Barely 3 years old, the Los Angeles-based TV arm of indie Entertainment One has made a mark in the network and cable biz by bringing to the table that most precious commodity: financing.

eOne Television, headed by CEO John Morayniss, leverages its heft as a producer and distrib of film, TV and home entertainment fare in Canada, the U.K. and other territories to cobble together coin for TV series in the same way that many indie features are funded, through a combo of foreign pre-sales and advance commitments. It mines the lucrative Canadian system of production incentives and premium license fees given to shows that lense in Canada but also air on a major U.S. network.

This patchwork quilt of funding sources allows the company to offer some series to U.S. networks at a steep discount, often in exchange for big upfront commitments. Its highest-profile series to date has been the adaptation of John Grisham novel “The Firm,” which landed at NBC with a 22-episode order.

The legal ensembler wasn’t that much of a gamble for NBC at a license fee said to be around $1 million, less than what top cablers pay for original drama skeins. Between the coin received from Canada’s Global TV and a big sale to Sony’s suite of AXN-branded international channels covering more than 140 countries, eOne didn’t need big bucks from the U.S. to cover its costs; it needed the outlet to attract name thesps (notably Josh Lucas and Molly Parker) and to ensure the premium license fees from its other partners.

“There’s a proliferation of channels that are hungry for American programming that is a certain genre and tone,” Morayniss said. “When an opportunity comes along get a branded series like ‘The Firm,’ Sony’s AXN came in without the condition of a U.S. sale because they knew we were heavily in this market.”

In many respects, “The Firm” will be an interesting test case for whether the eOne model can survive the big leagues of network primetime. The Big Three have been experimenting with Canadian imports for the past few years, but most of these shows have been relegated to summer runs, as ABC has done with eOne’s cop drama “Rookie Blue.”

“The Firm,” on the other hand, landed a regular-season slot and was touted at NBC’s upfront presentation last May. On the downside, “The Firm” has been mostly panned by domestic critics and got off to a weak start (a 3 share in adults 18-49 weak) in its two-hour premiere Sunday. It will face tough competish in its regular Thursday 10 p.m. berth.

But even if “The Firm” doesn’t go the distance, the eOne model has piqued the interest of the creative community. Indeed, it was Grisham, scribe Lukas Reiter and his reps at CAA that brought the project to eOne after seeing what the company had done with “Rookie Blue” and the Syfy drama “Haven.”

NBC, for one, is negotiating with eOne for a multi-episode commitment to another drama, medical vehicle “Saving Hope,” that has also been ordered by Canada’s CTV. Filmmaker Paul W.S. Anderson came to eOne last fall with a concept for a supernatural procedural drama, “The Reel,” that will be shopped overseas long before it seeks a U.S. home.

Timing was everything for eOne’s push to build its U.S. TV business. In fall 2008, the company bought Blueprint Entertainment, the production shingle run by international TV vets Morayniss and Noreen Halpern, who is now eOne’s prexy of drama programming. Morayniss and Halpern had been pursuing the Canadian content/foreign financing model on their own, but the backing of eOne gave them deeper pockets.

Moreover, eOne’s rollup of Blueprint and other TV companies came on the heels of the 2007-08 writers strike, which was the shock to the system that spurred the major nets to look for new and cheaper sources of programming.

“We’d always had a more global approach,” Halpern says. “All of a sudden that coincided with an interest in the U.S. of putting shows together in a different way — bringing financing out of international markets, using the advantage to be able to bring a significant amount of money out of Canada and other countries as a way to do high-end shows for lower license fees.”

This article first appeared on Variety.com.

What can the mass media 1 percent learn from the digital 99 percent?

While big media and other critics slam Occupy Wall Street for lacking a cohesive message, the movement continues to just get on with things, including its own media, innovating in the process and providing a case-study for excellence in editorial, production and broadcasting.

If TV execs aren’t taking notes, they would be wise to get out their stenographers, because now’s a great time to mimeograph a digital manifesto for the team.

Original cartoon by Catherine Warren, image from Huffington Post/Getty Image photo, cartoonized by Befunky.

