Chilly Beach joins march of web properties to television schedules

A long wait by the team of the former Infopreneur Inc., now March Entertainment, to find a business model for its Chilly Beach property has finally paid off as it gets set to air the show on CBC Television. The previously web-only animated series is set to hit the larger Canadian audience with 26 episodes starting in September, with animation being done in a new production facility in Sudbury ON. Readers will find the Chilly Beach name familiar (CNM, May 18/00). The show has been broadcasting consistently on the web for about five years and has won several accolades from the new media community in Canada. In 2000, Infopreneur was acquired by Terry Matthews-owned March Networks and spun into a separate entertainment group for fear the "networks" title would be confusing. Partner Dan Hawes says that despite the name change, the company remains the same core group as when it was the independent Infopreneur. Hawes owns 50% of the company, with March Networks owning 25%, and Matthews himself directly controlling 25%. The show will now be produced from Sudbury, where the company has leased 4,000 square feet of space in the Sudbury Technology Centre, with significant help from the City of Greater Sudbury, FedNor, Human Resources Development Canada and the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund. The public assistance, Hawes says, has made a TV show viable by filling in the funding gap between the costs of production and the licence fee to be paid by CBC. The show will be slotted after the Simpsons re-run in the CBC’s schedule, which bodes well for its popular appeal.Hawes also says that besides the CBC contract, the company will maintain a fully interactive web site and some web episodes, though some segments of the show will be pulled down under the terms of March’s agreement with the public broadcaster. Further, the show is working with both Bell Globemedia and the CBC, with financial assistance from the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund, to develop a wireless game that ties in with the show, and allow viewers to watch episodes on handheld devices such as Internet-connected PDAs. "The web, TV and wireless, for us, will be seamless mediums," Hawes tells Canadian NEW MEDIA. "We grew up on the web, so that’s more native to us. But television gives you such a substantial boost of audience and such visibility that they really work well together." Moving to television will also help the team escape the constant trap of webcasting, the progressively higher costs of distribution as audience grows – something that’s avoided using traditional tele-vision broadcast technology. "We realized that at one point, in order to sustain the deal over the long term, you need a TV audience," Hawes says. A distribution deal with Salter Street Films announced in late March 2001 was ended last year when Salter was purchased by Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc. and many of the staff laid off. In fact, Catherine Tait, formerly of Salter Street, is co-executive producer of the show. Now export distribution has been picked up by CBC International, which has provided a "significant" advance to March. How well it will sell in other markets is up in the air. Says Hawes: "We think internationally it will sell…I don’t think we’ll get an American contract. Americans have such a different sense of humour." The show has always proudly self-identified as Canadian. Hawes says a marketing experiment with the giant brewer Molson Inc. also fell by the wayside at about the time March began talks with Salter. Chilly Beach episodes did feature some product placement of the suds, but the revenue stream wasn’t pursued as a television deal was sought. Hawes won’t say whether that experiment may have led to the brewer’s current deal with Smiley Guys Studios’ Odd Job Jack project (CNM, Feb. 20/03). March Entertainment expects to hire 20 to 30 animators and others for its new Sudbury digs.

Chilly Beach joins march of web properties to television schedules

News | 04/03/2003 5:00 am EST

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