Author of new book hopes to lure Canadian new media firms to La-La land

The US-based author of a guide to new media opportunities in California is hoping his labour of love will mean lucre for Canadian firms. Thomas Palamides, trade commissioner at the Canadian Consulate General in Los Angeles, spent nearly a year meeting with decision-makers at 11 digital animation houses, game development studios, and wireless content providers, ranging from those owned by major international players to smaller independents. "A lot of little Canadian companies really don’t have access to this market down here. This book is actually a vehicle by which they can enter this market and feel confident," he says. For the book, titled Hollywood Vinaigrette: Finding Partnerships in Digital Entertainment, Palamides interviewed executives at Electronic Arts, Duck Studios, Fox Sports Interactive Media LLC, Qualcomm Internet Services, Sony Pictures Digital Inc., comic book legend Stan Lee’s Pow Entertainment Inc., Technicolor Entertainment, THQ Inc., Walt Disney Internet Group, Warner Brothers Animation, and Wild Brain Inc. "Just to get into companies like Disney and Warner Brothers, talk to them, and actually publish what it is they tell me, is a major coup," he says. Contact information for each of the executives is also supplied at the end of the interviews. The 76-page, bilingual book also includes market intelligence reports from four recent major industry conferences – the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment, Digital Hollywood, and iWireless World – as well as a sample web licensing contract. The latter is designed to give Canadian firms a taste of the terms and conditions many Hollywood studios include as standard in licensing deals. "If they throw a contract under your nose you don’t want to be scared, you at least want to know a little bit about terminology," Palamides says. While business abounds for Canadian new media producers in other US cities such as New York and San Francisco, the City of Angels and surrounding environs might soon host the highest-profile examples of convergence. Palamides points to companies such as Redwood City CA’s Electronic Arts and Sunnyvale CA’s Yahoo (which is actually closer to San Jose) as two examples of new media firms looking to grow beyond their respective gaming and portal businesses into industries more traditionally associated with Hollywood. "EA is actually morphing into a studio – they’re going to be doing their own films soon, I think Yahoo wants to be a Hollywood media mogul company within the next decade," he says. "You’ll see them morph from an Internet company into a Universal Studios-type , maybe even theme parks." Seven years ago, Palamides produced a similar book on LA’s film and television production industry and opportunities for Canadian firms therein, at a time when ex-Prime Minister Kim Campbell was consul; she signed a letter endorsing the project, and work began on putting the book together. "I got an ISBN number, and we printed I think 3,000 copies," he recalls. "We got rid of probably about 500 or 600 copies wound up donating the rest of them to new media schools across Canada," foreshadowing the increased interplay between digital communication and the movie-making industry. Outside the movie and console gaming industries, opportunities also abound in wireless content. Palamides notes that San Diego’s Qualcomm Inc., one of the firms interviewed for Hollywood Vinaigrette, is making a major investment in building a new network for delivering mobile content channels. "They announced six or eight months ago they’re putting in $800 million to develop a new wireless service called MediaFlow, which will broadcast video through their cellular network," he says. "They’re looking for content for that." Disney, he adds, has found incredible success in Japan with mobile versions of its licensed content. Although Canada already has a positive reputation south of the border for such high-tech tasks as software development and programming, and is a historical first choice for US firms looking to source work elsewhere, competition for US investment and business is heating up – the current "near-shoring" phenomenon notwithstanding. "The world’s become more competitive: Canada has to compete with South , Ireland, Australia…it’s not just Canada or the US ," Palamides says. Canadian firms also have a tendency toward believing they’re second-best compared to US counterparts, a phenomenon Palamides says they’ll have to work to overcome. He cites a St. John’s-based web programming and software services firm, Zeddcom Inc., as an example. After setting up a US business office in Orange County, Zeddcom’s management thought the best way to compete with US incumbents would be on price; consequently, the firm made much of Canada’s lower labour costs and favourable exchange rate. However, Zeddcom soon found that customers were lauding their work as superior to that provided by local competitors, and the firm quickly shifted focus to promote its top-tier results rather than its low-ball pricing. "They were kind of underselling their services," he recalls. And for those who would ignore the importance of the US market, Palamides offers up one final cautionary tale: that of Ottawa’s Zucotto Wireless Inc., a software developer that at one time employed close to 100 and attracted somewhere between $30 million and $40 million in venture capital financing. "They were a Java developer about five years ago, just ahead of their time. They had some sales in Korea and Japan, but nothing in the US, and they burned through their money and went bankrupt, like a lot of them." The book is available, free of charge, by signing up at http://www.hollywoodv.com.

Author of new book hopes to lure Canadian new media firms to La-La land

News | 12/09/2005 5:00 am EST

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