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Three years to Doomsday
The challenges for Canadian TV advertisers in 2009 are mounting. Never mind the recession. In a recent NATPE keynote speech, TiVo president Tom Rogers warned of another game-changer with far more catastrophic potential: the digital video recorder.
An audience with TSN’s King
Phil King does not fit the mold of a typical president at TSN, currently ranked Canada’s top specialty channel. He finessed his way to the senior role in 2004 from a finance background, and not the television production side, as was the norm with the previous four executives atop the sportscaster.
In America
Shortly after Screen Actors Guild national executive director Doug Allen suggested suspending a strike authorization vote, he found himself out on the pavement – and not on a picket line.
Motown megastudio casts shadow in Canada
Efforts to get Hollywood back to Ontario hit a new hurdle with news that Michigan will build a new $53-million, 600,000-square-foot megastudio in an abandoned GM truck plant. Motown Motion Picture Studios plans to open nine soundstages from 12,000 to 30,000 square feet in size in Pontiac later this year, without any apparent Canadian involvement or ownership. (Pontiac is a small city some 40 kilometers from the Detroit/Windsor border crossing.) The proposed studio, backed by generous state tax breaks, will instead be managed in Pontiac by L.A.-based Raleigh Studios and repped in Hollywood by the Endeavor Talent Agency.
Foreign Intelligence
There are some ideas only ‘experts’ understand – like why it makes sense to give trillions of taxpayer dollars to the numerically challenged numbskulls who have virtually bankrupted the global economy. But, not wanting to be left out, U.K. media regulator Ofcom has hit on a similarly counterintuitive idea. Briefed to save public service broadcasting, it has told leading ad-funded network ITV that it will be allowed to drop some of its more onerous responsibilities, creating what is being dubbed as a PSB-lite broadcasting model. More bizarrely, it has said that one way to save quasi-public broadcaster Channel 4 from financial ruin would be for it to merge with RTL-owned commercial network Five.
Canada 2025
Who could have predicted all this? If you consider how Canadian media has evolved in the past 15 years – the technological innovations, media globalization, the restructuring of domestic and international regulatory regimes and the demographic diversification – it’s a wonder that the industry was able to muddle through. All of these things have collectively transformed the Canadian media scene. And, given the speed and magnitude of these changes, it’s understandable if those at work in media were leery about what the next 15 years might bring.
Red Hot Camera
French new wave master Jean-Luc Godard once pointed out that there’s nothing like ‘a girl and a gun’ to grab your attention, although a girl and a camera run a close second in Red One boot camps.
Red cameras: collect ’em all!
With thousands of Red One cameras in shooters’ hands now, excitement is mounting for two new models set for release in 2009. Here’s a look at what to expect from the new Reds on the way.
Good news/bad news/less news at Canwest
The former Alliance Atlantis specialty channels, now controlled and managed by Canwest Global Communications in partnership with Goldman Sachs & Co., have emerged as a bright spot in an otherwise darkening TV ad business. CW Media Holdings, which includes Showcase and History Television, posted higher advertising and subscriber fee revenues as part of its first-quarter results. But the Canwest subsidiary swung to a steep first-quarter loss after recording foreign exchange losses of $57.1 million related to the influence of a weaker loonie on unhedged U.S. denominated senior unsecured notes.
Keleghan laughs all the way to the bank
There are two sides to Peter Keleghan. One is the actor who has made audiences howl at his off-the-wall characters on Canadian and U.S. series. The other is the staunch defender of the interests of his fellow performers. And it is both sides that ACTRA Toronto will fete when it bestows upon him the Award of Excellence at its annual awards show, Feb. 20 at the Carlu.
In the director’s chair: Alison Reid
First-timmer Reid’s Baby set for summer release
Moves and Signings
• NBC Universal has upped Ron Suter, its longtime Canadian sales head, to spearhead the U.S. network’s Canadian digital strategy. Toronto-based Suter moves up to EVP of NBC Universal Television Distribution in Canada, from SVP and GM. He makes the same leap at Universal Studios Canada.
Talent
Uwe Boll is doing Darfur – and has signed Kristanna Loken and Billy Zane to star in Janjaweed, a thriller set in the famously bloody region of the Sudan.
Hot Docs honors two
Alanis Obomsawin and Ron Mann will be honored for their decades of documentary making this spring at Hot Docs. Obomsawin will receive 2009’s outstanding achievement award, while Mann will be the subject of the annual Focus On retrospective.
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