If Jerry Bruckheimer got into a fight with Jerry Bruckheimer, who would win? We’ll find out this fall when CTV and Global again go at it for ratings – both armed with new shows by the U.S. mega-producer.
Canada’s networks have closed their deals for the coming season, having spent a reported $200 million at the L.A. screenings on a better-than-average crop of dramas and sitcoms for 2005/06.

On the afternoon of June 12, Joe Novak of Calgary’s Joe Media will host a session for emerging TV producers at the Banff World Television Festival called Rookies in the Rockies. The idea behind the session, which takes place while many veteran participants will be hitting the links at the Fairmont Banff Springs Golf Course, is to give first-time attendees the most bang for their hard-earned buck.

Producers and broadcasters are worried that proposed changes to the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit at the hands of the Canadian Audio-Visual Certification Office will seriously impede the already-difficult task of financing indigenous film and television.
‘Our greatest concern is that producers won’t be able to negotiate the deals they need to negotiate in order to bring projects to fruition,’ says Susanne Vaas, CFPTA VP of business affairs. ‘Financing film and television productions has never been more difficult, and restricting access to the CPTC will only serve to curtail production activity.’

Thanks in part to a revived Germany and a lack of competition, the market at this year’s Cannes festival was busy and productive, according to Canuck distributors.

The Canadian Television Fund’s May 16 decisions for English-language drama, which rejected 44% of the total dollars requested, has left some producers wondering if the current approach to drama is working.

The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage investigation into domestic feature films slowed last month amid the near-collapse of the federal government. Hearings in Vancouver, scheduled for May 4 and 5, as well as those in Halifax, scheduled for May 18 and 19, were postponed to the first week of June. The tour should reach Vancouver before committee members move on to the Banff World Television Festival, June 12-15.

If you want access to the latest information and statistics on the current state of Canada’s drama crisis, you’d better be at Banff. The Canadian Coalition of Audio-visual Unions will present a new study focusing on 10-point, English-language drama on June 13, day two of the 2005 Banff World Television Festival.

Crossover between the interactive and broadcast sectors is ramping up like never before, and so it only makes sense that a congregation of broadcasters is a place where the new media industry should also be.

French-Canadian period drama Le Survenant continues its box-office domination among domestic films. By the end of May, after five weeks on Quebec screens, the Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm release neared $3 million in receipts. Directed by Le Dernier tunnel’s Erik Canuel and starring Jean-Nicolas Verreault, the Vision 4 production adapts a classic Quebec novel about a stranger who shakes up a turn-of-the-century town.

CTV made ratings history on May 20 with its broadcast of the two-hour season finale of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Nearly five million Canadians tuned in to watch ‘Grave Danger,’ the special episode helmed by Quentin Tarantino.

The Hot Sheet tracks Canadian box-office results for the period May 20-26 and television ratings for the period May 23-29.

It might be in bad taste. It might not. Almost no one has seen it. The real question about Deadly – the much-discussed movie about the crimes of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka – is, given the many raw nerves it has touched and its blizzard of bad press, will anyone in Canada actually buy it?

While the Banff World Television Festival may be the place ‘where great television is born,’ panels at this year’s conference will help guide producers about business opportunities here and abroad and prepare them for upcoming shifts in the industry.

More than 240 shorts from over 30 countries will be on display when the 11th Worldwide Short Film Festival kicks off June 14-19 in Toronto.

The CFTPA has elected Ira Levy of Toronto’s Breakthrough Films & Television as its new chairperson. Levy, who takes over from Laszlo Barna, says he is ‘delighted and thrilled’ by the job and that, as chair, he will work to see the Canadian Television Fund reformed.