TORONTO – The Canada Media Fund (CMF) has added two new members to its board of directors following its annual meeting of members held earlier this week in Montreal.
Lori DeGraw and Michael Schmalz succeed outgoing directors Cheryl Barker and Glenn Wong. They join current BoD chair Alain Cousineau and directors Alison Clayton, Guy Fournier, David McLennan, and Rob Scarth.
DeGraw is executive director of the Ontario Land Trust Alliance, and brings 25 years’ experience in the audiovisual industry plus extensive corporate governance experience to the role. She held the role of VP media operations at Blue Ant Media for 10…
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SHANGHAI – Canadian industrial Internet-of-Things (IoT) solutions company BeWhere Inc. is teaming up with Huawei to develop Mobile IoT Low Power Wide Area (M-IoT LPWA) applications to enable the deployment of smart cities technologies.
The LPWA sensor prototype was developed in Canada by BeWhere and uses Huawei's Boudica 120 chipset, the world's first 3GPP-based NB-IoT commercial chipset. It will be showcased in the Huawei booth at the Mobile World Congress in Shanghai.
The companies said Wednesday that the partnership reflects a next generation collaboration to bring together customers, technology providers, and partners from various industry verticals to explore future mobile application…
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TORONTO – While the virtual reality sector is still in the early stages of its development, there has been a 22% increase in the number of Canadian companies working in the VR landscape since 2014, says the initial findings of a report surveying the Canadian VR ecosystem.
Pulse on VR: A Living Ecosystem launched in June 2016 and remains ongoing, capturing the workflows, tools, challenges and opportunities that VR creators and technologists face in this evolving landscape. The next round of data will be shared in Fall 2017.
Co-authored by CFC Media Lab and OMERS Ventures, in collaboration with Nordicity,…
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TORONTO – The Writers Guild of Canada is appealing to Cabinet to reject the CRTC’s “potentially disastrous” broadcast policy changes and licence renewals announced last month.
WGC said Tuesday that that the Commission’s decision to reduce Bell Media’s and Corus Entertainment’s minimum spending requirements on programs of national interest (PNI) have “created deep concern in the Canadian screenwriting community” because they cut private broadcaster funding to Canadian programs by 40% which the Guild says could lead to over $200 million in reduced broadcaster spending on Canadian shows over a five-year licence term.
“We appeal to Heritage Minister Mélanie…
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Rights, diversity and the need for a strong, sustainable Canadian production sector
LAST WEEK, HUNDREDS OF independent producers, broadcast executives, government officials and countless other industry stakeholders made their annual pilgrimage to the heart of the Rocky Mountains for the Banff World Media Festival.
Although this year’s conference was similar to previous years in many ways – projects were pitched, deals were made, and drinks flowed freely – this year’s event felt different. Over the course of the conference there seemed to be a collective realization that the future of our industry, which has been endlessly discussed at Banff for years,…
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TORONTO – User experience has surpassed content and distribution in the pursuit of entertainment and media revenues, says a new PwC report.
Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2017-2021 projects that Canadian entertainment and media revenues will rise at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.8% in nominal terms over the coming five years, from US$42.98 billion in 2016 to US$49.40 billion in 2021. This growth rate represents a slowdown from last year's 3.5% growth in industry revenues, and will lag behind overall global economic growth during the next five years. Total data consumed in Canada…
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OTTAWA – Canadian Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly has created an advisory committee tasked with compiling and submitting a list of potential candidates for the Board of Directors at CBC/Radio-Canada.
The independent, non-partisan committee, announced Tuesday, consists of experts in broadcasting and digital technology, representatives of cultural sectors from across Canada, Indigenous Peoples, official-language communities and youth, reads the announcement.
The committee, who will serve a six month term with the possibility of extension, will provide the Minister with the names of qualified candidates for each vacant position, as well as supplementary qualified candidates to create a pool to fill posts in the…
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MONTREAL – The National Film Board of Canada has unveiled a new three-year plan that seeks to address Indigenous creators’ longstanding concerns about systemic inequities in the existing Canadian production landscape.
The Indigenous Action Plan, developed in collaboration with an Indigenous advisory group, contains 33 commitments grouped under the main areas of Institutional Transformation, Industry Leadership, Production, and Distribution, Collection Management and Education.
Highlights include a commitment to achieving representational parity in the NFB workforce by 2025; an immediate commitment to ensuring 15% of production spending is on Indigenous-directed projects; and a commitment to working with Indigenous partners to develop protocols/guidelines…
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BANFF – The recent controversy about cultural appropriation is only the latest Canadian flashpoint regarding Indigenous peoples and their relationship with centuries of non-indigenous immigration.
But can such grappling with identity, nationhood, and creativity be catalysts for constructive change?
Indigenous stories are already welcoming audiences here and around the world, for example Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001) which won ACCT, Genie and Claude Jutta Awards in 2002; or more recently We Were Children (2012, pictured), the acclaimed documentary about the experiences of First Nations children in the Canadian residential school system.
With the success of APTN, the work underway at the NFB,…
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OTTAWA – The Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA) has launched two new CMPA-funded national mentorship programs to provide on-the-job training for 15 up-and-coming filmmakers.
The first, known as the Production Mentorship Program, will offer 10 emerging and mid-level producers 20-week placements at independent production companies across Canada.
The new Diversity Mentorship Program will provide five placement opportunities to candidates belonging to underrepresented groups that have historically faced barriers to entering the screen-based media industry, including indigenous peoples, visible minorities, women, newcomers to Canada, members of the LGBTQ community, and those with disabilities.
Production companies and mentorship candidates wishing to apply to either…
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