’s comedy thriller Polyesterday, slated to shoot here this fall.
Heist, a Mark Ezra story about extreme sport types on the criminal fringe, stars Stephen Dorff, Natasha Henstridge, Bruce Payne and Steven Berkoff. It’s been filming on location in Montreal over the past 12 weeks, and is a triparite coproduction between Claude Leger of Transfilm, Jason Piette, Michael Cowan and Jonathan Vanger of the U.K.’s Spice Factory, and Eric and Nicolas Altmayer of France’s Mandarin.

Banff: A chill may have been in the air and some snow may have fallen at the 22nd Banff Television Festival, but with more pitching sessions than ever before and such high profile speakers as Kelsey Grammer and Darren Star, few were complaining about the burgeoning festival that this year boasted a record 1,800 delegates from 28 countries.
But while the Canadian event ascends in size and profile, Canadian television product may have taken a step down this year, being virtually absent from the international award-winners’ queue.

As broadcast ownership contracts in the Canadian marketplace, and with the fresh news that the CRTC will let cablecos buy analog specialty channels, Corus Entertainment is busting the niche channel world wide open with its wildly varied slate of digi-specialties set to launch this fall.
Corus, which recently bought kid prodco Nelvana, used to emphasize its strengths as being music on radio, music on TV, as in CMT, and kid specialties, as in YTV and Treehouse. But as Paul Robertson, president of television at Corus, noted during the launch, ‘there’s no one particular area of expertise at Corus now.’ However, he agrees the kids franchises ‘will likely give us more international exposure’ in the sense that Corus could export kids channels around the world more easily than a doc channel, for instance, since factual channels are already everywhere.

The cable lobby says it’s only fair that cablecasters are now allowed to own analog specialty channels, but what is not clear is whether this rule change will one day lead to a distributors’ monopoly on specialty ownership.
The CRTC announced earlier this month that it will now allow cablecos to gain controlling interests in analog specialty channels, so long as certain conditions are met. While the regulator promises to provide the reasons for its decisions later, it does not put an upper limit on the number of specialties a cablecaster can own, nor does it deal with the marketplace fallout if cable companies buy out all the independent specialtycasters such as Alliance Atlantis, Astral and Chum.

Montreal: The Canadian Television Fund elected a new board of directors at its June 12 annual general meeting convened at the Banff Television Festival.
A new CTF policy document on governance structure is in distribution after being passed by the boards of directors of both the CTF and Telefilm Canada.
Highlights of the governance reorganization include a streamlined CTF executive committee and the creation of an independent board committee charged with dealing with all conflict of interest issues.

Following the federal government’s recent $60-million commitment to the CBC, it has been confirmed that English Television will receive almost half of it. At the same time, the Corp will lay off 50 employees in a move to further generate funds for programming and bolster the pubcaster’s level of ‘efficiency’ – a primary goal of its Transformation Plan.
The new funds will be allocated entirely to programming as follows: English Television – $29 million; French Television – $18 million; English and French radio – $5 million each; and new media – $3 million.
The money on the English Television side, as announced in early May when the federal government said it would infuse the Corp with an extra chunk of cash for the first time in 15 years, will be directed toward the CBC’s Transformation programming priorities.

Vancouver: Production volumes in Vancouver will drop about 75% July 1 in part because of the negative effects of a potential Screen Actor’s Guild strike.
At press time, U.S. studios and networks were negotiating with SAG – a positive sign that, like the Writers Guild of America talks last month, a strike may be averted at the 11th hour. The current SAG contract expires June 30.
For local crews dependent on U.S. service production for their livelihoods, however, the dramatic downturn will hit whether or not negotiations succeed.

New $10-million fund supports new media…

Some days, fairness is the weakest link….

Banff: Canadian Heritage Minister Sheila Copps and International Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew made it clear Canada intends to promote cultural diversity in upcoming WTO and GATS talks. …

Banff: The door is wide open for Canadian feature film producers looking to gain entry into European coproduction….