Business

Studio B Moves To New Facility. Studio B Productions has moved to a custom designed studio at 190 Alexander Street in Vancouver, British Columbia. The three-floor, 27,000 sq. ft. facility is home to Studio B's animation studio and production house as well as Mercury Filmworks, a fully equipped digital animation facility, and Dick and Roger's, a fully equipped sound studio which means that the facility now has the ability to produce an animated show or series in its entirety from script to post-production. The move to larger, custom designed facilities comes as a result of Studio B's recent success. Three of its proprietary titles were picked up for broadcast beginning in January 2000 --Yvon Of The Yukon will air on YTV; D'myna Leagues will air on CTV/Baton; and What About Mimi? will be seen on Teletoon. Studio B Productions was founded by artists Chris Bartleman and Blair Peters in 1988. The studio has grown to include a team of over 100 artists, writers and producers. In addition to its own titles, Studio B has produced episodes of Ned's Newt for Nelvana, Timon and Pumbaa And Jungle Cubs for Disney, and CatDog for Nickelodeon. The studio is currently working on Angry Beavers for Nickelodeon and has just completed Mission Hill, a prime time series for Film Roman which is now airing on the WB network.

Oxygen Media Names Online Executive Team. New York City-based Oxygen Media, Geraldine Laybourne's media company founded to provide content for women, has named eight executive producers, seven of whom are new to Oxygen's team, to guide the development of Oxygen's growing online network, including building five new sites - Style, Sports, Teens, O2 Simplify, and womenshands - as well as expanding the popular existing parenting site, Moms Online and Oprah.com. The new and expanded sites will be rolled out this winter. Oxygen's online executive producers will report to Sarah Bartlett, Oxygen's Editor-in-Chief. They are: Amy Critchett, formerly a supervising producer with ZDTV, will executive produce Oxygen.com, Oxygen's home base and network hub; Martha McCully, who was Beauty Director at Allure magazine, who will executive produce and oversee the creation of Oxygen's style site; Lynne Tapper, formerly Manager of Multimedia at ABC Sports, will executive produce and develop Oxygen's sports site, WeSweat.com; Giselle Benatar, who joined Oxygen earlier this year, will executive produce Oxygen's teen site; Dori Berinstein, a Tony Award-winning producer, will executive produce, among other special projects, O2 Simplify, an essential resource for women seeking to streamline their lives and recapture time; Kathy Hammer, formerly an independent producer, will executive produce womenshands.com, which explores the creative energy of women and provides a venue for their unique products and stories; Anne Ashbey, a veteran producer of traditional and digital media, will executive produce Moms Online, a popular parenting site on AOL; and Jim Brady will executive produce Oprah.com. Oprah.com, home of The Oprah Winfrey Show and one of the most popular sites on the web, joined the Oxygen family of sites on August 1st.

Macromedia Announces Several Strategic Moves Including Merger. Macromedia, the industry leader in web design and web graphics tool development, announced several moves and agreements which gear the company toward taking e-commerce to a new level, and making Macromedia a central part of this growing sector's evolution. The company unveiled its eBusiness Infrastructure strategy, i.e. plans to provide 'solutions' for content creation, management, personalisation and management of Extranet and Internet sites. The company also made several other significant announcements, most notably that it has signed a deal to merge with Andromedia, a leading E-commerce software developer. Also among this startling news, details of Macromedia forming 'alliances' with USWeb/CKS, iXL, and BroadVision -- all of whom will be working with Macromedia to provide more complete web and e-commerce solutions. Clearly, Macromedia is positioning itself to become a market leader in providing, not only graphics and design tools, but also software tools to E-Businesses. And why not? Combine the design flexibility of Macromedia Dreamweaver and the amazing graphics features in Flash and Fireworks with the ability to build a complete working, and most importantly, interactive online store, and we might actually see an e-commerce/web design solution that really is just that -- a solution.

Read more about Macromedia's products in Animation World Magazine: If you want to post animations on the Internet then you need to become familiar with Macromedia Flash. In "How to Animate the Web" Tom Calthrop does the introductions in a very useful "how to."

Read about Macromedia's newest versions of Dreamweaver and Fireworks in Jeff Williams' "Macromedia's Latest: Making the Web Easy."

