Banff Launches Inaugural Telefilm Canada TV 360 Program

TORONTO: The Banff World Television Festival and nextMEDIA Banff are presenting, for the first time, the Telefilm Canada TV 360 program, aimed at providing cross-platform development opportunities for Canadian producers, writers and directors.

The program offers the opportunity to create a multiplatform entertainment project, while providing the tools to pitch and market projects to Canadian and international broadcasters and funding partners. Three teams of nine will compete to create a package for the best digital media pitch for a current TV series, which will be revealed at nextMEDIA Banff on June 6. The program will wrap on the final day of Banff with a pitching competition to a panel of entertainment executives on June 10. 

"TV 360 is a valuable addition to the existing training programs and fellowships at Banff," commented Peter Vamos, Banff’s executive director. "We’re excited to collaborate with Telefilm Canada to create this new and original program that will foster cross-industry partnership between new media and the future of the television industry."   

"The TV 360 program supports the convergence of the TV and digital media industries," added Mark Greenspan, the VP of digital media for Achilles Media. "TV 360 participants will be taught the best practices required for generating new concepts for interactive narratives that are related to existing television content." 

"There is a growing enthusiasm from both traditional TV people and digital media executives to develop truly integrated forms of entertainment programming," said Lisa Osborne, TV 360’s program manager and supervising producer at the American Film Institute’s Digital Content Lab. "TV 360 offers a great opportunity to be a on multidisciplinary team and learn about production, technology and show development in a fun way."

Applicants must be Canadian professionals from the new-media or film and TV industries. Deadline for application is May 15.