JAY SWITZER IS ABOUT to find out if Canadians want to accept an invite into his new Hollywood Suite.
That’s the name Switzer, the former CHUM Ltd. CEO, and David Kines, another former CHUM executive (who was EP of the just-wrapped Gemini Awards) have given their new company, which is about to launch four new high definition movie channels: dubbed at their license approvals: Velocity, The Love Channel, Kiss, and Adventure.
The independent broadcaster will officially launch in the coming days, announcing key people, branding and programming, aiming at an April 2011 launch with Canadian carriers.
Switzer and Kines have done this many times as they both rose through the ranks at CHUM/City from an early date: Jay very early since his mom Phyllis co-founded Citytv when he was just a kid, later selling it to CHUM owners, the Waters family). He and Kines both began at CHUM in the early 80s, with Jay rising to the CEO’s chair and Kines eventually overseeing all of the company’s music and youth programming.
While Switzer left when the company was purchased by CTV in 2007, Kines worked at CTV running the music branded channels until the fall of 2008.
Given the number of successful specialties that sprang from CHUM through the years, if there’s anyone who knows how to do this – while also having a pretty good idea of what Canadians like to watch (and what distributors need to hear in negotiations) it will be the principals of Hollywood Suite.
However, 2010 is a different media world and specialties have to be far more special nowadays. Compelling content has to be available across all platforms just to get a carriage deal. However, Switzer (pictured) feels he has a formula for success – and as always, isn’t afraid to share his thoughts on the industry at large, too and what follows is an edited transcript of Switzer’s recent chat with Cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien.
Jay Switzer: People are still talking about what you did – or what Bob Rabinovitch did – with the opportunity and the platform you gave him last month. I salute you for taking Cartt.ca to the next level, and at the same time creating a legitimate debate… Bob’s decision to speak so candidly about the institution and his successor is balanced by the debate, which is I believe, hugely beneficial.
Greg O’Brien: Thanks. And some of those topics, I also wanted to get into with you. So much change is going on globally and our traditionally regulated industry within our own little borders has been nice, neat, and tidy, but global events are pulling at its threads. The way media is developing, the way platforms and transmission technology are developing, the way content is shifting, are all pulling at the fabric of the industry in Canada. So in the context of what you’re launching, how do you see your place in the world?
JS: Well, I can speak about it from all kinds of perspectives, but while all of this consolidation is going on… you know, scale doesn’t help you with creative. Scale doesn’t necessarily help you with ideas. Scale doesn’t necessarily help you with an ability to connect with viewers. It has fantastic advantages, in terms of operating costs, efficiencies, and sharing resources and so on but it’s not got a monopoly on the next great idea or what the market needs.
I don’t say that arrogantly. I just suggest that a good idea is a good idea, and our particular idea is to launch much-needed high-definition movie channels because audiences are screaming for it. It’s a perfect storm… of meeting the needs that we believe we’re finding in our discussions with BDUs, with the Canadian creative community, with foreign suppliers, and with audiences. So in terms of the structural issues around the race for who has more high-def and the race for who has more SVOD, and the race for who has more streaming to serve the way Canadians are shifting their entertainment habits and patterns – it’s just great timing.
From a supply point of view, there was never a better time to come to market. We put together the best team in the business and have fantastic partners and the announcements will be coming literally in the next week or two will show that.
This is something significant, something that’s needed, something that’s first class, and we’ll be launching these (4) channels under Hollywood Suite in April 2011… as a destination of four true high-def movie channels. We’re clearly not in the pay business (the licenses are cat 2s) – I don’t want to not be invited to Ian Greenberg‘s next dinner party.
GOB: Well, to take the skeptic’s point of view, there are hundreds of channels, and hundreds of linear channels. Tons of movies. How is there room for more?
