JPL's prime move

JPL Productions, a Tele-Metropole subsidiary, is the first Quebec broadcast affiliate to move into primetime entertainment production and stake a major claim on Cable Production Fund resources.

Broadcast-affiliate producers, but mainly jpl, have locked on to just under 10% of 1996/97 cpf French-track funding, or $1.3 million.

jpl's '96/97 production slate includes Ent'Cadieux, Le Retour and Bungalow Blues, teleromans produced on videotape in studio at Sonolab, a t-m post and studio service company.

A number of management appointments have been announced at jpl. Former Coscient producer Marleen Beaulieu has been named director of production. Michel St-Cyr, previously with Videotron's defunct tvi unit (interactive television), becomes creative and development officer, and Daniele Bouchard is the new production co-ordinator.

t-m owns and operates a majority of the TVA Network stations, including Montreal flagship station cftm-tv.

Techie talk in Vancouver

Rainmaker Digital Pictures reports resounding success for Canada's first dvd (digital versatile disk) symposium, which it hosted in Vancouver May 10.

The 220 attendees from the multimedia, investment, entertainment and academic fields clung to the words of experts that included Garrett Smith, executive director, video operations at Paramount Pictures; Andrew Rosen, mpeg compression manager at Microsoft; David Habiger, director of sales, new media, Sonic Solutions; and Dr. Panos Nasiopoulos, Rainmaker's director of r&d and adjunct professor at ubc.

Speakers stressed that dvd is more than a storage medium and covered issues of mpeg encoding quality and the technical and creative challenges in bringing this emerging technology to the motion picture industry.

Fabulous Footage

U.K.-based Getty Communications has acquired Toronto stock footage company Fabulous Footage.

Fabulous Footage, with offices in Toronto, New York and Boston, supplies stock footage internationally to ad agencies and film and tv producers. It also licenses film and video from tv companies as well as cinematographers and independent production companies.

"It came down to a question of distribution," says Fabulous president Steve Garson. "The next great opportunity is Europe."

Garson says the acquisition will likely mean a future increase in Fabulous' activities in Canada and elsewhere in terms of sourcing material and distribution with Getty's worldwide distribution network.

Garson will retain his duties as Fabulous president.

Strike looms

Union representatives of about 7,000 cbc staff have set a strike deadline of May 23 at 11:59 p.m. after rejecting the network's "best offer," presented on May 13.

Unions are seeking a commitment on the part of the cbc regarding the issue of contracting out production and the associated loss of jobs.

"They will not give us straight answers and they will not give us a commitment concerning the future of broadcasting within the corporation," says Dan Oldfield, senior staff representative for the Canadian Media Guild, one of three unions, including the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union and the Canadian Broadcast Employees Union, which is poised to strike.