Apart from the dozen television screens broadcasting CTV content, the first thing you notice in Ivan Fecan’s office is his desk. It’s oval – and there’s enough room around the marble tabletop for a small platoon. The typical oak coffin separating the leader from his minions is definitely not Fecan’s style.

In 2000, after Bell Canada Enterprises took over CTV – of which Fecan was already CEO – the network’s multimedia parent Bell Globemedia was formed and he was installed as its president and CEO. He’s been behind the same desk for 11 years and insists it’s his people that have kept him there.

A self-made maverick in an industry dominated by generations of Griffiths, Shaws, Rogers and Bassetts, he has broken the mold and built his own multimedia family – average age just under 30 – from scratch, recently adding CHUM Limited from the Waters family in a deal worth $1.4 billion.

The modern incarnation of CTV under Fecan began with his move to Baton Broadcasting in 1996, following ‘Big John’ Bassett and his son Douglas into the president/CEO chair. But it was Fecan who engineered a series of joint ventures and acquisitions that changed a divided co-op of CTV affiliates with 40 weekly hours of programming into a unified powerhouse network, and folded it into a media giant with 21 conventional channels, 17 specialties, The Globe and Mail, and myriad other interests.

Trademarks of the Fecan era are creative programming and inspired deal-making, a combination that has paid large dividends for the perennially number one network, which recently notched 16 of the top 20 shows of the fall season. Other recent highlights include CTV scooping CBC for the 2010 and 2012 Olympics, and parent company BGM’s $800-million ownership restructuring geared towards growth, announced in December 2005.

CTV is a new media leader as well, having launched an online broadband service this past spring with sister channel MTV Canada, followed this fall by CTV’s own broadband network, offering its Canadian series and some of its U.S. ones. Meanwhile, BGM specialties TSN and Discovery Channel were the first in Canada to beam their signals out in HD four years ago.

This year saw CTV secure a second feed for TSN, perhaps in anticipation of grabbing NHL broadcast rights long-held by Cbc. And in August, the CRTC put its rubber stamp on the ownership changes, officially bringing two new partners – Torstar and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan – to Fecan’s oval table, chequebooks at the ready. But the real earthquake came before the ink had dried on the stamp.

Fecan got a call from the Waters clan in the summer, on the heels of the passing of patriarch Allan Waters, offering up CHUM to the highest bidder. Pending regulatory approval, Bell Globemedia will become an even bigger media player – albeit still dwarfed by the BBCs, Viacoms and Bertelsmanns of the world.

‘I really didn’t plan for any of this to play out this way,’ laughs Fecan during an exclusive interview with Playback, pointing out that he started his career in 1975 as a creative producer on the CBC Radio science show Quirks and Quarks.

‘I enjoy both [business and creative],’ he says. ‘What I don’t want to do is be restricted to one or the other. I honestly don’t know [if] I would enjoy running a non-content business. Maybe it’s just ignorance on my part that I haven’t discovered other things that would excite me.’

Trina McQueen, the former CTV president who now sits on the CBC board, grew up professionally alongside Fecan at the CBC – she was head of news and he the head of entertainment – but says even she is astonished at his career trajectory.

‘He was absolutely the creative guy, and not the business guy,’ says McQueen. ‘He was the programming guru, [who] I thought might end up as program director of CBS or something like that. I’d never have guessed that he’d go the way he did.’

The quantum change from creative producer to mogul may have begun when McQueen, who had become cohead of English programming with Fecan, left the CBC. It was his third tour of duty at the pubcaster, following two formative years at NBC in the mid-eighties as VP of creative affairs.

About half of his 30-year media career was spent at CBC.

‘I thought that I could go in there and try [to either] make the trains run on time, or I could go in there and help establish an environment where there could be terrific programming,’ he says.

As sole head of English programming, he decided on the latter. But in order to achieve his goal, he had to not only buck the system, but reshape it to get the content he wanted.

‘Psychologically, the area heads [of drama, documentary, etc.] became buyers, rather than buyers and producers,’ he recalls. ‘That way, the best project had a better chance of getting made. And it wasn’t just, ‘Well, we have to keep these people working and we’ve got to give them money to produce stuff whether they have a good idea this year or not.”

Under Fecan’s leadership, the CBC enjoyed a golden resurgence with shows such as Kids in the Hall and Degrassi Junior High. He admits that he learned several important lessons during his time at NBC under the late Brandon Tartikoff.

‘The key point at NBC was ‘stay close to your audience,” says Fecan. ‘Don’t get too fussed by technology or anything else.’

Although he doesn’t believe in getting ‘fussed by technology,’ Fecan is a noted early technology adopter. His trailblazing broadband deal with Warner Bros., which brings U.S. shows Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Smith and The O.C. online just after they air on conventional CTV, will set the standard for those to come. But his secret, he insists, is that he bases all his decisions on content.

