THERE’S LITTLE DISPUTING the fact Canada is a resource-based economy.
As oil and gas and mineral stocks go – so goes the Toronto Stock Exchange. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians work oil rigs, underground drills, huge chain saws and on fishing boats.
The question is: Do Canadians want a television channel reflecting that? Ivor Barr thinks so and has launched IDNR-TV to prove it. The company holds a pair of category two digital channels for The Mining Channel and for Natural Resources TV.
Barr is generally unhappy with the way the mainstream media covers the resource industry, swooping in only when disaster happens, for example, or heaping scorn upon big oil or forestry practices.
IDNR-TV has the support of the industry and the people in it, says Barr (including an endorsement from Timmins "the City with the Heart of Gold" mayor Vic Power, for example). All he has to do now is get carriage on cable and satellite.
What follows is an edited transcript between Barr – a former SRC producer with 30 years of TV and news production experience – and cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien.
Greg O’Brien: Why IDNR-TV?
Ivor Barr: The idea was to build a media outlet for what this country was built on, natural resources… nobody’s looking at what this country was built on, which is one of the most important sectors of the economy.
GOB: What made you look at that and want to launch a TV channel to serve it?
IB: Basically, I looked around and I was quite unhappy. I felt as a professional I can do more in the TV business than what I’ve been allowed to do until I had this idea. I was just trying to apply to the CRTC and to come to the table with a proposal which was really original.
I didn’t want to make, for example, the Fried Food Channel, you know what I mean? Because even talking about food, you have on the morning show with other guys, food you have in the afternoon program, food you have the Food Channel, food you have in the Home & Gardening Channel, food you have in Outdoor Living Channel, food you have in Indoor Living Channel… I said it’s my duty to get a license and to deserve to get a license to come with a project that it’s really original – and I can tell you that there’s no other country in the world that has a TV station dedicated to the natural resources sector.
GOB: You got the license in 2004, have you approached the cable companies or satellite companies for carriage yet and what’s their response been?
IB: Some of them, they are very, very positive. Some of them, I won’t say they are jumping on joy, but they’re positive, saying "finally something very original, something interesting" – basically there are a lot of them they’re telling it’s a niche. It’s basically uncovered. Some of them are very, very scared, because it’s an original project. It’s way cushier to go back and say listen we don’t know who’s going to watch it.
GOB: So who’s going to watch it?
IB: I’m just going to give you a number just for Ontario. According to the Ontario Mining Association, there are over 200,000 people involved only in mining in Ontario. I’m not talking about oil guys, I’m not talking about hydro, I’m not talking about lumber. Just about mining. So, who’s going to watch it basically? The main name of the game of the specialty channel is to build a channel that the people can recognize themselves in that kind of programming. So, just in Ontario in mining, we have over 200,000 people.
And, Toronto is the capital of financing for the whole mining industry in this country. Who’s going to watch it? Ask me who won’t watch it.
There are over 1,100 public companies – just in mining, and if you calculate an average of 5,000 investors per company, some of them have less investors, some of them have more than 5,000, you know like the big guys like Barrick Gold or Placer Dome or Gold Corp., you name it.
You get close to six million investors. Now you’re going to tell me, "yeah, but the investors usually are not investing in only one company." Okay, so you’re going to have one-and-a-half million investors; let’s say those are potential viewers for my program called the Junior Mining Hour or the Analyst’s Hour.
Who’s going to watch it? Everybody who’s afraid about what stock market and public companies are all about, they will watch it because then we’ll have a program (about behind the scenes on the stock market) – which I’m going to bring the biggest experts on public companies to explain to the viewers exactly what’s going on, why a stock goes low even if the company has very good reports.
We won’t be a mining infomercial or natural resources infomercial channel. We’re going to have a lot of social programs. We’re going to have a daily program called Family Matters, dedicated especially for families that have one of the members involved in the (resources) sector. If he’s a prospector, a geologist, a miner or a financial analyst, that guy would be out of the house 12 or 14 hours a day, or he’s going to work in the bush for several months a year.
GOB: Can you explain a little bit more about the First Nations thrust and your interactive plans?
IB: Obviously we’re going to have programming about the First Nation, because basically they’ve been the first users of the natural resources here. But the idea is we want to look at them in harmony in what’s going on in the industries. We won’t do what APTN does.
I’m just going to give you an example, there’s a very small community north of Sudbury called Wahnapitae. They have courses and training in order to become employees in the mining and for the lumber industry in the area. It won’t be a show in Cree for the Crees. It’s going to be a show in English for everybody.
So everybody can understand what the Crees are all about. The Crees, for example, are going to be able to succeed with their know-how and their tradition in dealing with the natural resources.
GOB: You mentioned kids shows before, what type of shows would those be?
IB: There will be also some shows that are informative and interactive… We know that there are a lot of NR sectors which are far away from everything. Why the kid of Yellowknife or the kid from Rouyn, Quebec doesn’t have the right to think Canadian, doesn’t have the right to see the Natural History Museum in Ottawa? Yes indeed he has the same right as the kids from downtown Ottawa or from Toronto. So, we’re going to build this kind of programming in order to keep the kids, first of all, to develop the proudly Canadian feeling and then to bring the country to them because the country’s so big and they cannot travel. We’re going to have kids from Vancouver present Vancouver. The kids from Yellowknife will present Yellowknife.
It’s going to be very interactive and very educational. And don’t forget, our slogan is "Canadian to the core", so we’re going to try to keep the programming 100% Canadian.