JS: If I were to summarize it, we’re designing a suite of movie channels designed for the true movie lover in all of us. We’re positioning these to champion our iconic memories of what movie channels can do and can be, as a single destination. Not having to watch some series, some classics, some old. Yes, dozens of Canadian specialty channels have some movies but there’s really only two or three that specialize in movies as 60 or 70% of their airtime, and certainly not in as focused, and as organized a way.
When you can create a suite, you can have the ability to create a single destination, so that you’re not counter-programming against each other. You’re not mixing some Cs with some As. You’re not mixing some old junky series with some leisure. You have the freedom and privilege to create a very desirable, very high quality, true high-def, not with upconverted crap, high value, low price, high-def suite of movie channels that we think will find fantastic acceptance in Canada. Based on our discussions over the last six months with BDUs, we’re encouraged.
GOB: Now, you observed the launch of City, even if you weren’t necessarily there
JS: I was literally a kid.
GOB: And that was in a very different media world. You were at CHUM when Much and many others were launched and again, very different media world. How does, or can, the launch of those channels inform how you’re doing this, given how today’s media world is so different?
JS: Some see this as a very challenging time, and we just see it as a great opportunity. We don’t have a heritage business to protect. The SVOD component of Hollywood Suite is the fundamental part of the offering. The broadband streaming that we’re able to offer BDUs is a fundamental part of the offering, together with the linear channels.
Others see challenges like this as putting at risk their legacy, heritage business. We don’t have a legacy, heritage business. We have a multi-platform offering that’s obviously different than the launch of traditional linear channels five, 10, 20 years ago, but no less exciting than those launches were at the time.
GOB: Let me back up a little bit. How do you envision going to the newly combined Shaw, which owns (the former) CanWest channels to ask for carriage. You’ll be going into the newly combined Bell TV, which will own all the CTV channels, too.
JS: I’ve been told and taught now in the last 72 hours not to use the Canwest name . I’m supposed to put a dollar in a jar to their charity, if I do. You just did, but we’ll let that one go.
GOB: How about I edit it that out?
JS: We can use the Global word I’m told, not the Canwest word.
GOB: Okay, the former Canwest assets, Shaw Media. So you’re going to be going in there, and they’ve got a world of knowledge of what all contracts are like, and what all the rest of everything is like. And they’ve got a ton of their own channels, established ones, and you’re going to be the small new guy.
You’ve seen how some of the independents have fared attempting to get carriage. High Fidelity HDTV has struggled to get carriage for its channels. Channel Zero for Movieola and Silver Screen Classics, same thing.
JS: Martha (Fusca) and her gang (at Stornoway Communications).
GOB: Right. Knowing all of that, what are you thinking about going in there, and presenting your value proposition, and coming away with carriage right out of the gate rather than wait years to get on cable or satellite.
JS: That’s the beauty of Cat 2s/Cat Bs; you have no entitlement for carriage. It forces you to come up with a proposition that the BDUS want that they know what their customers want. If we’re wrong, it won’t work. We’re clearly certain based on feedback from BDUs that it will work, but there’s no sense of entitlement. We know that the expansion of the business is driven by a rich, SVOD offering, and a broadband offering. And as you know, the dirty secret of media, regardless of platform, is that the business has been driven by movies, sports, and adult, to be frank.
There’s never been a greater demand for high-def; there’s never been a greater demand for a concentrated, organized destination approach to movies. We’re not suggesting we’re going have five million subscribers overnight. It’s likely, depending on how our BDU partners choose to market us, we will have many hundreds of thousands subscribers in the early years, and that’ll be fine. This is about meeting a need in the market with an absolutely first class product… that meets the needs of the BDUs to deal with their other issues like over the top.
We’ll find our way, but the early discussions and commitments have been phenomenal, beyond our expectation, and we have to prove ourselves. It’s about innovation, creativity, putting a product together that the distributors, and eventually, your audiences want.
These large BDUs are publicly traded companies that are interested in improving their own product, and whether that’s worrying about the pending launch of a GoogleTV or how they’re going to fight Netflix or how they’re going to fight each other as they build up their own authorized streaming sites, whether it’s wireless or whether it’s just keeping their basic customers happy and reducing churn.
