Toronto company chosen to produce television series with Discovery Channel

Even as a handful of entrepreneurs and small enterprises win public support to break out of the fee-for-service cycle, SNAP Media and its partners have won the nod from Discovery Channel Canada for a massive new project that may well create the template for future convergence projects not just here, but abroad. In December, at the Congress of Science Producers in Europe, Toronto-based SNAP and partners Galafilm (Montreal) and Mentorn Films (U.K.) were picked from an impressive short list of media companies vying for the $4-million licence fee being offered by Discovery to produce a new multi-platform show chronicling a fictional mission to Mars. When it finally airs during the 2005-06 television season, the total value for the project will likely exceed $10 million, and is the largest convergence project of its kind to be attempted in Canada. SNAP, which is a full partner in the project on both the television and interactive components, is taking on responsibility for seeing through an interactive concept that includes desktop applications, web site content including video feeds, wireless games, e-learning modules, interactive television content and even a book. In addition, SNAP is exploring merchandising and licensing opportunies. The project already seems sure of international distribution, with broadcast partners here, in the U.S., Asia and Europe. SNAP president Raja Khanna says the deals haven’t been signed yet, but expects to make announcements over the next few months. "The scope of this thing is huge," Khanna tells Canadian NEW MEDIA. "The interactive portion of this alone is going to be a couple of million bucks. I don’t think anything like this has been done for a TV show - I don’t know, probably anywhere. Certainly not in Canada - not to this scale. I think it’s exciting. I mean, we’ve been looking for that next step in the evolution of our industry, and I think this type of initiative which, honestly, was started by the broadcaster and not by us, is a very good sign." SNAP, which has been honing its interactive muscle through projects including those for Alienated and Degrassi: The Next Generation, will likely re-use much of the intellectual property it’s developed over the years to create the various web sites and other platform content that will be involved. While the scale and scope are untested - SNAP and its partners have formed relationships with everyone from NASA and the Canadian Space Agency to dozens of independent science experts to ensure realism - Khanna says the actual programming and technical challenges have been done before. Rather, the key challenge will be creative and in managing the project. "We’re partnering with the Ontario Science Centre, probably the National Museum of Science in the U.K. We have all the space agencies involved. We’ve got different schools involved. We’ve got tons of different stakeholders, people that we want to be involved, not to mention book publishers, game publishers, the list goes on and on and on. From that point of view it’s definitely more complex. But, there’s nothing content-wise that we’re producing that poses any kind of technical or creative huge challenge other than just making it good. It’s not like it’s uncharted territory to make a wireless game." For SNAP, the project represents the culmination of a long process of building the company’s intellectual assets and reputation. Interactive companies across Canada will likely be watching the initiative closely as they struggle to find the resources and time to pursue similar projects. "We still do service work. It’s still an important part of the business, and, actually, I have no real desire to stop doing it. The desire was never to kind of move from service into original IP and leave the service behind. It was always to slowly build the IP side of it and maintain the service stuff. That’s what we’ve been able to do. I can say in the next two years, more likely than not, the original IP side is going to far outweigh the service side of our business… "My ultimate goal on our IP side of the business is just to be media producers - the next generation of producers, where we’re platform and technology and everything agnostic. Where we’re just creating and developing brands and pushing them across different media…We think of ourselves as a brand-building company."

Toronto company chosen to produce television series with Discovery Channel

News | 03/17/2004 5:00 am EST

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