With its four-point approach to media mastery – low cost production, on-the-fly coverage, blast-off transmission and crowd-sourced financing – Digital Occupy mercifully takes no prisoners.

In his article “Innovation and Imitation in Commercial Media,” Middlebury College Associate Professor of Film & Media Culture Jason Mittell writes: “Creating commercially successful mass media involves a delicate balance of offering something familiar along with something new, an alchemy of innovation and imitation.”

But what today’s audiences get is more like the bad chemistry of eyes wide shut. Big media is turning its back on both the news that matters most and the best means to deliver it.

For an excoriating attack on broadcasters’ failure to innovate check out the CNET profile of Gary Shapiro, head of the Consumer Electronics Association. A summary of his take on broadcasters: “For decades they haven’t been creative, and they’ve been resistant to changes in technology. And they get a phenomenal amount of money from what they do. For years they’ve basically controlled Congress.”

What’s up with that? Recently, I was at Zuccotti Park, Occupy Montreal, The International Emmy Awards and NBC’s 30 Rock Plaza all in the same few days. The digital divide was as striking as any other.  Today, it seems that the media splits unevenly into the “haves” and the “have apps”.

“What you are seeing is the culmination of social media, citizen journalism and what I call ‘small technology,’ a cell phone and a hotspot,” says Henry James Ferry, who together with Tim Pool launched a primary source of independent media www.theother99.tv on day one of Occupy Wall Street – and hasn’t looked back.

“I don’t think that mass media know what to do with this and I am surprised that they haven’t found a way to take [these productions] and at least package them as their own,” he says. It is not as if this stuff is so new, notes Ferry. But it is far from mainstream. “You’ll know it’s jumped the shark when a big company does it.”

As bloodthirsty audiences, we should be so lucky.

Obviously, when it comes to decentralized movements, digital media is mission-critical. But if media is your core business, isn’t there even more of an imperative to get with the digital program? North American broadcasters with their incessant restructuring are particularly vulnerable to stagnation, with every shuffle their digital brain trusts go back to ground zero.

Meanwhile, as mass media risks continuing to drone on about the uncertain value of digital media, radical media is deploying actual drones to capture current events in real time.

Cleverly making and delivering media from the front lines with their live streams and cells, The Other 99’s Ferry and Pool are currently upping their game with the use of an “AR Drone”, a low observable flying machine with a high-quality wireless web cam easily controlled from the ground with a phone. The Other 99 have tapped Pool’s independent tech team’s DroneStream project for deployment. Sold in orange and green at Toys “R” Us for $298.99, but sadly out of stock right now for Christmas and broadcast networks, these gaming toys (the AR comes from “Alternate Reality”) make ideal electronic newsgathering devices.

The idea for using a drone, says Ferry, happened when early reports suggested that the NYPD closed the airspace above Zuccotti Park. (In mid-November, WCBS and other media companies believed they had been ordered out of the sky in a media blackout designed to prevent choppers from taking aerial shots of the Occupy scene. While high-priced, high-flying media helicopters did turn tail, the NYPD and FAA have since denied this edict and chalked it up to a media misunderstanding.) Now with a toy that flies at 400 feet, and financed by donation, Ferry says he can stay on the right side of the law and FAA regulations, while still delivering powerful aerial coverage at rock-bottom costs.

Another regulatory environment could facilitate a détente between big media and its frenemy, the participatory audience. “Changes to FCC and CRTC guidelines mean no more ‘broadcast standards’,” notes Roger Williams, CEO of Image Media Farm, which specializes in real-time production of massive live events and rents broadcast equipment to news and sports networks. Broadcasters and broadcast technology manufacturers can now look to consumers for best practices in production, editorial and transmission, he says.

At the bleeding edge, these “consumers” are actually the digital revolutionaries, the activists on the front lines of the Arab Spring and the Occupy movements who produce on the run and transmit on a shoestring, reaching massive audiences with often with nothing more than a phone.

