Now & Next

On this episode of Now & Next we journey into the business aspects of one of the buzziest areas of the media landscape: Podcasting. And really, there’s nobody better to explain the dramatic changes playing out in the audio space than Nicholas Quah.

He’s a veteran of a bunch of online media companies that you probably know, like Business Insider and BuzzFeed. He’s also a contributing writer to New York Magazine, he’s been a Nieman Journalism Fellow at Harvard, and he’s also the founder of Hot Pod, the leading newsletter about podcasts.

To download a transcript of this episode, to consult the show’s credits and to dive deeper into the topic at hand, visit trends.cmf-fmc.ca.

Excerpts in the opening:

(00:21) - Podcasts on TV: Big Successes and Major Flops by the CBC on YouTube (URL on trends.cmf-fmc.ca)
(00:26) - Sarah Koenig Interviewed the Taliban for ‘Serial’ by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on YouTube (URL on trends.cmf-fmc.ca)
(00:35) - Podcasts See Massive Boom in Listeners and Investment by CGTN America on YouTube (URL on trends.cmf-fmc.ca)

This episode presents an in-depth conversation with acclaimed documentary filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin, one of the world’s most notable Indigenous filmmakers.

She has made over fifty films over the span of her fifty-year career. Her documentary on the 1990 Oka Crisis is among her most widely known works. Now in her late eighties, Alanis has not slowed down. Her 53rd film, Jordan River Anderson, The Messenger, premiered at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival. It also won the ‘Best Canadian Documentary’ award at the 2019 Vancouver International Film Festival.

So, what does the iconic documentarian make of all the changes afoot in the doc world but of media and technology in general? Find out in this episode of Now & Next as we focus the spotlight on Alanis Obomsawin.

To download a transcript of this episode, to consult the show’s credits and to dive deeper into the topic at hand, visit trends.cmf-fmc.ca.

While you may think—and a lot of people do—that gaming is just something that too many kids spend too much time in their basements doing, you can’t get away from how insanely popular it is. The global gaming industry is worth more than twice the movie and music industries, combined.

Spurred by gaming’s massive popularity, eSports—or competitive video game playing—are rapidly gaining momentum. The industry is predicted to breach the billion-dollar threshold in 2019.

Furthermore, data released by GlobalWebIndex in July 2019 show that almost a billion people had watched an eSports tournament "in recent months." That’s close to a 50% increase over 12 months. The trend is increasingly noticeable among internet users aged between 16 and 24 years old. Within that group, 32% say they watch eSports. 31% say they watch traditional sports.

Because there are no borders on eSports, when a tournament happens, it’s a global event. And in some cases, like the League of Legends World Championship, audiences are bigger than the Super Bowl’s.

So, have eSports reached a tipping point? Where does it go from here? How does Canada fit into the global eSports scene?

On this episode of Now & Next, Leora Kornfeld sits down with five time Counter-Strike World Champion and professional gamer Stephanie Harvey for an insightful chat about the fast-growing eSports industry.

For more about this topic, or to consult the show’s credits, visit trends.cmf-fmc.ca/

For several decades, placing long-shot bets and hoping for the best was pretty much all there was when it came to making TV shows and movies. Then along came data and analytics.

On this episode of Now & Next we hear from Jack Zhang. Jack is a Waterloo grad who has devised a machine-learning system that breaks movies down to their core elements—tens of thousands of them in total—to predict a movie’s likelihood of success. And as you’ll hear in the inaugural episode of our second season, that’s only one of the many things Zhang’s artificial intelligence program can do.

For more information about Now & Next, this episode, to learn more about artificial intelligence in filmmaking, or to consult the show’s credits, visit https://trends.cmf-fmc.ca/

Why do Canadian businesses from the entertainment and audiovisual production sectors flock to Texas during SXSW? We sent the Canada Media Fund's Director of Industry and Market Trends, Catherine Mathys, down to Austin – microphone in hand – to find out.

For more about SXSW 2019, head over to trends.cmf-fmc.ca.

Even though we’ve been hearing about virtual and augmented reality for years, we’re still far from mass adoption. Could blending VR/AR technologies into physical environments change that? In this episode, industry analyst Alexis Macklin of Greenlight Insights makes the case for location-based entertainment.

How can producers of kids’ content differentiate themselves in a newly global and competitive marketplace? For J.J. Johnson of Sinking Ship Entertainment, the production company behind some of the most popular kids’ shows on streaming and broadcast channels, it’s all about doing what others are not.

What do digital cats have to do with blockchain? A lot, thanks to the game CryptoKitties. In less than a year it’s become one of the world’s most successful blockchain applications, with over $40 million in transactions. Yes, of cats that live on screens.

Wattpad is the online writing platform with 65 million users worldwide, written by 4 million writers, that generates 1 billion data points per day.

This episode goes inside Wattpad studios to find out how all this data is helping TV & film companies make better bets.

With Steve Pratt and Dan Misener of the Vancouver-based Pacific Content, embark on an in-depth look at the phenomenon of podcasting and how it’s doing double duty as audio entertainment and as a jumping off point for TV and film projects.