In the not-so-distant past, dot-coms and broadcasters proclaimed all manner of Web and interactive innovations that would usher in the home computer as a broadcast delivery device to enhance and even challenge traditional forms. In recent months, however, pie in the sky has fallen to earth with a splat.
The struggle of Internet-based companies, be they content or service providers, has been well documented. Toronto’s ExtendMedia seemed to represent the convergence vanguard, helping to develop the interactive programs Drop the Beat and Dish It Out, produced by Alliance Atlantis Communications (the former with Back Alley Film Productions). But the iTV company recently slashed staff to 55 from 160 in a four-month span, closing its New York and Los Angeles offices.
‘The interactive entertainment sector hasn’t emerged as quickly as we thought it would,’ ExtendMedia PR manager Caroline Verboon explained at the time of the cuts.

Lisa Francilia and Dan Scherk, cocreative directors at Bryant Fulton & Shee, have etched themselves on the Vancouver commercial market with quality spots most production and post houses are anxious to work on. …

The PNMD Communications creative duo of copywriter Stephane Charier and VP, creative director, art director Martin Beauvais is big in Quebec. How big? Well, at Christmas they were in direct competition with the Beatles. If the Beatles are bigger than Jesus (thank-you, Mr. Lennon), then what exactly does that make these ad guys?
The competition with John, Paul, George and Ringo was over a CD Beauvais and Charier championed over the holidays last year. As an extension of their ongoing campaign for Quebec’s milk producers, Le Federation des Producteurs de Lait du Quebec, a CD featuring the music used in their popular ads was battling it out with the lads’ greatest hits album for top spot on the Quebec music charts.

International distributors know the strength of their companies and their future balance sheets depend on the quality and quantity of content in their program libraries. Broadcasters looking to strengthen audience loyalty on-air know they have to bring viewers along on multi-platform experiences – specifically, from the tube to the Net or vice versa. But since broadcasters can only distribute online programming for which they hold the rights, they look to in-house catalogues as an important (and thrifty) way to extend their on-air branded content online.
While you might expect an educational broadcaster to leverage in-house shows online, TVOntario has gone one step better. It plans not only to reconfigure its ‘rich archive’ of Saturday Night at the Movies interviews for the pleasure of webbies, it will also package the SNAM interviews with other material to create an online, for-credit film studies course.

Since September 1998, Nicole Dube, advertising and promotions director for Le Federation des Producteurs de Lait du Quebec, has used the PNMD Communication creative team of art director Martin Beauvais and writer Stephane Charier for her milk spots….

A group of grads from the Canadian Film Centre’s new media design program at Bell h@bitat believes it has devised a more sophisticated kind of convergent entertainment. Called Tightrope, the project is part film, part game and part documentary, and it…

‘It’s always exciting for us at Cinelande to receive boards from PNMD,’ says Alex Sliman, VP and executive producer at the Montreal-based commercial production company….

Ryerson University’s Television and Radio Achievement Awards are in their 23rd year, but for the TARA 2001: Time Warp show April 12, the school intends to present a convergence production unlike anything it has done before. …

In the not-very-distant future, consumers’ set-top boxes will allow them to pause live TV to answer the phone, speed through commercials and digitally record at least 30 hours of programming. The ‘smart’ program guide in their cable or satellite box will…

Halifax-based VR interactive has a solution it believes will allow digital content producers to create navigable 3D environments simply and cheaply. …

Production in the Prairies continues to thrive, with Alberta leading the way, Saskatchewan registering a very healthy spike and Manitoba making respectable gains in 2000.
Saskatchewan reports a total production volume of $60 million, more than twice 1999’s figure of $27 million and a slight improvement over 1998’s production volume of $58 million.
The numbers reflect an increase in dramatic production in the province. While Saskatchewan has not seen an increase in pure offshore service deals, coproductions proliferate.

Calgary-based White Iron is one company involved in actively putting together product to feed the starving maw of specialty channels.
‘The specialty channels are looking for product that they feel has a strong place,’ says president and COO Lance Mueller. ‘They have strong audience desires for their channels. What we do is we watch a lot of TV, talk to a lot of broadcasters and ask, ‘What don’t you have that you need? What would you like to see?’ So we’re not just sitting here flogging idea after idea [that misses the mark]. We try to have intelligence so when we go to them we have a sense we’re already ahead of the game.’

A generous helping of government funding, a godlike mentor and the conjunction of two subterranean rivers make Winnipeg the artistic centre of the country, nay the universe….

Among the praise attracted by James Dunnison’s critically acclaimed Stuff (produced by Toronto’s Bull’s Eye Films) was this from Toronto urban entertainment weekly eye: ‘possibly the greatest Canadian film you’ve never seen.’…

Attributing a lack of suitable scripts and subject to a case of strike chill, the Saskatoon Initiative has fallen behind its original schedule….