“When we talk of these so-called revolutionary innovators we are referring to your average Internet ‘addict,’ which these days means most of us,” says Sandra Larriva Henaine, co-author of the new book Revolution 3.0, a series of profiles on the power of the Internet as an agent of change.

We are the digital 99 percent.

“We post interesting images or videos on Facebook, we tweet breaking news on Twitter, we e-mail links to our friends, we download podcasts onto our phones and we prefer getting our news digitally. These are all factors that media outlets these days have had to take into consideration in order to survive,” she says.

While mass media may continue in survivor mode largely kickin’ it old school, digital media is turning to Kickstarter for financing innovation.

An online funding platform for creative projects, “Kickstarter is the ultimate dog and pony show,” according to Christos Sourligas, writer and director of the world’s first feature film shot entirely on the iPhone 4. “Fed-up innovators are tired of waiting around for government or venture-capitalist hand-outs, and have taken to the streets in order to get their messages across. Except that the street has now come to the laptop.”

“The Arab Spring and Occupy movements have shown us that social media and cell phone technology works!” says Sourligas, whose indie movie “Happy Slapping” was shot on iPhones by the actors themselves. Except for sound recording, the only mechanical costs were for the smartphones. The total budget for this 90-minute movie: $250K. “When projected on a big screen, you can’t tell the difference between this film and any other film shot on high-definition cameras that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he says. And his distribution strategy aims to capture the smartphone audience, with a day-and-date theatrical and mobile content release, following his earlier premiere at the Montreal Film Festival in August.

Fan-funding is also part of Occupy’s advertising. With Loudsauce, a site for crowd-financing TV commercials and other campaigns, movements can underwrite the purchase of expensive airtime. Conceivably, digital revolutionaries can now get their content on air through an ad-buy, if not an editorial window, and supported entirely by audience dollars. When valuable television content becomes advertising we want to watch, big media risks a double by-pass.

Unlike print media, which presents itself in perpetual crisis mode and can always use turmoil as a reason not to innovate, world TV revenues reached a healthy $375.5B in 2010 and are expected to grow to $460.9B by 2014. So if tech is cheap and TV revenues are up, then where is the patently evident R&D?

“One of the best places we go [for digital inspiration] is to talk to recent college grads,” says Tim Gaughan, CBS director of digital news gathering and special events. He notes that CBS’s digital advance has accelerated over the past two years, with “Twitter as the best CBS example of digital media — bringing in audiences, listeners, viewers and adding another screen.” Gaughan says that while CBS does watch Occupy’s use of social media, it is to “monitor the way that protestors are organizing” not for digital competitive intelligence.

Chances are if you are rich, you are not hungry, a maxim that might also apply to big media and its impetus to innovate. Under the sky, the drones, the foreclosed homes, Digital Occupy eats its lunch.

Click here read this article in The Huffington Post.

Follow Catherine Warren on Twitter: www.twitter.com/fantrust

Help me out, here.

When will digital media shareholders, investors and boards look at the case for female leadership on its merits and stop with the painful status quo contortions required to keep women out of top roles?

What’s it going to take when, faced with hard data, these decision makers persist in making limp calls?

Original cartoon by Catherine Warren, image from Huffington Post/Getty Image photo, cartoonized by Befunky.

The facts have been in for a while: women dominate the Internet, represent the lion’s share of consumer spending, and deliver better value to shareholders when at the corporate helm.

Connecting the dots has never been easier!

From cave paintings to Facebook posts, women continue to shape the media landscape. Today, we are the digital evangelists; 92 percent of us pass along information about online deals or finds to others. We own digital fan activity, representing a whopping 71 percent. When it comes to the fastest growing video game sector, social gaming, we make up three-quarters of the audience. And, boy, do we buy: online and off, women account for 85 percent of all consumer purchases.

Yet women hold only three percent of the clout positions in mainstream media. More generally, among communications companies in the Fortune 500, we represent just 15 percent of top executives and only 12 percent of board directors.

To shape-shift the media business model, look no further than the obvious. Women are the forest and the trees, what can’t you see?