It’s going to be hard to not look at the quality of the titles, the quality of the execution, the price value relationship, the very rich SVOD and streaming package, and say this doesn’t have a legitimate home. If a BDU chooses not to carry it that’s fine. We believe they’ll see it – and based on feedback so far, it’s already clearly in their best interests.
GOB: Now to win that battle against over the top video to fight against Netflix and Google, you really need some exclusive content. What are your thoughts on that, and what content is going to be exclusive just to you. Will you be making your own content.
JS: I’ll let the management team talk about that in the next week or two. Exclusivity of title is not in the early stages a key part of what we’re offering. We’re offering an environment, a destination, a well thought out movie environment around your mood about what you want in a suite of four channels that, regardless of your age or sex, whatever mood you’re in, there’s a movie channel that you feel a special connection to that you can watch.
It’s the way of putting it all together as a single… suite of channels that you just feel connected to. You probably have 10 or 12 favorite channels in your life, and those are different than the 10 or 12 favorite channels in my life. We would hope that our suite… would be able to earn a slot as one of your favorite channels.
GOB: It’s funny how some people still watch TV. Despite the fact that I have stuff on DVD, and can find all sorts of titles on demand or online, I found myself not long ago watching one of the Star Wars movies on Spike in linear format in real time.
JS: And probably not even high-def.
GOB: Nope. And I’m sitting there after half an hour going “what am I doing? I’ve got this on DVD.”
JS: For me, it’s Hunt for Red October. No matter what channel it comes up, no matter how botched it is with commercials every 12 minutes on some American channel, I will still watch it again.
GOB: When I think about the way I watch TV, the way I see other people watch TV – even my son and daughter, who are 12 and 6 watch linear TV – I have a lot of doubt about the prevailing thinking of that everyone is going to watch everything on demand, and they’re going to be able to pick everything on their own. And that they’ll want to do that.
There are a zillion titles so how are they going to pick? Who’s going to program it for them? Are they going to do it on their own? The assumption that everyone’s going to want everything on demand all the time, so that they can decide the way they want it and when they want it… I mean, it sounds great but it’s a big job to be able to find, pick, and present it, basically program it themselves.
JS: I will say out of both sides of my mouth in the same breath that the free SVOD offering and streaming offering will be an absolutely fundamental part of this proposition. But at the same time, there will be a significant portion of the audience that will want to sit back, and enjoy their favorite movie, programmed by us whenever they want it in a way that we’re going to try to predict what they want.
There’s been an awful lot of work in the last year down on designing these channels, and how we’re segmenting them, and when you see it, it’ll be obvious. Both are true, and I don’t know if that split is generational. I don’t know if it’s economic. I don’t know if it’s regional.
GOB: It’s really kind of everything.
JS: You’re right, a lot of people will take great pride in plugging in their new Apple TV box… and hooking up their big screen to everything else. Then, God forbid, they’ll downsize their hundred-dollar package to a thirty-dollar basic package. And others will say that they’re watching a lot of stuff online, and still when it’s really important to watch Battle of the Blades and watch it live off Rogers or Bell.
GOB: As we endure so much change, what do you think of the ongoing regulatory aspects, and making sure we have enough Canadian content? Is it possible to maintain the quotas, as we move forward?
JS: I’m not sure… For as long as you and I have been in the business, there’s been this unspoken agreement. This kind of complicated quilt that’s been put together: tradeoffs, checks and balances, leveling of a bunch of tables where privileges have been granted to Canadian broadcasters in return for contributions to the system. I’m not particularly speaking over the air or specialty. I’m just speaking generally.
I think the Canadian public has been extremely well served we have a reputation for having one of the strongest broadcast systems in the world while living in the shadow of the most powerful media country in the world… because of regulation, not in spite of regulation. When I explain to my European and American friends that every single Canadian home gets everything in the world – the entire U.S. slate, the best of the world, and a healthy offering of Canadian choices that have a privileged space – that nothing’s kept out and we know our kids can grow up knowing about both prime ministers and premiers, as they do about American senators and governors, it’s a very good thing.
