Vancouver: The Canadian film industry may not want to ‘paint the devil on the wall’ and speculate about the fallout from potential U.S. labor disruptions this summer, but most are now bracing for a dramatic downturn in business.
Across the country, the outlook is pessimistic that American members of the Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild of America will ratify new contracts in time to avoid picket lines and work stoppages. And there is little confidence that Canada’s domestic industry will be able to fill the void to any positive effect.

No longer holding off for the CRTC to change its policy on cable ownership, Corus Entertainment finally bit the bullet and sold its 50% interest in Family Channel to the most likely bidder, Astral Media.
And in an almost simultaneous move, Corus sold its pay-per-view channel Viewer’s Choice to its separately traded mother corp., Shaw Communications, and bought the highly sought-after Winnipeg-based Women’s Television Network.

After losing the independent film channel licence to Salter Street Films back in December and then again to Alliance Atlantis Communications in February, Lisa de Wilde, president and CEO of Astral Television Networks says, ‘We’ve moved on.’
‘We figured out that with our first pay-TV window of international independent movies, we can do a lot of what we wanted to do with that niche through our main network, so that’s where our strategy is focused.’

Production in 2000 was hit and miss for the four Atlantic provinces, according to the East Coast film commissions. The major production centre of the region, Nova Scotia, dipped slightly while regional dark horse, New Brunswick, managed to more than double its production.

Montreal: Quebecor Media has filed a letter of complaint with the Competition Bureau asserting Cogeco and BCE are colluding to reduce the selling price of Quebecor’s 85% share of French-language TV network Television Quatre Saisons.
Quebecor put TQS on the block last fall after its $5.9-billion acquisition of Groupe Videotron and broadcast and media company subsidiary Groupe TVA, which Quebecor intends to keep.
Quebecor says BCE and Cogeco, the latter with a 13% to 15% share of TQS and a shareholder’s right of first refusal, made a joint bid for TQS that is considerably lower than an initial, standalone offer made by BCE. The BCE bid was reported to be more than $80 million.

Despite talk of a decline in the number of Canadian distributors – especially for drama programming – another healthy contingent is headed to the Palais des Festivals in Cannes to sell, sell, sell from April 2-6 at the MIP-TV program market.
Telefilm Canada will host 19 Canadian companies under its umbrella stand in the Palais basement, four more than at MIP 2000. Lise Corriveau of Telefilm says 135 Canadian companies are exhibiting at the market as compared with 1,183 exhibitors from all countries – up slightly from 1,170 in 1999.

Making his Playback debut with the following guest editorial, industry insider/displaced regional Bulgarian producer/resurrected satirist Dan Pierce will share his wit, savvy and front-line experiences dealing in the Canadian film and television community in a new column. On a semi-regular basis,…

Canada@Cannes returns…

In the story "There’s good news – and good news" in the Feb. 19 Report on Investment & Finance (p. 18), Paul Stewart of Recoup Inc. was erroneously referred to as Paul Sinclair….

The Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation deadlines published in Playback’s Feb. 19 Report of Investment and Finance are incorrect. The next funding deadline is May 4. The year’s final deadline is in September; an exact date is yet to be finalized….

Winnipeg: The third round of the Local Heroes Canadian Film Festival in Winnipeg was a roaring success, with daily jam-packed sessions and the festival’s first-ever feature film sellout with closing film Hey Happy!…

Filmmakers are being invited to submit to the third round of the National Screen Institute’s Features First program. Aimed at filmmakers in the early stages of their careers, the program is designed to help teams composed of a writer, a producer…