In the famous “invisible gorilla” experiment Harvard psychologists proved that as many as 50 percent of viewers will miss something as obvious as a gorilla in the midst of a small group of people. But women in media represent a universe of dancing gorillas somehow overlooked by people on safari looking specifically for gorillas. Willful blindness appears to trump the implausible.

Things might change as more women get into the media investment game. When we met as speakers recently at theInternational Women’s Digital Media Summit, Arianna Huffington told our group that Laurie David was her first investor in The Huffington Post. She also said, “If Lehman Brothers was ‘Lehman Brothers & Sisters’ they would still be around today.”

Arianna Huffington and Catherine Warren, Photo credit: Tori Sutton, Stratford Gazette

Obviously, women don’t provide immunity. As Nell Minow, board member of the corporate watchdog research group GovernanceMetrics International reminds me, “There were women on the boards of Enron, Lehman Brothers, etc. etc.”

Since corporations are people too, it’s no surprise that perceptive investors see them as gendered. Serial angel investor Esther Dyson, whose media investments have included Flickr and del.icio.us, both sold to Yahoo!, says that she looks for “character traits (in the companies I invest in) that tend to be overrepresented in women: good listening skills, self-awareness, good at motivating and developing people, common sense.”

The Internet itself may help more women eventually get ahead, says Nanon de Gaspe Beaubien-Matrick, president of Beehive Holdings, an investment company that funds women-led digital businesses that deliver to a female customer base. “The Internet allows flexibility, it allows people to work from home, to participate [at the executive level] in ways we didn’t have before.” Face time may no longer be the benchmark, she adds, performance will.

But performance measures can cut both ways. How about the board director scorecard? Companies that are doing amazingly well on the backs of hundreds of millions of female consumers, such as Facebook and Zynga, have zero female board members. Since zero is easy to count, many women — from consumers to senior staff and from the mathematically challenged to the whizzes of finance — may take their business elsewhere.

Companies with zero female board members are not just slapping our faces, they persist in slapping the face of logic. That’s because companies with significant female board membership are widely known to outperform their counterparts. Specifically, when comparing Fortune 500 companies with the highest female board representation to the lowest, those with more women on board are the financial superstars. Across the board, these companies deliver better returns: on equity, on sales and on invested capital.

Ultimately, what’s bad for women is bad for business. Let’s shake things up nicely with some reciprocity.

C’mon, guys. What’s up? We are, in order: Good (women deliver bottom line results); Giving (we put out to buy your stuff); and Game (as players and as leaders). So why are you still just not that into us?

Follow Catherine Warren on Twitter: www.twitter.com/fantrust

“Descent Into Crowley Heights” is a web-based, side-scrolling game that takes players through the world of Todd & The Book of Pure Evil, playing as one of the gang members from the series with characteristic weapons. The game utilizes the well-known locations, enemies, and a slew of monsters featured on the program.

Each player is taken through five bloody levels on their mission to try to capture the Book of Pure Evil. The art direction is representative of the rich texture and tongue-in-cheek style from the Todd & The Book of Pure Evil television series.

“Descent Into Crowley Heights” leverages cast audio, clips and of course the attitude that viewers have come to know and love. The game guide takes the form of Todd’s mentor, Jimmy (Jason Mewes), with his typical crude approach to advice. A variety of mini-game challenges are also available on Facebook as well as an unlockable character to play once the user finds the code.

Hot off a Gemini award for best Ensemble Cast in a Comedy Series, Todd & The Book of Pure Evil debuted as one of the highest-rated premieres for a SPACE original series last year and continues to gain momentum. Following an amazing run on SPACE, Season 1 was the most watched Canadian program on The Comedy Network this summer among all key adult and male adult demos. The first season’s gory goodness can also be found on MuchMusic, Tuesdays at 9:30 pm ET.

Viewers in the U.S. made a pact with the devil when the first season of TODD began airing on the horror channel, FEARnet, in August.

The series returns to SPACE and SPACE HD with brand new bloody hilarious episodes Sunday, Oct. 30 at 10 p.m. ET.

The series is distributed by eOne Television International and is produced by Corvid Pictures, Aircraft Pictures and Frantic Films.

