Videoage International March-April 2020

28 March/April 2020 V I D E O A G E At Citytv, Znaimer offered a distinctive style of broadcasting with a studied “casual” format aimed at young audiences. He equipped his reporters with cameras so they could shoot the stories themselves. He also hired a diverse staff, some of whom lacked TV experience, and programmed Friday night erotica. He knocked down the TV studio walls and let the passer-by public see what was happening inside. He called the concept, a “studioless station.” However, after three years, Citytv was running out of money and 45 percent of the station was sold to the Bronfman family’s Multiple Access from Montreal. In 1977, Multiple Access sold its stake to Toronto’s CHUM— a media company founded in 1945 whose major shareholder was Allan Waters — for C$13 million. A year later CHUM increased its stake to 89.1 percent, but sold 21.9 percent to a few of the funding group (including Znaimer). In 1981, CHUM acquired the remaining 32.8 percent shares in Citytv (including Znaimer’s shares) with CHUM stock valued at C$6.4 million (Znaimer continued on as president and was later made a v.p. of the parent company). VideoAge can’t detail the financial aspects of these transactions as when asked about them Znaimer simply stated that he “didn’t exactly recall” and that the information “is not really relevant to the story.” With Citytv’s newfound financial stability, 1981- 1990 was a hugely prolific and creative period for Znaimer. During the 1990s he presided over a considerable expansion of the CHUM television group. In 1992, Znaimer ventured outside Canada as part of a group that included Thames Television, which bid for the license for a fifth British TV channel, which was ultimately awarded to a competing consortium led by Pearson. With expansion, however, came corporate limitations that, ultimately, in 2003, forced him out. But let’s proceed chronologically. In 1979, two years before the birth of Music Television (MTV) in the U.S., Znaimer helped to develop John Martin’s idea of a music channel. Martin (1947-2006) moved to Canada from Manchester, U.K., in 1967 to work at the CBC. His idea of a “rock and talk” TV show was accepted by Znaimer, and in 1979 the NewMusic weekly TV show was born on Citytv. With the success of the show, Martin proposed a full channel devoted to music to Znaimer. MuchMusic launched in 1984. In 1990, Znaimer created the “Speaker Corner,” a video booth mounted outside the Citytv building where passers-by could videotape short messages, some of which were televised. Speaker Corner, which lasted until 2008, pre-dated the arrival of social media — which didn’t happen until Six Degrees in 1997 and MySpace in 2003 — by a number of years, but never progressed into the social media that we know today, even though the format was licensed to TV stations in several countries, including Argentina, Colombia, Spain, and Finland. Znaimer also predicted that television would move towards specialized channels, which promp- ted him to create Bravo! (a style and arts channel) in 1995, Space (a science-fiction channel) in 1997, and CablePulse 24 (Canada’s first 24-hour local news channel) in 1998. He began using the word “original” to promote the channels (as in “Bravo!’s Original,” and “Space’s Original”). Later, in 2001, this method was extended to Citytv programs, (such as “ Sex City Original ” ). This was done much earlier than Netflix, which famously began using the term in 2012. When Znaimer was (by some news accounts) forced out in 2003, CHUM had 28 radio stations, eight local TV stations and 17 specialty channels. About the reason for his dismissal, Znaimer commented: “Creativity is about surprises. Bay Street is about no surprises.” Bay Street is Toronto’s financial district, so it is assumed that he means that his investors only cared about the bottom line. One newspaper account at the time explained: “He was an establishment outsider who wore a ponytail and created a pioneering environment in what was becoming a mature and staid business.” With his dismissal, Citytv’s international content distribution business was also ended. This was a business that Znaimer had started in 1991. Before closing, it had gone through three different content sales executives. In2007,CHUMwasacquiredbyCTVglobemedia (now Bell Media) for C$1.4 billion, however regulators demanded that CHUM’s five Citytv local stations be sold to increase competition, and Rogers Communications purchased them for C$137.5million. Citytv is still housed in the CHUM Building — an iconic former publishing building in Toronto’s downtown that CHUM purchased in 1987. The building also serves as Bell Media’s headquarters. But Znaimer did not remain idle. In addition to putting together a series of media ventures, he returned to the CBC in 2005 to executive produce the TV comedy Rumors , a show that, unfortunately, was canceled in mid-season. Fortunately though, four years after leaving CHUM, Znaimer reconciled with the print media that he previously bashed, by acquiring control of Kemur Publishing, publisher of CARP Magazine, the advocacy association for aging Canadians. While at Harvard he’d considered becoming a print journalist, but later, in 1995, he reneged on the medium when he produced TVTV: The Television Revolution , a three-hour documentary on the image versus the printed word that prompted him to create the “Ten Commandments of Television,” one of which (rule seven) was “Print created illiteracy, TV is democratic.” But after rekindling his love affair with printed journalism in 2008, he relaunched the CARP publication as Zoomer magazine. It is interesting that at a young age he promoted youth, but now, as a mature man, he has become an advocate for Canada’s 15.8 million people aged 50-plus, known in Znaimer parlance as “Zoomers” (or “boomers with zip”). In 2006, under the ZoomerMedia umbrella (which, by the way is abbreviated as ZM, which is the reverse of MZ, Znaimer’s initials), he acquired the commercial classical radio station CFMX- FM, later re-named CFMZ-FM (for the Toronto coverage, while keeping its old call letters for its original coverage area, Cobourg, Ontario). The following year, he acquired CHWO-AM, a Toronto pop music radio station. Today, both stations are under the direction of his sister, Libby Znaimer, a journalistwhoworked for theAssociatedPress and Global Television, and is a national spokesperson for Pancreatic Cancer Canada. A younger brother, Sam, is a venture capitalist. Moses, on the other hand, is president of CARP, and an outspoken supporter of assisted suicide in Canada. In 2009, he acquired the media assets of S-VOX Foundation, for C$25 million, which included two specialty channels of religious-oriented TV programming: Vision TV, and One-TV, and two conventional stations: CHNU-TV (Joytv), and CIIT-TV (Faith TV). In 2009, Znaimer merged his own private company MZ Media (which owned the radio stations, and a conference organization) into ZoomerMedia, which is 66.28 percent owned by Znaimer (through his Olympus Management, Ltd.). Fairfax Financial, an insurance company, owns 28 percent, while the rest is floated in the TSX-V exchange. The conference organization, ideaCity, was founded in 2001. This three-day conference is held annually in the month of June, and features Znaimer as he interviews some 50 prominent personalities. ZoomerMedia and CARP are located in the ZoomerPlex, a 10,522-square-meter state-of-the- art production and live-event complex in Toronto’s Liberty Village, which also houses the 150-seat Zoomer Hall, and the MZTV Museum. Znaimer’s work as an actor includes Louis Malle’s Atlantic City (1980), The Best Revenge (1984), and Being Julia (2004). He’s also toiled as a theater producer. His pro- ductions included the Canadian version of Miss Margarida’s Way (1976), and Tamara (1981). Tamara was a play inwhich the audience followed the plot by moving from room to room, and which starred Marilyn Lightstone, his longtime partner. They met when both were students at McGill University. Int’ l TV Distribut ion Hal l of Fame Moses with sister Libby Moses Znaimer gave VideoAge ’s Dom Serafini a tour of the MZTV Museum in 2014 when it moved to its current location in ZoomerMedia’s Liberty Village in Toronto.