Bell Media is lending a helping hand – and monetary backing – to Canadian producers as part of a new apprenticeship program – Bell Media Producer Accelerator Lab.
The project is a training program designed to groom the next wave of talented television producers. There are two primary components: a broadcaster internship at Bell Media’s headquarters in Toronto and a subsequent production mentorship experience in which the producers spend eight to 10 months at either Bell’s in-house productions department or an independent production company.
Bell Media will give up to $1 million each year toward the lab – one in a group of several other training programs (including the Bell Media National Fellowship Program and the Business Management for Media Professionals Program) backed by the $1.8-million Bell Media TV Skills Development Initiative and other television industry groups.
In a release about the program’s creation, Bell Media president Kevin Crull said Bell aims to air “prestige Canadian programming in primetime” on CTV each night of the week, and having access to a wider pool of skilled producers will also help as it increases the amount of original content on its specialty channels.
Details on applying to the program will be released later in the spring. It is slated to launch by end of year.