For more information on the game, please contact:

Travis Dudfield, FanTrust Entertainment Strategies, travis@fantrust.com

For more information on the series, please contact:

Andrea Allen, Bell Media, 416-384-5375 or andrea.allen@bellmedia.ca

CTV’s spectacular SuperBodies

Inspired by the forensic animation on the show CSI, SuperBodies was first introduced during the 2010 Olympic Games as a series of two-minute vignettes exploring the anatomy of elite athletes.

In February 2011, Discovery Canada aired a new incarnation – a 60-minute documentary that further explored the impact of competitive winter sports on the bodies of elite athletes.

In partnership with CTV Olympics and the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund, an educational game app was created to support the doc. With 3D animation and original video segments, the SuperBodies mobile app allows users to peel away the human skin to reveal what truly happens on the inside when star athletes perform.

Online, Facebook and Twitter facilitated knowledge sharing and fan interaction with athletes and sports scientists.
With its continued success, CTV commissioned another 12 segments for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London.

This is an excerpt from StrategyOnline.ca. Click here to read the full article.

Photo courtesy of the International Emmy Awards

In recent years, FanTrust president Catherine Warren, a member of the Academy, has served on the jury. “The caliber of digital media nominees from around the world continues to push the envelope year over year. Winners blend innovation and interactivity to attain the most coveted prize in global entertainment.”

The award categories for submissions from outside the United States are as follows:

Digital Program – Children & Young People

Digital Program – Fiction

Digital Program – Non-Fiction

The deadline for entries is Thursday, November 3, 2011. Winners will be announced at a ceremony during MIPTV 2012 in Cannes, France.

Click here to access the rules, regulations, guidelines and entry form for the 2012

For additional information, please contact the Awards Department of The International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences at awardsdept@iemmys.tv or phone 1-212-489-1946.

Catherine Warren, President at Vancouver-based FanTrust Entertainment Strategies believes that “young women can do amazing things.” She will be moderating a panel called “The Executive Suite: Women on Top” at the International Women in Digital Media Summit (iWDMS 2011) in Stratford, Ontario from October 23rd to 25th, 2011.

As a preview to the conference, I spoke with Catherine about what it takes to run her own business, lead as a woman in the digital media industry, and much more. Here are the highlights from our conversation last week:

How did you get your start in the digital media industry?

Prior to starting my own business, I was a COO at a cross-platform broadcasting software startup called Blue Zone during the early days of the Internet industry. In this role, I spearheaded significant convergence broadcasting deals and developed media creation, and distribution strategies. We grew this publicly-traded Nasdaq company to a $300 million market cap. When the dotcom bubble burst, I realized it was time to go out on my own.

What is FanTrust?

FanTrust looks at how fans can transform business models for the entertainment industry. Having worked with broadcasters for years, I realized that many of them hadn’t anticipated the power of interactive audiences. I immediately recognized the opportunity to focus on digital media and fan culture.

Celebrating our 10th anniversary this year, FanTrust has influenced major media networks, fortune 500 clients, gaming and mobile companies, and advertising agencies. We focus on “hit making” to drive B2C value (including traffic) for new media platforms. We also provide our clients with new ways to capture financing, captivate audiences and capitalize on digital business development. Our client successes include Microsoft’s early push into digital content, Gemini Award-winning CTVNEWS.com and the fan strategy for the CSI television franchise.

What does it take for a woman to lead in the digital media industry?

The short answer is that it takes all of the same things that a man needs to lead. You must be ambitious, a lifelong learner, understand politics within an organization, and be very responsive to employee and customer needs. Women still face a lot of obstacles, especially when it comes to comparing their income vs. men in a similar role. The playing field won’t be level until that is sorted out.

All business is still male dominated. The digital media industry may, in fact, be better than other industries for having more women leading the charge. For example, in the casual gaming industry, women make up a big part of the customer base. So, it makes sense to hire female Sr. Executives because they understand how to cater to that audience. But there are still few female C-level executives in publicly traded companies in Canada.

