Collideascope hires broadcast veteran to bolster ties with television community

Halifax-based new media leader Collideascope Inc. is hoping to solidify ties to the traditional broadcast community with its hiring last fall of Salter Street Films Ltd. (now owned by Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc.) veteran Allison Outhit. Outhit, who worked as a showrunner for the series Lexx, says she will be responsible for working with company president Stephen Comeau and CEO Michael-Andreas Kuttner to manage Collideascope’s development and production slate for television. Her new role as VP of television and business affairs will also include collaborating on any television products with an interactive component. Collideascope’s latest hire, which was announced earlier this month, is significant given the firm’s past history of success working as a digital player in the broadcast field. The company is often cited as a model of how converged digital/TV content can work, especially its partnership with YTV on series such as Ollie’s Under the Bed – the first animated series drawn entirely in Flash in Canada. That show was recently picked up by YTV as a 26 half-hour episode series after running as a collection of shorts with a companion web set for the specialty network. Outhit looks forward to working with the company to strengthen those sorts of partnerships. "They’ve actually been able to make money at it. That makes them unique," she tells Canadian NEW MEDIA. "How they’ve done that is actually by being quite sensible in terms of the kinds of content that they’re creating, and also how they’re structuring their deals and who they’re producing work for and why they’re doing it. They’re not out to get rich quick and in the meantime they’ve put a lot of work into forming relationships with producers in the more traditional media. "Whether that was by providing service work for the online component of tele-vision shows or just kind of general relationship-building in the industry, I think they’ve done really good work. They’re well-liked." Her role will be an important one at Collideascope as the company continues to rely on convergence revenues as a key business driver. Asked how the company can make the transition to less reliance on TV dollars, Outhit is candid in her assessment. "To undertake that is enormously expensive and scary. Trying to act as a content provider – essentially as a broadcaster, it’s scary…," she says. "For us, in order to be able to undertake the launch of online (intellectual property) that’s not supported by other people’s money is kind of a scary undertaking. I think we would have to channel all of our resources into that to the detriment of the service work that we do. It’s a growing process where you take baby steps." In the meantime, she says the company will continue to focus on digital/TV offerings. "For Collideascope, and this is a huge X-factor, how are we going to create truly converged programming? Properties where it’s the combination of the online and broadcast element and one cannot work without the other. That’s what we’re interested in getting going on and talking about." Digital specialties promisingShe cites the new spate of digital specialty TV channels as one potential source of revenue. "Much in the same way that traditional independent producers will always keep a vigilant eye on what the broadcasters are doing – because we live or die according to how they spend their money – the same goes for new media production, particularly in the convergent media. "We’re definitely keeping tabs on the specialty channels, in particular, how they’re spending their mandatory new media budgets. Because these are traditional broadcasters. If there’s any real convergence in the business, that’s where it’s going to be is with those specialty channels because they’re mandated, from the get-go, with that traditional broadcast as well as an interactive component."

Collideascope hires broadcast veteran to bolster ties with television community

News | 01/23/2002 5:00 am EST

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