Cinar Investigated For Tax Fraud. Montreal, Canada-based Le Journal De Montreal reported Friday, October 15 that Cinar, producer of such shows as PBS' Arthur, The Busy World Of Richard Scarry, Are You Afraid Of The Dark and Wimzie's House, substituted the names of Canadians for work done by non-Canadians to become eligible for tax credits that were intended to help Canada's film industry. Although the film company was not named in the newspaper story, the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) reports that on Friday, in the Canadian House of Commons, Bloc Quebecois Member of Parliament Stephane Bergeron identified the company as Cinar Films Inc. To qualify for Canadian federal tax credits, the producer of any film or television show must be Canadian. This also applies to the director, screenwriter and lead actors. Radio-Canada, the CBC's French network, interviewed a screenwriter in the United States who said he contributed to a Cinar TV show, but never received credit. According to a statement released by Cinar, "The allegations in the media appear to pertain to episodes produced several years ago and have no relation to the current operations and activities of the company. Based upon its review to date, Cinar believes that such allegations will not have any material adverse impact on the financial position or results of the company. Nonetheless, the Board of directors has given a special mandate to members of the Audit Committee of the Board, composed only of outside directors, to review the various issues associated with the allegations. The Committee has been instructed to report its findings and recommendations to the Board of directors at the earliest possible date. The Board reaffirms its intent to cooperate with all competent authorities." Cinar was founded in the 1970s by Micheline Charest and her husband, Ronald Weinberg.

For more about Cinar read Deborah Reber's "All in the Family: Rated 'G' Animated Programming" in the December 1998 issue of Animation World Magazine.

Europeans Set Up Animation Group. Seven European animation companies have joined to form a company called the European Animation Group, although its name is likely to change. The group hopes to produce a minimum of one animated feature or series per year, beginning in 2001 with its first feature, the $15 million Elfquest, set to go into production in January 2000. The announcement was made at MIPCOM held October 4 - 8 in Cannes, France. European Animation Group brings together seven companies. From France, the partners are Joinville-le-Pont-based GTC, one of Europe's leading labs and a specialist in digital technology; Grenoble and Paris-based Project Images Films, a multimedia production company, which has already produced the animated feature Aaron's Magic Village; and Paris-based Sceneries Europe, a film production company. German input comes from Munich-based Das Werk, which does high-end commercial and film post-production; and Munich-based Trixter Film, founded by animation director Michael Coldewey, which produced the 3D effects for the recently completed Heavy Metal F.A.K.K.2. The Spanish partners are Indice Multimedia, multimedia specialists, and Storyboard, which has experience in TV production and 3D computer graphics. European Animation Group will be headquartered in Dusseldorf, with the company jointly headed and managed by Philippe Lenglet (Sceneries), Joachim Sturmes (Das Werk) and Jorge M. Reverte (Storyboard). The group has twelve projects in development. Half of the production financing will be raised in Europe, with the rest coming from the US and international sales. Sceneries Intl. will sell the films and series internationally, and the partners will be responsible for raising investment and handling rights in their own territories. The first project, Elfquest, is based on the graphic novels of Wendy and Richard Pini, and is being executive produced by Los Angeles-based Wolfmill Entertainment, headed by Craig Miller and Marv Wolfman, which has also produced Bohbot Entertainment's Pocket Dragon Adventures.

Insight Will Distribute Oxygen. New York City-based Oxygen Media, Geraldine Laybourne's company founded to provide content for women, has reached an agreement with Insight Communications to distribute the Oxygen cable network. Insight is the 8th largest cable operator in the United States, serving more than one million customers in six states. Under the terms of the agreement, Insight Communications will launch Oxygen across the majority of its systems. The new Oxygen cable network, which launches on O2/O2/2000, will be integrated with Oxygen's existing online properties to create a "home base" for women on cable and the Internet. The new cable network will offer original and diverse programming 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week, including X-Chromosome, an animated primetime series specifically targeting women.

Machi Tantillo.

Oxygen Names Cable Programming Production Team. Oxygen Media has named seven executive producers for its original cable television line-up. Carsey Werner Mandabach will oversee seven hours of original programming each day on the 24-hour-a-day, 7 day-a-week cable network. The new appointments are: Linda Corradina (former Senior Vice President, Programming and Production, VH1) will join Giselle Benetar as Executive Producer of Oxygen's teen block; Roni Selig (former Executive Producer of The Rosie O'Donnell Show) will executive produce Pure Oxygen, Oxygen's 2-hour, primetime, live signature program which features the latest information, insight and opinions on parenting, business, health, style, home and entertainment that will be integrated with Oxygen's online content; Lydia Stephans (former Vice President of Programming for ABC Sports) will serve as Executive Producer of Oxygen's sports programming, titled We Sweat; Scott Carter (former Executive Producer of Politically Incorrect) and Nikki Donen (formerly of HBO) will co-executive produce Exhale, Candice Bergen's conversations with newsmakers; Virginia Kuppek (former Supervising Producer for Discovery Pictures) and Dianne Galligan (former producer of CNN's Your Money) will co-executive produce Ka-Ching, Oxygen's look at money from a woman's point of view; Mark Farrell (producer of more than 200 hours of comedy programming on HBO, Showtime and Comedy Central) will executive produce Oxygen.Comedy, as well as a weekly comedy sketch show; Katie Puckrik (BBC, UK Channel 4, UK ITV, VH-1) and Todd Yasui (former Supervising Producer of USA Network's Happy Hour) will co-executive produce and host the variety show, Pajama Party. As previously announced, Machi Tantillo, former Director of Animation at MTV, will executive produce X-Chromosome, an animated primetime series specifically targeting women.