By the look of Moses Znaimer’s intimate second-floor office, overlooking downtown Toronto’s fashionable Queen Street West district, it’s apparent the man watches a lot of television.
Televisions are everywhere – hung from the ceiling, perched in front and on the side of his desk, and strung across two walls. There’s even a pyramid of three flat-screen computer monitors that tune in a streaming television feed from the Internet, which is broadcast by CablePulse24 (CP24), Znaimer’s all-news cable channel. There are almost as many televisions as the number of TV channels Znaimer runs.
Mothers may have the compulsion to tell Znaimer to shut that thing off and go outside and play. But Znaimer can’t. He’s having too much fun.
He is the visionary behind 25 TV channels, from Citytv, Canada’s largest independently-owned TV station to MuchMusic, the nation’s 24-hour music channel, just to name a few.
As the president and executive producer of ChumCity, Znaimer can be credited with a lot of television firsts.
While Canada takes for granted the so-called 500-channel universe today, specialty channels did not exist when Znaimer started to build his empire in the 1970s.
“When Moses pitched MuchMusic to the CRTC, none of the networks were interested in this stuff. They thought it was crazy. This whole idea of niche television was ludicrous at the time,” says Matthew Fraser, a media columnist at the National Post and professor of communications at Ryerson University in Toronto.
Znaimer also created and popularized the concept of “videographer” in which a TV reporter doubles as a camera person. The concept is glamorous and sells well on TV, plus it’s a cost-effective way of creating content. The one-person crew also makes for nimble newsgathering.
The studioless station is another Znaimer creation. The ChumCity Building, the site of his broadcasting empire, is wired so that any corner of the building can be used as a set.
“He literally blew away walls and doors, and created an environment that interacted with the cityscape — the studio was spilling onto the street. Previously, studios had been closed spaces and cameras had been stationary,” says Fraser, who also wrote a chapter on Znaimer in his 1999 book, Free-For-All: The Struggle for Dominance on the Digital Frontier.
Other firsts for Znaimer include Speakers Corner, a video booth where anyone can speak their minds on television. That’s Znaimer at his best, because it is simple, inexpensive and takes television to the streets.
These kinds of innovations give the company’s programming its unique look and personality. As in any industry, however, good ideas get co-opted by the competition. For example, Alberta’s A-Channel and Vancouver’s VTV are clones of Citytv. That has also happened in the United States, where small screen giants such as CNN and MTV approach television in Znaimer-like ways.
“My fear is that an American will be walking along Queen Street one day, and while passing the station say: ‘Look at those guys. They’re doing it just like the Today Show. Wouldn’t that be the American way?’,” Znaimer says.
Despite his fears, Znaimer has been recognized for his achievements. His work earned him the Canadian Association of Broadcasters 1998 Gold Ribbon for Broadcast Excellence, Canadian private broadcasting’s highest award which recognizes “innovative achievements, imagination, dedication, hard work, and genuine concern for the highest broadcasting standards.”
However, some industry observers write Znaimer off as a purveyor of pop journalism and candy-floss content, who doesn’t fit into the staid Canadian TV establishment.
“Moses has always been an outsider,” Fraser says. “For him, it is a badge of honour. He doesn’t lack dinner invitations, but he still maintains his outsider image.”
When he goes to Ottawa to attend CRTC hearings, Znaimer subtly thumbs his nose at the rest of the TV world.
“He goes up there in cowboy boots and a black T-shirt and pony tail,” Fraser says. “Everyone else is in suits.”
Znaimer doesn’t worry much about paperwork either.
“Moses never has polls, statistics or financials. His pitch is simply: I understand TV, give me a licence,” Fraser says. “It’s arrogant, cocky and presumptuous, and to some people it’s vaguely off-putting, but the fact of the mat-ter is that when he wins a licence, he launches a successful channel that delivers interesting content.”
This cavalier attitude and renegade approach to broadcasting began to formulate during Znaimer’s early days in Canada. Born in Kulab, Tajikistan, Znaimer arrived in Montreal with his parents, Chaja and Aron, as post-war Jewish refugees in 1948. They moved into a third-floor walk-up on St. Urbain Street, the home where Znaimer bought his family’s first television set with his bar mitzvah money.
“That was the moment. It was in my house and we weren’t the richest people around,” he says. “That was the big epiphany for me. I staggered up to my room, and I watched it propped up on my elbow on my bed. It was an overwhelming light bulb.”
After earning a BA in philosophy and politics at McGill University and an MA in government at Harvard University, Znaimer moved to Toronto in the 1960s and became a radio and TV producer, director and host at the CBC.
After he left CBC, the late Phyllis Switzer recruited him, and with a team of like-minded entrepreneurs, they co-founded Citytv in 1972.
In Citytv’s quirkier early days, Znaimer set out to put on the air a diverse mix of people. This wasn’t easy. His staff would come to him and say they couldn’t find anyone with experience.
“I said, ‘Well how are they going to get experience if we don’t give them a job?’ ” Znaimer recalls. “I said, ‘Go out on the sidewalk and grab the first person that walks by and we’ll train them.’ ”
A shoestring budget and streetwise, raw talent meant that early programming was not particularly polished.
When it was suggested to TV anchor Gord Martineau that he join Citytv, he balked at the idea.
“I said no one in their right mind would go to Citytv. At the time, it was nuts,” says Martineau, who was then working as a weekend anchor at CFCF-TV, a CTV affiliate in Montreal.