I have sat on corporate boards like the Bell Fund, which has awarded $100M to convergence productions. Companies need more women on boards. It affects everything within an organization – including the bottom line. It also sets the right tone for clients, shareholders, and employees because of the diversity of viewpoints being discussed.

What is your advice for anyone starting their own digital media business?

• Surround yourself with a great advisory board.
• Pick people with different, yet complimentary skills to yours for your team.
• If you’re looking to raise money, educate yourself on the path to raising capital. It requires a completely different skill set from running your business, and can be a distraction from your core business. Talk to a lot of people who’ve been through it. Instead of trying to raise a lot of money, focus on generating early revenue. This is probably a better way to stay focused if you can avoid having to raise a lot of investor money early on.
• Work with both big and small clients. I encourage entrepreneurs to shoot for high profile clients and mix those with smaller customers.

Who is your biggest role model?

Well, I come from a family of entrepreneurs. There is sort of an expectation in my family that entrepreneurship is simply what you do. Even my grandmother was one of Canada’s first female real estate agents. My mom started her own interactive database business in the 1970s – before the Internet and search even existed. So, I’m surrounded by role models.

I believe that if you’re open to it, life can change on a dime. For example, another role model of mine is Julia Butterfly Hill. She ran a number of successful businesses in her 20s but gave it all up to spend two years living in a California Redwood tree to try and save it from being cut down. She made this decision after attending a fundraiser to save the forests. Her story is a great example of the type of dedication and courage that it takes for a young woman to lead and change the world.

Catherine Warren is just one of the many fabulous speakers who are scheduled to speak at iWDMS.

Click here to see the article published in Tech Vibes.

• Call Me Fitz, produced and distributed by eOne Television International, walked away with six Gemini’s for Best Sound and Best Picture Editing in a Comedy, Variety or Performing Arts Program or Series, Best Writing in a Comedy or Variety Program or Series, Best Performance by an Actress and Actor in a Featured Supporting Role or Guest Role in a Comedic Series and Best Direction in a Comedy Program or Series.

• “The Phantom of Crowley High”, a musical episode from the first season of Todd & The Book of Pure Evil, produced by Frantic Films, Corvid Pictures and Aircraft Pictures, and distributed by eOne Television International, received the Gemini for Best Ensemble Performance in a Comedy Program or Series, in what the Toronto Star called one of the biggest surprises of night.

• The season finale of Ice Pilots NWT, “Arnie Calls It” received a Gemini for Best Original Music for a Lifestyle/Practical Information or Reality Program or Series and the Season 2 episode “Under Pressure”, was given the nod for Best Photography in an Information Program or Series.

• Debt Do Us Part, distributed by PictureBox, picked up a Gemini for Best Lifestyle/Practical Information Series.

• Best Cross-Platform Project, Fiction went to marblemedia for the comedy DatingGuy.com

Catherine Warren, FanTrust president and Bell Fund board member & communications chair, also congratulates the following Gemini award winners, who received funding from the Bell Broadcast & New Media Fund:

• Best Cross-Platform Project – Children’s and Youth: Babar and the Adventures of Badou Interactive

• Best Cross-Platform Project – Fiction: DatingGuy.com

• Best Cross-Platform Project – Non-Fiction: Storming Juno Interactive

The 26th Annual Gemini Awards will culminate with the Broadcast Gala on

Wednesday, September 7th at CBC in Toronto with the presentation of the final seven awards. Hosted by comedian Russell Peters, the event will be broadcast at 8pm on CBC Television.

Video has long been a highly effective medium for getting out a message, but only in recent years — with the advent of inexpensive cameras, consumer-friendly editing software and broadband Internet — has it become truly accessible to everyone, including your nonprofit organization.

The apparent ease of production, however, does not mean video-making should be taken lightly. A well-crafted PSA or information video posted on your website and YouTube can be wonderful for garnering attention for programs, but a poorly executed one may well lack the flash to grab people’s attention on the video-saturated web.