‘Our core strength [at CTV] is developing and acquiring content, promoting it, and scheduling, which is a bit of a lost art and shouldn’t work – but still does,’ he says. ‘What platform it ends up on is the next consideration, but it’s all kind of irrelevant if you don’t have things people want to see. It’s got to be that simple.’

Fecan recently presented the Crystal Award for International Achievement to Epitome Pictures producer Linda Schuyler, cocreator of the Degrassi franchise, which has sold to more than 150 countries around the world. Schuyler first met Fecan when she was called into his office at the CBC in 1988.

‘He said, ‘I’ve been looking at your show and I’d like to move it to Mondays at 8:30 p.m.,” Schuyler recalls, adding that she wanted Degrassi out of the Sunday afternoon slot but didn’t think it was ready for primetime. ‘I looked at him and said, ‘Oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Fecan didn’t listen to her. ‘That smart programming move was a seminal point in Degrassi history,’ she says, noting that Fecan ‘has such incredible instincts for television. I think that’s probably why he has done so well. He just has this strong gut that seems to guide him.’

McQueen has also spent years observing Fecan at work, and likes to say he doesn’t have a learning curve, but a ‘learning dot.’

‘He’s always two steps ahead of everybody. It’s not just that you can add numbers up and do deals,’ she says. ‘It’s that you can think strategically and see a little bit further ahead than other people. He also has huge energy, real dedication and an absolutely committed work ethic.’

While Fecan reiterates that his team got him to the dance, he’s unique in that he employs his creative resources in a deal much in the same way he does when developing content.

‘There really is art to business,’ he says. ‘The right people and chemistry can make a deal that’s theoretically impossible, possible. Yes, you have to have the tools, but we have wonderful people that as a team can think independently. And even if the road map doesn’t exactly take you there, they can improvise. In an environment of change, that’s really important.’

The second key point Fecan learned from Tartikoff was ‘development and promotion,’ which he repeats over and over like a mantra. ‘Both keys,’ he says. ‘You’ve got to get a lot of stuff into development. You have to try as much as possible – and this is where the BCE benefits worked out really well – to isolate the development from the timing of the [public funding agencies]. And the funding mechanisms are well-meaning, but sometimes their timetable may not suit the creative momentum a project has got, or the needs of a broadcaster.’

At the behest of the CRTC, no less than $140 million of the $230 million from the BCE benefits package resulting from the takeover in 2000 was directed towards priority programming. Since then, the package has run its seven-year course, but CTV has continued paying the full shot on Corner Gas, Canadian Idol and The Juno Awards.

‘[Their success] taught us a lesson,’ says Fecan. ‘If you really believe in it and you can possibly do it without going through the normal mechanisms, your chances are better.’

Despite criticism to the contrary, he’s adamant that reflecting Canadian culture is an important mandate for CTV.

‘I feel a huge obligation – not just as a Canadian – but also as someone that thinks that the long-term business of any media company in Canada depends on having content that’s developed in its own territory that has an audience connection,’ he insists.

Schuyler, whose series Degrassi: The Next Generation and Insant Star air on CTV, believes he means it. She suggests that what makes Fecan interesting is, as instilled by Tartikoff, that he wants to stay close to his audience, despite having to deal with the business of running a conglomerate.

‘He’s able to bring business savvy and run that company in a way that keeps the shareholders happy,’ she says, ‘and yet at the same time be able to call me up on the phone and say, ‘I care so much about this new show you’re doing. Let’s talk.”

In response to the argument that producing more drama will in turn mean more successes, Fecan agrees that money spent on development makes sense.

‘But if you now say we’re going to water everybody’s production budgets to do a few more series and a few more movies, I think that’s a mistake,’ he says. ‘We risk alienating our audiences with something that we know isn’t as good as we can make it.’

Fecan readily admits that CTV is producing less drama than it was five or six years ago. And whether you buy Fecan’s Cancon philosophy or not, one can’t help but admire the fact that he decided to stay in Canada and build his media empire from Scarborough, and not Manhattan.

‘That’s an example of his motivation,’ says McQueen. ‘He could have stayed in the United States and done very well. But he didn’t. I think his affection for the country is a motivator for him.’

Whatever his reasons, change has come fast for Fecan and his multimedia family in 2006.

‘How did we know the Waters family would wake up one day and say, ‘By the way, the company’s on the block, and you’ve got a few days to figure out whether you want to buy it or not,” he says.

Fecan likes to remind people that broadcasting has been an exciting business for a long time – and there’s nothing else he’d rather be doing. His favorite pastime outside of the office is taking long walks with his wife, independent producer Sandra Faire, and their two dogs, although even then a part of him is still sitting behind that oval table dreaming up his next big moves.

‘Moses [Znaimer] always used to say ‘You’ve got to live the life,” he says fondly. ‘And Tartikoff used to say ‘It takes as much effort to get a base hit as it does to hit a home run. So concentrate on the home run.’ If the shareholders are going to allow me to sit here and do this, I’m going to give it my all.’