However, the station’s parent company had invested money in Citytv, and executives encouraged Martineau to consider the idea.
“They were going to change the whole look and dynamics of the station, and put more money into it,” Martineau says.
Martineau met with Znaimer, who convinced him that the scrappy little station had an exciting future. He’s been the anchor of Citytv’s flagship news show, CityPulse, ever since.
It was true that the station was run loose and wild.
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CityPulse News anchors Anne Mroczkowski and Gord Martineau are familiar fixtures in Toronto homes, delivering Znaimer’s distinct alternative to conventional TV news. |
“In the early days, pieces wouldn’t be reviewed by a producer before they aired,” says Peter Gross, a CityPulse reporter who is infamous for his offbeat segments. “I would just hand in my tape and it would go straight to air.”
Gross was discovered when he was work-ing as a taxi driver. While there are conflicting stories about how that happened, the legend is that Gross charmed Znaimer during a taxi ride so much that by the time he dropped him off at the station, Znaimer offered him a reporting job at Citytv.
One memorable report from Citytv’s zanier early days was Gross’ gambling coverage at the horse track. At the end of the piece, he turned around and walked away from the camera – completely naked, illustrating that he had lost more than his shirt.
Gross recalls Znaimer’s response to the report: “He said in apparent seriousness, ‘I suppose you thought that was funny?’ I said, ‘Yes, I did.’ And he said with a warm smile, ‘So did I.’ ”
The story (there are hundreds more) is archetypical Znaimer.
“It was almost as if you got a reward for going too far. He wanted to push the limits of television,” Gross says.
Znaimer believes the flaws of the would-be TV personalities were their strengths. He points to Erica Ehm, the first female video jockey hired by MuchMusic whose early on-air days were rocky.
“Everybody watching could imagine that they could be as good,” Znaimer says. “We would get letters from viewers, and a typical letter would be: ‘My name is Cindy Sue and I am from such and such high school,’ and she would go on and complain about Erica. And there would always be the same last line: ‘If she can do it, then why can’t I?'”
Ehm found her way in front of the camera after a stint answering phones at the New Music, a Rolling Stone-style magazine program that pre-dated MuchMusic.
She was put on-air after Znaimer saw a demo reel she created with the help of John Roberts, now the senior White House correspondent for CBS News.
Despite her rough beginnings, she got better — with a lot of hard work.
“He chooses these unlikely people, and at the beginning people say, ‘What was he thinking? ‘ Then after a while, they see the results and call him a genius,” Ehm says.
Znaimer earned a reputation around the station for his hiring policies. “There were some jokes going around that if you want a job at Citytv, and God forbid your name is Smith, then you better change it to Bachicaroopi,” Znaimer says with a smile. “Word was I was prejudiced against blondes, but I was trying to make a big point.”
His point was to put some diversity into the homogeneous TV domain of the 1970s. Of course, diversity in Znaimer’s world isn’t just about race. David Onley, now host of HomePage, a technology show on CP24, is case in point. At the age of three, Onley contracted polio, and has since used leg braces and a cane.
In 1984, Znaimer needed a new CityPulse weatherman so he called Onley, who was a radio announcer at the time. Their conversation led to a job offer.
Initially, Onley was shown on-camera from the waist up, but after two months, Znaimer put a stop to that. He walked into a newsroom meeting and told employees: “I have been watching the news and every time I see David, I only see him from the waist up. David happens to be a reporter that uses a cane to keep his balance. I want him shot from the ground up just like everyone else. Any problem with that?”
At that point, Onley had been on the air for two months. “I remember thinking, ‘This guy has flipped,’ ” Onley says.
Soon after that, Onley appeared on-camera with his cane and became the first on-air TV reporter in North America with a visible disability. Znaimer’s ability to democratize the medium is perhaps his most remarkable achievement.
He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Human Rights Centre Gold Medal for his outstanding con-tribution to the promotion of tolerance and creative race relations. He was also presented with the Urban Alliance on Race Relations Diversity Award and the Human Relations Award from the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews.
Looking ahead, Znaimer has ideas that predictably are at odds with popular perceptions. He believes the Internet is certainly a consideration in the future of television, though he has his reservations.
“It’s true there may be a lot of computers in a lot of houses, but when you start clearing it away and asking the necessary questions: ‘How old is the computer? How fast is the modem? How big is the pipe?’ By the time you get to a genuine high-speed connection, you may get to 10 or 15 per cent penetration. It will not go to 100 per cent,” Znaimer says.
Nevertheless, Znaimer says he has a myriad of ideas about how to harness the Internet. He certainly sees it as a potential distribution medium. “I have an idea to do what I call the ‘Citytv world service.’ Given all the original stuff we do now, we can put together one schedule that is 100 per cent owned by us,” he says.
“Maybe I’d de-emphasize the local, and emphasize the national or international. It’s actually a very charming idea, but it is a pro bono idea because there is very little commercial value in that.”
Meanwhile, he thinks the digital world needs to look at the Internet differently. “What is required is not the killer app that everyone talks about, but the killer event,” he suggests.
In television’s early days, he says it was the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II that boosted a lot of television sales. “Tons of people went out and bought TVs so they could see that,” Znaimer says. “So if you really want to push people online, create killer events.” He says that could be done by pairing a TV show with computer content.
Although interactivity between the television and the computer may be a future possibility, he says it contravenes one of his fundamental beliefs about television. “At the end of the day, television is ultimate simplicity.
So, the whole idea of trying to put computer-like applications into the television — I have my doubts.”