Recently, perhaps, the quilt has kind of started to unravel and the tradeoffs, the checks and balances are a little out of whack. The regulators… have an impossible job, a thankless job with an Act that is perpetually outdated at a time when their independence is challenged by a government that appears to be quite interventionist. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be (CRTC chair) Konrad (von Finckenstein) or acting vice chair Rita Cugini. Technology changed everything… and I fear the stakes are higher than ever. It’s important we get it right because if we don’t… it just becomes a North American market. A pure commercial capitalist might say “well, that’s not a bad thing,” but the Canadian in me says that’s not right either.
GOB: If you look at wireless and broadband, there are no cultural levers to pull, though. And as more media is consumed over the top, whatever the device used, it becomes more and more difficult to apply what’s built our industry on the traditional side to the online side.
JS: I’ve learned to not talk about broadcast. Five years ago, I was in broadcasting. Now I’m a digital content executive. These are important. I think – and I think whether you’re talking about Industry or Heritage, the left or the right side of this argument, with any stakeholder, there’s still a genuine desire that Canadian stories, and Canadian information have an important place in this new world – and what it does is it stresses results, it stresses innovation, it stresses creativity, it stresses excellence. And it means that these are not just Canadian borders, but our success is unlimited.
I’m working with a food entrepreneur Chris Knight in Ottawa. He was recently granted a license called Mmm.TV. He has three or four shows that he produces out of Ottawa that are very successful in the U.S. on Food and HGTV US. He has the No. 2 or No. 3 cookbook last year in Wal-Mart, too.
It’s about excellence and creativity.
It’s not about protecting anything. It’s about enabling success. I could argue the same thing for what I see with the digital content team at Glassbox. As you know, I’m a very small investor, and chair of Glassbox. The web traffic I see for Aux is meaningful, significant, and probably, 70% from the U.S. The bloggers, critics, and journalists in that independent emerging artist music space that have attached themselves to Aux happen to mostly be U.S.-based and God bless.
The next generation doesn’t see the world with artificial barriers. It’s just connecting with audience, so it means that channels which have a history of protection or entitlement had better move their asses because this is a competitive world where results matter.
GOB: So if Aux is enjoying all kinds of traffic from the States, and Mr. Knight is doing well across the border, doing what he wants.. and there are lots of other successes (such as Score Media’s international wireless content endeavors) why maintain all the rest of the rules around the rest of the system. Maybe it’s time to let everyone fight it out as they may. You want to launch a channel, launch a channel, and see if you can get anyone to carry it. If you’re a cable operator and you want to put all Canadian channels from Channels 1 to 20, and switch everything else or all American Channels 1 to 20, just go do it.
JS: I’m not a golfer, but I do play poker and a recent game that involved the head of an American studio I explained our system to him this way: “You’re used to an environment where everything’s allowed, unless there’s a rule forbidding it. In Canada, for reasons that we can make fun of, but have come from a good place, nothing’s allowed unless there’s a rule that allows it.”
That is the best way to explain the difference… I don’t know what the answers are, but will there likely be, and should there be, over the next 10 years, a wind down of the historic genre protection so the Canadian channels can fight on their own? Absolutely. Was genre protection for a limited number of years very successful, and appropriate regulatory tool to ensure that Canadian channels could at least get off on a strong footing? Yes, I can say that as well.
GOB: Others have said to me that if we’re going to define Canada as a nation, we really did need some kind of regulatory umbrella for protection of our culture because we’re situated right beside the United States.
JS: There are rules against American steel manufacturers dumping product in Canada, and this is technically, (a similar) way to deal with that. I’m a board member and a very small shareholder in Outtv, Canada’s gay and lesbian channel (and) if they hadn’t enjoyed the protection of a Category 1, they would not have been able to get over the hurdle of carriage in every major BDU and I think it’s a segment of the audience that deserved a little bit of a kick-start. It’s kind of risen from the ashes, gotten rid of all the junk, and it’s a fantastic channel that’s gone to 600,000 subs, and with new ownership. Regulation helped give that channel a chance. Now, it has to succeed on its own merit.
