About Playback

Playback

Overview

Playback is Canada's film and television industry trade publication, an online magazine published from Toronto by Brunico Communications. For four decades it has been the journal of record for the Canadian screen business, reporting on production, broadcasting, distribution, financing and policy for the producers, broadcasters, funders and distributors who make and sell Canadian content. Industry references describe it as a "must read" among Canadian entertainment professionals, and its publisher calls it "Canada's leading film and TV industry business publication."

Playback began in 1986 as a biweekly print magazine in tabloid format. Its print edition ended in May 2010, and it has been published exclusively online ever since — a daily news site at playbackonline.ca, supported by a paid-access model that Brunico introduced for the title in 2008. It remains fully active: on a mid-October 2026 visit, its homepage carried same-day news from the MIPCOM television market, the Vancouver International Film Festival and Canadian production companies. For WorldNM's purposes the listing city is Toronto, Brunico's home base.

History

The first issue of Playback was published on 29 September 1986, in tabloid format, as a biweekly magazine for the Canadian entertainment industry. It was the founding title of Brunico Communications, which James Shenkman established in 1986 after identifying, as the company's history is told, a gap in Canadian coverage of the media industries following an unsuccessful application for a Mississauga radio licence. Playback's launch gave the Canadian production community something it had lacked: a domestic trade paper of its own, at a moment when Canadian film and television production was expanding under new funding and tax-credit regimes.

Through the print era the magazine appeared every two weeks, chronicling production slates, broadcaster licence renewals, CRTC hearings, funding-agency decisions and the people moves of a growing industry; its ISSN, 0836-2114, dates from that period. Digital change came early. Brunico's corporate timeline notes that in 2008 PlaybackOnline became the company's first paid-access online editorial product, foreshadowing the full transition two years later. In May 2010 Playback stopped publishing its biweekly print edition and became an exclusively online magazine, a change reported at the time by The Georgia Straight; the same restructuring closed its sister title Boards, the advertising-production magazine.

Ownership of the title has never changed hands, though its parent has. In 2007 Brunico was purchased by an investor group led by Russell Goldstein, who continues as president and CEO. Under that ownership Playback has been grouped with Brunico's expansion into events and international markets: the company has operated the Banff World Media Festival since 2016, and Playback's senior vice-president also serves as the festival's executive director. In 2026 the magazine marked forty years since its first issue, having outlived the print format in which it began by more than a decade and a half.

Content and Coverage

Playback covers the Canadian screen industries as a business. Its daily news follows productions in development and before the cameras, broadcaster commissioning and scheduling decisions, distribution and sales deals at markets such as MIPCOM and TIFF, financing announcements from Telefilm Canada, the Canada Media Fund and the provincial agencies, and the policy files — CRTC proceedings, tax credits, guild negotiations — that shape the sector's economics. Executive appointments and company moves are a staple, as are festival circuit results and ratings performance for Canadian programming.

Alongside the news flow, Playback maintains franchise features. Its Indie List examines the annual production and development spending of Canada's independent producers, and its Best of the Year coverage names the people and companies that defined the year in Canadian screen production. The site also carries the publisher's long-running industry directory, billed as "the definitive CDN broadcast and production resource" with more than 5,000 company listings, which serves as a reference tool for the production community.

The title's beat is national but industrially concentrated: most coverage concerns the production centres of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal and the Canadian companies that travel the international market circuit. Its reporting voice is that of a trade paper — factual, deal-focused and written for readers who already know the players.

Audience and Reach

Playback's readers are the Canadian screen industry's decision-makers: independent producers, broadcaster and streamer executives, distributors, financiers, funders, guild and association staff, and the service and post-production companies that supply them. That is the audience it has served since 1986 and the one its subscription model is built around; access to the site's journalism is a paid professional product, as Brunico's own history notes in recording PlaybackOnline's 2008 debut as its first paid-access editorial offering.

No current audited circulation or traffic figure for Playback is published, and none is asserted here. The measurable evidence of its position is structural rather than numerical: forty years of continuous publication under one owner, its citation as a source by other Canadian media covering the screen industries, and its formal role within Brunico's entertainment portfolio alongside the Banff World Media Festival, whose leadership and Playback's are intertwined.

Digital Presence

Playback's home is playbackonline.ca, a daily news site organised by sector — film, television, and the wider media business — with a searchable archive reaching back through its online years. The site layers free headlines with subscriber access, and the title reaches readers through a daily newsletter and its directory of Canadian broadcast and production companies. Its social distribution and its presence at the industry's calendar fixtures — TIFF, VIFF, MIPCOM, Banff — mirror the working year of its readership.

The digital-only format has suited the title's news cycle: market deals and festival awards are now reported within hours, as the October 2026 homepage showed with same-day MIPCOM sales stories and VIFF award results. Its stories are routinely cited by other Canadian media reporting screen-industry news, extending its influence beyond its subscriber base. Brunico reaffirmed the publication's place in its strategy in 2026, when, announcing that it would discontinue its US events portfolio in 2027, it named Playback among the publications on which the company will concentrate going forward.

Ownership and Organisation

Playback is owned and published by Brunico Communications Ltd., the Toronto business-media company founded by James Shenkman in 1986 and owned since 2007 by an investor group led by president and CEO Russell Goldstein. Brunico's head office is at 100–366 Adelaide Street West, Toronto. Its sister brands include Strategy, Media in Canada, Kidscreen and Realscreen, and it operates the Banff World Media Festival.

Within the group, Playback is overseen by Jenn Kuzmyk, senior vice-president, Playback and executive director of the Banff World Media Festival, who, in Brunico's words, "oversees all aspects" of the publication. Day-to-day editing has been led by editor Kelly Townsend, whose site biography records that she joined the Playback team in 2018 after work in business-to-business and entertainment journalism, including covering Canadian television as an associate editor of The TV Junkies. Editorial policy across Brunico's brands is overseen by Mary Maddever, senior executive vice-president and chief content officer.

Contact and Availability

Playback is published online at playbackonline.ca, where subscription and membership options for its paid-access journalism are set out on the site. Brunico Communications can be contacted at 100–366 Adelaide Street West, Toronto, Ontario M5V 1R9, telephone 416-408-2300. The site's production and broadcast directory, with more than 5,000 company listings by the publisher's count, is also accessible through playbackonline.ca for industry readers seeking Canadian company contacts.