We’re going to have a show, actually Saturday and Sunday, where we’re going to ask people to send some footage from their region to make us more representative of their company or their environment. We’re also going to have another show which, I think is going to be successful which is called Toys for Boys. And it will be basically dedicated to ATV, 4x4s, boats and whatever the life in the bushes, you know in the northern climates.
And then we’re going to have lawyers. We’re going to have top-line lawyers that they’re going to be interactive with call-in shows. Instead of calling a lawyer for $400 an hour, you watch IDNR-TV you’re going to have your lawyers.
As I always said, we do not have money to entertain our viewers, but we do have money to inform our viewers. So, that’s why I’m sure that we’re going to have very good ratings because the people will watch IDNR TV and they will learn, they will get pragmatic answers for their daily needs, they’re going to get really cheap kind of programming, the kids will be happy to watch it.
GOB: A lot of your programming will be created by your viewers?
IB: Big time. And we’re going to — I don’t know if the word is the right one in English, we’re going to I just don’t know the word — we’re going to stress to them to make those kind of films.
We’re also going to have personalities like Tiger Williams or you know big important people, kind of Canadian symbols, and make some shows with them touring northern Ontario and touring some territories and so on. We won’t be a kind of learning channel or you know "university TV", but, we will inform and I think that’s what makes IDNR TV I think quite different, because the star, the mega star, the symbol is going to be the viewer.
We’ll do everything to convince the viewer that we deserve his time, you know, what I mean?
GOB: Right now, you got a lot of logos and such on your web site. Is this something the industry is behind and sort of helping pay for financially or is this?
IB: We’ve never had a story purchased on IDNR TV… our revenues are like CTV revenues. We are selling advertising on the Internet now but it’s very difficult and very costful to produce 30 second spots – and the quality of the picture obviously is not very good.
We do banners, with pop-ups to link to the home page and so on, but, our stories are not to sell. If a company will come to us and say listen we want the video and we want to air it on IDNR TV, that it will be a paid programming and the viewer will be noticed in the beginning of the programming. We will never ever cheat on the viewer.
GOB: Is your business model, based strictly on advertising or on subscription fees as well?
IB: Mostly on advertising. We want to be very good to the cable companies – we want to be an interesting partner.
GOB: You can see coverage from a mining show on your site, what has the industry reaction been?
IB: The industry wants to have a voice. It wants to advertise with IDNR TV because the Internet gets so much traffic and its so popular, so you can imagine what’s going to happen on real TV.
Everybody is asking, "hey when are you starting?" When is it going to happen? When is the programming ready? We want to see it. You know, basically it’s what’s happening every day. Some of the cable companies trying to serve better their customers, they are basically draining our energy, which instead of being focused in programming, it’s focused in negotiations.
We want to partner, where we deliver the signal and we are not looking, I would say for the first two years until we get strong and good and you know in an interesting way, I’m not talking about any wholesale fees like.
GOB: Are you talking about doing it as a linear channel or are the distributors looking at video on demand?
IB: You know, every hut has his own customs. You know, there are not two companies that are on the same page. One of them considers that we deserve to be on analog. Some of them said that we might be good in the news package. Some are saying that we might be good in the educational package, like kind of National Geographic stuff.
Some of them sees us as a stand alone, like there are no two companies on the same page. The companies are very positive to us. And you know, we are in very advanced negotiation with them.
GOB: Are you close with anyone to launching like—?
IB: I’m close but unfortunately I cannot reveal it to you. We had all kinds of problems. We’ve been asked who are you and how solid you are and how many months, you know, like what’s going to happen if you’re going to shut the doors up or what in one year?
GOB: Yeah, yeah. When you’re a newcomer, these are all legitimate questions, right?
IB: There are so many channels that nobody understands why they are there — and even the cable companies they cannot answer why they are there, you know? I am very thankful to God that I have this idea. We have a problem. Right now our problem is that we cannot accept advertising because we targeted September as the first broadcasting day But our problem is that we don’t have enough. It is the CRTC gave us 12 minutes an hour.
I have enough for 60 minutes an hour advertising… We are stepping in an overcrowded market, but we just have a niche that nobody touched it.
GOB: Why do you think nobody’s touched it until now?
IB: First of all the NR sector has a bad reputation. And there are a lot of people that are saying miners are killing the country. Obviously, they don’t know what they are talking about. Sure, there are good miners and bad miners. But for example, they said miners are killing the country. But, they don’t know—it means they don’t realize they are driving the car due to mining. They are having surgery and they are having medical treatment due to mining.
They can cook because this was mined before to take the ore of the ground and to make the stove.
GOB: But the natural resources sector is not a city story, and that’s where a lot of—
IB: For those that respect it it’s a big time city story.
GOB: No, no, I mean if you’re sitting in Toronto as a TV broadcaster, you’re not often thinking about natural resources. I mean people don’t think about the farmer when they eat, they don’t think about the miner when the cook. You know, they only see what’s in front of them, and so natural resources isn’t something that naturally springs to mind for most people.
IB: No, but the people will be very happy to think about natural resources, somebody that’s going to talk to them about that.
GOB: I’m just trying to think of a reason why that nobody’s thought of this before, I guess.
IB: For example, the North Trails program we’re going to have, I’m sure we’re going to be picked up on Discovery. Not because we’re going to have bigger budget on those guys, but we have the stories that everybody recognizes themselves on it.
The problem is that the NR sector has a bad reputation. Everybody knows that uranium is bad, but nobody wants to see that uranium can be good if it’s used in a wise way and a moral way, you know what I mean? Furniture? All of the lumber people are killing the forest. But you need to sit somewhere, you need to eat on something, you know?
