Aprominent new media think tank, the Banff New Media Institute (BNMI), is in the preliminary stages of formalizing its role as an incubator in partnership with government and the private sector. Sara Diamond, the BNMI’s executive director, says she has engaged in talks with the Alberta government and partners such as software companies and broadcasters to expand the role the Institute plays in mentoring new media projects with commercial potential.
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The CRTC has put its formal, public stamp of approval on the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund’s application to be eligible to receive contributions from broadcast distribution undertakings (BDUs) (CNM, May 5/99). On June 29, the commission certified the fund officially as one of several independently-administered production funds eligible to receive 20 per cent of a BDU’s contribution toward the production of Canadian programming. The remaining 80 per cent continues to pour into the Canadian Television Fund.
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Budget cuts haven’t stopped the new media division of CBC Radio from reaching out to young Canadians over the web. While plans for CBC Radio 3, a network aimed at the youth audience, never got off the ground due to an estimated $10-million price tag, the new CBC-produced web site – www.120seconds.com – promises to deliver flash broadcasts, games, pop culture and news to a diverse range of ‘tweeners and youth.
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Embattled Internet broadcaster iCraveTV.com is preparing to take another run at viability this fall, this time with retransmission rights secured and a new blocking software that should appease rights holders. If the maverick company is successful, the re-launch will mark an end to its voluntary break in operations, which it accepted in return for lawsuits against it being dropped (CNM, March 22/00). Ian McCallum, VP corporate sales and development, told a packed lunch crowd at the CANARIE-sponsored Net 2000 show in Ottawa that the company is in talks with a few dozen content providers, mostly in Canada and the U.S., and is already eyeing expansion both within North America and around the globe.
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New media and communications incubator Itemus Inc, Toronto, has turned one of its latest acquisitions, Ottawa-based Intrasoft Technologies Inc, into the sharp end of its corporate stick. With over a dozen companies under the Itemus Inc investment umbrella, the new unit – now named Itemus Solutions Inc – will serve as the pivot around which the disparate technologies in the group will revolve. Executives say it will act as an information broker both facilitating communications between member companies and for the group as a whole to provide Internet and application service provider (ASP) services globally.
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Ottawa-based Internet broadcaster Inetcable Inc has ended a year-and-a-half long search for a broadcast encoding partner and purchased the technology from Connecticut-based USA Video Interactive. Under the direction of experienced helmsman Ted Boyle, former president of satellite TV provider Bell ExpressVu, the company can now accelerate its plan to push streaming video and other media to the edge of the Internet using satellite capacity leased from Telesat Canada. Inetcable hopes its architecture, which will bypass the typical 14 router hops that signals typically take in a terrestrial network, will deliver speedy and secure content from more than 100 providers to some 4500 downlink stations across North America.
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Details of a tax credit designed to help Ontario new media companies have been implemented after a two-year wait — but the final product isn’t broad enough to help most firms in the province, critics charge. On June 7, the Ontario Film Development Corporation unveiled details of the Ontario Interactive Digital Media Tax Credit, now expanded to cover 20 per cent of eligible labour costs for interactive new media projects in the last provincial budget (CMN, June 14/00). While the extension from the original proposed 10 per cent is welcome, new media community leaders say the credit is too narrow to help most firms producing content on contract. Despite its flaws, the owners of small shops say the credit will help them hire and more generously reward staff and work on even more projects.
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It’s been six months since the United States required a Canadian invention to be installed in most television sets. And its success hasn’t been as widespread as many would like.
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Jacques Bensimon, former managing director of TFO, has been appointed executive VP of the Banff Television Festival. Bensimon left TFO following a dispute over the vision for Ontario’s pubic broadcaster.
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