GOB: Going back in the history of that channel, the real surprise is that CHUM didn’t get the licensing. If I remember correctly, everyone assumed you were going to get it.
JS: Not to sound arrogant but it was ours to lose. John Levy and his gang snuck up and – how do I say this politely – we’re now living with those overpromises, and happily so.
GOB: Given all you’ve seen in your years in the industry, what do you think of the content that’s on TV these days? What are your favorite shows? What do you like to watch? What do you think could be done differently?
JS: I’m a TV fanatic, both for personal and professional reasons. My handle in various chat rooms is TV Brat. If you ever see TV Brat, that’s me. I’m a big fan of the medium. I live with it much like people who love music live with music. Some people all the time, part of their background, part of their life, part of everything with my wife (Jay is married to actress Ellen Dubin) and I, it’s television. So I try to watch everything and I can find something to enjoy even in the bad stuff. I am a student of television and always trying to improve my skills, and understand why certain things connect with audiences, and why they don’t.
I had the privilege of attending the L.A. screenings for about 20 years and to have seen pretty well every single pilot, good and bad, that’s been made in the U.S. I’ve been fortunate to see pretty well every single pilot made in Canada. I remain a big fan of the medium, and because of that, I live it. I can respect the art form of a Mike and Molly or of a Raising Hope, the wickedly bright writing on The Simpsons or the guilty pleasure that is watching Hawaii Five-O.
I watch every single Canadian show because I want to, not because I have to because I’m trying to learn, I’m trying to help people make it better. I’m impressed with what I see, and it’s not just the obvious stuff. I remember calling again at CBC after the first episode of Being Erica just saying, obviously, it was targeted to younger women, and I’m not necessarily that young, and I’m not a woman, but I said what a fantastic execution.
It’s hard enough to get it in color and in focus, and get it done, and on the screen let alone execute something that’s sweet and innocent.
I think Rookie Blue just took everybody surprise. I’m hooked. I can go through a long list of every single show on the air, and tell you why I watch them, whether it’s the serious stuff that’s intense like a Durham County or Battle of the Blades with John Brunton on CBC. You won’t find any other country in the world of 30-some-odd million people… that produces this rich, and diverse, and entertaining in an information offering.
GOB: It’s funny though that after all these years of so many people doing TV all around the world that there still is no rock-solid formula for success, no way to predict that a show will be a hit… I always wonder how, in so many instances the same team that will produce something big can move onto the next project, and it bombs.
JS: Four out of five fail. Look at the U.S. model. It’s a risky business. I don’t want to say anything terrible about another show but there’s a new Matthew Perry show starting soon (Mr. Sunshine) and I understand he was very involved in the production and he stars in it. It’s a cathartic story set in San Diego in a rundown sports arena where he is the general manager. They have circuses come through, monster trucks, and crusading evangelical types that come. The matriarch, who owns it, is a fantastic actress, Allison Janney, from West Wing. Matthew Perry, Allison Janney, the best writers, the best directors, and unlimited budget:
I thought the pilot was almost unwatchable. I don’t say it from a personal taste point of view. Critics universally have hailed this as one of the least successful pilots out there. So you ask how can you get the best writers, the best budget, the best actors, and it doesn’t work? Well, because this isn’t an assembly line where you add that crew and double your output.
The very best teams with the most experience, and the biggest budget environment in the U.S., four out of five will fail. Eight hundred scripts are ordered, 100 pilots are made, 40 shows are actually commissioned, and eight of those 40 will be on the air a year later. In Canada, we’re too small to play that game, and every single one matters, and we get upset when half of them don’t work.
If half of them worked in the U.S., you’d be getting the keys to the castle.