“Just a couple of years ago there seemed to be a movement toward low-quality video,” says Mike Edgell, an award-winning video producer with the marketing firm Thornley Fallis. “It’s a connected, online generation, and for some reason people thought quality didn’t matter anymore. But would any nonprofit write a poor press release, or not prepare for an important speech, or not fix the sign on their building if it fell down? Why drop the ball when it comes to video?”

Of course, the reason is usually expense. It takes more than just a good camera to make a good video. Indeed, Edgell says that at the upper end of the scale, a video of TV-commercial quality can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Thankfully, options do exist for getting the job done for quite a bit cheaper than that, from hiring students, to holding contests, to teaching courses and enlisting volunteers.

The United Way of the Lower Mainland, in British Columbia, launched the Care to Change Video Competition last March to engage with the online community, especially youth.

“I really feel it is important to engage youth,” says United Way board member Catherine Warren, “specifically using new media where they engage in dialogue and relate to their friends.”

The contest, now closed for submissions, asked youth and adults to submit videos dealing with issues such as bullying, poverty and loneliness as experienced by children and seniors. In August, a shortlist selected by an independent jury will be posted to the contest website, where viewers can vote for their favourites. Winners in a variety of categories will be announced in September, taking home prizes such as professional video equipment, computers and retail store vouchers. Top winners will be screened at this fall’s Vancouver International Film Festival and posted to the nonprofit YouTube channel VISOgive.

Warren says the objective of the contest was to foster dialogue, but she stresses it was important to make sure videos were of a certain standard. “Part of the direction we gave people was to inspire audiences, but to use artistic touches to do that,” she says. “The whole idea was to motivate the audience to act.”

To that end, the contest website offered a Video Toolkit containing links to such things as royalty-free sound effects and music, storyboarding instruction, YouTube’s tutorial page called Creator’s Corner, and a filmmaking workshop.

“We have just been overwhelmed by the content, quality and variety of submissions,” says Warren. The contest generated a total of 70 entries.

Beyond YouTube and the contest website, the finalist videos will also be made available for use by some 1,100 organizations that are part of the United Way’s partner community in the lower mainland. “They represent business, labour, public sector and nonprofits that we support or that support us,” says Warren.

This is an excerpt. Click here to read Shaun Smith’s full article on CharityVillage.com.

MOSCOW, June 16, 2011 – Executives from the world’s leading media outlets in North America, Russia, Europe and Asia will gather in Moscow on June 24, 2011 for a global forum on the future of media hosted by the Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

“The current influx of new technologies means that it’s a fascinating time for journalism all over the globe,” said editor-in-chief of Guardian News & Media Alan Rusbridger in an interview with the Russian news agency. “Never before has the news industry been presented with such a proliferation of ways to gather news, communicate with the audiences and increase our influence.”

The International Future Media Forum will provide an opportunity “to debate how we can better operate in this ever-expanding digital arena, what we can learn from each other, and how we can continue to experiment in order to pioneer new forms of story-telling for our tech-savvy audiences,” said Rusbridger.

Panelists and keynote speakers include heads of media companies as well as executives from international organizations, innovation companies and analytical centers focused on media market development.

“With audiences at the centre of the media ecosystem, social media jockeying for position against mass media, and new financing and revenue models shaking things up, this group couldn’t come together at a better time,” said FanTrust Entertainment Strategies president Catherine Warren, who will speak on the topic of media profitability at this Moscow event. FanTrust provides business development for the media and entertainment sectors, coalescing content, commerce and consumers.

The Future Media Forum is planned as the core of this year’s celebrations of the RIA Novosti media agency’s 70th anniversary.

“We hope that this forum will become an open platform for a broader discussion of possible paths for media development, looking beyond the media community,” said RIA Novosti Editor-in-Chief Svetlana Mironyuk. “We were keen to bring together leading representatives of the international media market and the audiences, the end consumers of these media products, to discuss the interaction between the traditional and increasingly popular innovative media.”

The sessions will be broadcast live on the RIA Novosti website in Russian and English. Questions to the panelist can be posted at www.facebook.com/FutureMediaForum.

View the Forum agenda, list of speakers and partners at www.fmf-eng.rian.ru.