For Canadian news consumers, the devastating Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami in Asia and Africa has led to a flurry of media coverage that will likely continue until at least the end of January. More than two dozen Canadian journalists and supporting crew have been reporting from the affected countries since Dec. 26. And while the newsroom chiefs have kept an eye on the rising costs of the extensive coverage, the media outlets have been focused on the enormous human story and galvanizing relief efforts at home.

Now that he’s got it, Serge Bellerose still isn’t sure what to do with Toronto 1. But that’s okay, he says, no rush. There won’t be any real changes at the struggling station until fall, which gives him and the other brass at Quebecor a bit of time to figure out what went wrong and how to set it right.

Vancouver: Brightlight Pictures, one of the busiest service producers on the West Coast, is threatening to move almost US$100 million in feature productions to Ontario over the next few months because of that province’s newly improved tax credits.
The US$50-million videogame-turned-thriller Dungeon Siege, in the works for Boll KG of Germany, could save ‘hundreds of thousands’ by going east, says Brightlight partner Shawn Williamson.

Quebec jumped into the tax-credit ring late in December by upping credits for foreign productions to 20% from 11%, just a week after the Ontario government increased its Production Services Tax Credit to 18% from 11%.
The nine-point increase for foreign productions, announced by Quebec Finance Minister Yves Séguin on Dec. 30, boosts the province’s tax credit two percentage points higher than Ontario’s.

This month, three new comedy pilots featuring some of the top names in Canadian comedy, including Colin Mochrie, Mary Walsh and Peter Keleghan, will premier on CBC. And rather than relying solely on ratings and sample audiences to evaluate the pilots’ potential, the pubcaster is going straight to the source – the viewers.

Dramatically increased costs and concerns about organization have put NATPE on probation with Telefilm Canada, casting a shadow across the upcoming TV market, set for Jan. 25-27 at the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Convention Center in Las Vegas.

The Canada/U.K. suspense thriller White Noise, starring Michael Keaton, grossed US$24 million across North America over its Jan. 7 opening weekend, making it the second highest grossing film of the weekend behind Meet the Fockers, which generated US$28 million. By comparison, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, another Canadian film that opened wide in the U.S., brought in US$28 million over its first seven days in theaters.

CTV’s two-part MOW Lives of the Saints, starring Sophia Loren and directed by Jerry Ciccoritti, drew a very strong average of 1.45 million viewers over Jan. 2 and 3, according to Nielsen Media Research, playing well to stay-at-home post-holiday crowds after heavy promotion throughout December. Ratings dipped slightly on the second night, however, from 1.46 million to 1.42 million.

This time last year, a warning went out about the future of digital TV when, in these pages, execs at CTV, Alliance Atlantis and other casters noted that the coming year – 2004 – would probably make or break many of the 50-or-so digital channels in Canada.

Telefilm Canada’s Canada Feature Film Fund and Screenwriting Assistance Program have announced their selections for 2004/05.

Entertainment lawyers Stephen Stohn and Ron Hay made additions to their Toronto firm last month with new partners Diana Cafazzo and Sandra Richmond. The expanded outfit – now Stohn Hay Cafazzo Dembroski Richmond LLP – is repositioning itself to cover more areas of media law. It added music lawyer Steven Ehrlick and media/sports lawyer David Dembroski in 2003.

Brault wins Prix Jutra-Hommage

* Yves Dion has been appointed president of TVA Films, replacing Pierre Lampron, who recently moved up to a VP spot at parent company Quebecor Media.

It is an irony, albeit a cold one for West Coast stakeholders, that B.C. was the first of the big three industry centers to mobilize a province-wide industry lobby group, with the formal creation of the Motion Picture Production Industry Association of British Columbia, and yet is the last to see its 11% service production tax credit boosted to a competitive level.

Toronto: David Wu did not want to come back to Toronto. It was the spring of 2003 and he was in L.A. when news broke about a mysterious and deadly disease from Asia that was on the loose in the Ontario capital, where he has done a good deal of work since the late ’90s. Rumors and infections were spreading quickly. The same day he was to fly out of LAX, as his wife was trying to talk him out of his business trip, an increasingly panicky CNN reported that another 600 people had taken ill.
He was nervous, but flew back anyway and, as far as he knows, ended up being the only Chinese director in Toronto during the SARS crisis. Who better, he asks now with a laugh, to shoot the MOW?