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http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Vancouver+company+opens+office+York/5475741/story.html

Independent Vancouver-based production company Paperny Entertainment Inc. - once nominated for an Oscar - is opening an office in New York.

Paperny Entertainment has created TV shows such as Glutton for Punishment, Eat St., Consumed, Dussault Inc. and Love Shines.

Former Discovery Channel executive Lynne Kirby will oversee the U.S.based office as executive vice-president of programming.

"Lynne Kirby has been a star in the American TV marketplace for over 15 years," said David Paperny, president and co-founder of Paperny Entertainment. "She has a blue chip background. She's a great idea person and a great collaborator with everyone she works with."

Kirby most recently worked with Discovery Fit & Health and Planet Green and before that was senior vicepresident of original programming for Sundance Channel.

With this move, Paperny Entertainment hopes to both increase the audience for the shows they're already making, and to make new shows in the United States, Paperny, 53, told The Sun in an interview.

"Paperny has a fantastic track record of making a variety of successful nonfiction programs for the Canadian and international markets," Kirby said in a news release. "We want to translate those popular formats for American audiences, and generate new content for the U.S. market that can travel in turn to Canada and overseas. Paperny's reputation as nimble and high-quality producers makes this a very exciting opportunity for me."

Paperny, his wife and partner Audrey Mehler and partner Cal Schumiatcher started the company - formerly Paperny Films - in 1994 after Paperny was nominated for an Oscar for his work directing and producing the Dr. Peter Diaries, chronicling HIV/AIDS through Dr. Peter Jepson-Jones, who died in 1992.

Paperny's non-fiction TV productions include lifestyle shows, documentary-soap operas and shows with social media ties. Eat St. is a show about the food cart movement in North America, and more than 300,000 people have downloaded the related app, which finds the closest food cart for users anywhere on the continent.

Dussault Inc. is what Paperny calls a documentary-soap opera: the show follows the eclectic family of Vancouver clothing designer Jason Dussault. Consumed is a show about Lower Mainland families with too much junk. They're left to live with their essentials for a month, with a goal of tossing, donating or recycling 50 per cent of their possessions.


Paperny would not say what Kirby's first new show will be, only promising that "we've got some great projects in development."