CCR People

Sandra Pugielli has left CHUM Ltd., where she was director of publicity for music and youth channels, to join CanWest MediaWorks Inc. as director of publicity, television and radio. She will be in charge of all publicity efforts for Global Television and will coordinate publicity for other TV brands (CH/Global News/Specialty Networks). She takes up her new job in late November. Also joining CanWest’s publicity team in the next few weeks are Yvonne Chiang as publicist for Global News, and Dan Kenning as publicist for the specialty networks. Chiang will be based in Vancouver, and Kenning in Winnipeg. The company is still searching for a Calgary-based publicist. Catherine Donohue has been named as VP of distribution and sales operations at Cookie Jar Entertainment. She joins the firm from the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., where she oversaw children’s and youth programming. She worked with Cookie Jar’s principals when they headed up Nelvana, where Donohue was VP of distribution and Canadian sales. Sylvain Lafrance was appointed to the newly created role of executive VP for CBC’s French services. The new role combines the VP duties previously held by Lafrance (radio) and Daniel Gourd (television). The restructuring is a result of Gourd’s decision to leave his position once his mandate is up this month. Lafrance will be responsible for all of the public broadcaster’s French-language media – television, radio, and web – and will oversee an expansion of the public broadcaster’s radio networks. Lafrance also chairs the board for Radio-Canada’s arts and entertainment specialty TV channel ARTV. He headed up CBC/Radio Canada’s new media unit for four years. TV producer Adam Haight has been named as supervising producer at Shaftesbury Films. A former president and COO of now-defunct Fireworks Entertainment, he recently oversaw production of Shaftesbury’s Strange Days at Blake Holesy. CHUM Ltd.’s founder Allan Water has stepped down as a member of the company’s board of directors. He has been named honorary director of CHUM. He began his broadcasting career in 1954 with the purchase of 1050 CHUM in Toronto. He was chair and president of CHUM until 2002. He was succeeded as president of CHUM by current president and CEO Jay Switzer. Mike Nesbitt has been appointed as general manager of operations at SunTV, formerly known as Toronto One. Nesbitt was director of technical operations at Toronto One. Toronto International Film Festival Group documentary and Talk Cinema programmer Sean Farnel is leaving to become director of programming at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. Returning to the Film Festival Group is Chris Gehman, who will program The Free Screen, formerly known as The Independents, for Cinematheque Ontario. Previously, Gehman was assistant programmer and program guide editor at Cinematheque Ontario. As well, five new Festival Group board members were announced: former Shoppers Drug Mart chair and CEO David Bloom, Milestone Radio founder and CEO B. Denham Jolly, The Plan Group CEO Bill Kurtin, Bell Canada senior VP of corporate marketing James Little, and FedEx Canada region president Rajesh Subramaniam. Leaving the board are Lousie Bellingham, John Bailey, Rudy Bratty, Robert Lantos and Helga Stephenson.

CCR People

Broadcast | November 7, 2005

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