FOR A YEAR NOW, Sam Norouzi has been working tirelessly toward getting a new conventional television station on the air.
It's not something you see much these days. Unlike specialty channels, where applications come in by the bucketload (but are launched by the thimbleful…), the number of conventional television stations has only shrunk over the past decade. In 2006, there were 101 private commercial stations in Canada, according to the CRTC. By 2012, after the bottom had fallen out of the advertising market, that had dropped to 91.
Even tougher for Norouzi, his station, dubbed ICI, is an ethnic station – and the business model for that is hardly rock-solid. In May, Rogers announced it was cutting 39 jobs at its multicultural brand OMNI, and cutting all local programming at its OMNI stations in Alberta.
In Montreal, the history of ethnic television has been one of financial failure. It started with a cable access channel called Télévision Ethnique du Québec, where Norouzi's father Mohammad started a Persian program 30 years ago. "I was 13 or 14 years old and my dad put a camera on my shoulder and said go shoot for me," Sam Norouzi said.
TEQ ended with the creation of CJNT, an OTA ethnic television station whose licence allowed it to broadcast some non-ethnic programming, from which it earned ad dollars. Independent producers were replaced with a small number of station employees who produced its ethnic shows. As CJNT was sold to Western International Communications, which was itself sold to Canwest, the station pushed the CRTC to ease its licence conditions and bled money.
In 2009, when Canwest went under, CJNT was sold to Channel Zero when the company also bought Hamilton’s CHCH, but while the Hamilton station quickly doubled-down on local news, local production at CJNT essentially ceased. The station aired music videos, along with years-old reruns of its local ethnic shows, many of which were laughably out of date, some promoting events that had happened years earlier.
It was around this time that Norouzi decided he had to do something.
"I was 13 or 14 years old and my dad put a camera on my shoulder and said go shoot for me," – Sam Norouzi
He approached Channel Zero about bringing ethnic programming back to CJNT and eventually they came to a deal where Norouzi would start his own television station with a $1-million loan and free master control and technical support from Channel Zero if the CRTC agreed to turn CJNT into an English station. Channel Zero intended to replicate the model it is using with success at CHCH, which has wall-to-wall news during the day and some imported U.S. programs and movies at night.
That plan changed though when Rogers made an offer of $10 million to buy CJNT from Channel Zero as the company looked to round out its national broadcast offering. Rogers, however, maintained the deal with Norouzi, and offered to devote its $1 million tangible benefits package to ICI's programming, on top of what Channel Zero had already committed.
Even with that extra help, the CRTC expressed concern about the long-term viability of this station.
But Norouzi believes he has the solution. It involves abandoning the business model used by OMNI and CJNT and going back to the one used by TEQ: A co-operative where each producer buys airtime and sells their own advertising. Producers are closer to their communities, he argues, and are likely to get more advertising for their shows than a sales representative hired by the station that doesn't even speak the same language.
Even before coming to the CRTC, Norouzi had letters of intent from more than a dozen producers saying they were ready to buy airtime at rates of $25 to $200 a half-hour depending on the time slot. Most of those producers were the same ones he knew from his days with TEQ.
"There's been an accident. They dropped your antenna."
So on Dec. 20, 2012, the Commission awarded his licence. And on Dec. 11, 2013 at 6 a.m., ICI (short for International Channel/Canal International) went on the air as CFHD-DT Montreal, channel 47.1.
It was a long process getting on the air. The broadcasting antenna, purchased from a supplier in Germany, was supposed to be installed in early summer. "Finally the day arrived where we were going to get everything installed. I think it was the second or third day, I got a call: There's been an accident. They dropped your antenna. Four of the six panels were destroyed."
"And it fell right at the time in August when Europeans go on vacation."
He found a new supplier in the U.S. who sent over replacement panels but when they arrived, Norouzi discovered two of them had been damaged in shipping. It looked like a forklift had punched a hole in the box.
Finally, with another two panels sent from Germany yet again, the antenna was installed and broadcasting began on Aug. 21 with a test signal that was supposed to last three weeks. "I think it was two to three days later, we got a call from Bell Mobility Radio. Our antenna was interfering with theirs. We had to shut it down immediately."
As it turned out, the transmission was causing intermodulation interference with an antenna at the same height used by Quebec's provincial police force. Moving their antenna eventually solved the problem, but required co-ordination between the site manager, Norouzi's engineers, Bell Mobility Radio and the police, which led to more delays.
Finally, on Nov. 26, the transmitter went back on, and they were ready to set a launch date.
With hours to go before launch, Norouzi was still tweaking the schedule, but it will include local programs in Portuguese, Italian, Arab
ic, Tagalog, Armenian, Spanish, Romanian, Greek, Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu and Bengali, in addition to French and English. Programs in Farsi and Creole are planned for the new year. The CRTC requires it to broadcast in 15 languages and to 18 different ethnic groups. But Norouzi hopes to exceed that significantly, and expects that more producers will come knocking once the station is on the air.
Most of the schedule is local programming, most of which will be repeated several times throughout the week. Part of the deal with Rogers gives the station access to 200 hours a year of free programming from OMNI, and it's taking advantage, grabbing the Mandarin and Cantonese versions of OMNI News, plus entertainment show Bollywood Boulevard and cooking show South Asian Veggie Table. It also acquired Portuguese and Spanish soap operas.
Norouzi said he wanted the local shows to be shooting out in the field as much as possible. For the stuff in studio, he's set up a virtual one, with the standard green walls. Sets, including anchor desks, are virtual, with each show getting its own look. "It's day and night from what was existing previously, one decor for all communities," he said.
But will that be enough to attract viewers and make this station successful?
"For the moment it's undecided," said Henry Ngaka, host of the weekly show Afromonde. He's worked in local ethnic television for 20 years and was eager to join the ICI project. He thinks this model is "by far better" than the one CJNT used, but he'll wait and see what the reaction is when the station is on the air.
Norouzi is confident in the model. "We scaled back some of the stuff, but through efficient management of our costs we've been able to minimize expenditures," he said. "When we did our forecasts and projections with the CRTC, we said year one would be loss of $300,000.” However, “if there's a loss it's going to be a minimal loss (not including start-up costs)." By year two, he expects their operational budget to break even.
That's assuming there are no more surprises like the one the CBC sprung on him last spring. The public broadcaster is asking that Norouzi's trademark on the use of "ICI" in television be expunged, even though his trademark was filed before the CBC, which wanted to shift its decades-old tagline "Ici Radio-Canada" into an official part of its brand.
This summer, CBC announced it was rebranding its French-language services as Ici. The move sparked a backlash from pe
ople complaining that it was spending $400,000 on an unnecessary rebranding exercise and was taking the word Canada out of its name. The CBC partly backtracked, giving its radio and TV services the oddly long names "Ici Radio-Canada Première" and "Ici Radio-Canada Télé", but the legal battle is still pending.
The case awaits a hearing date, but in the meantime Norouzi isn't changing his plans. “We have full rights to go forward with the name and we intend to do so," he said.
As a local station, ICI gets automatic carriage on local cable providers Videotron and Bell Fibe in Montreal. Norouzi said he has asked Bell satellite TV to carry the channel as well, but is waiting to hear back.
After some more tweaking, Norouzi said he expects an official launch event for the station to happen some time in the spring.
