MédiadeNovo is readying a concerted pitch to sell the CRTC on its plan to allow local avail sales to underwrite Cancon programming.

MédiadeNovo chairman and CEO Glenn O’Farrell hopes to succeed where three previous bids failed by securing a regulatory greenlight to convert local avails on U.S services like A&E, CNN and MSNBC into Canadian commercials and revenue for local programming.

The regulator on Wednesday gazetted its business application and set a hearing for Feb. 22.

O’Farrell says directing 70% of MédiadeNovo revenues, or an estimated $100 million in the first three years of business, into Canadian programming and the rest to cable or satellite distributors promises a partial solution to the Cancon funding crisis that has spurred a fractious fee-for-carriage debate.

‘This is s public policy solution crafted with a view to optimizing opportunity for revenue generation by way of incremental ad revenue in local avails, and transforming these into solutions for Canadian programming,’ he argues.

MédiadeNovo has also assumed that the earlier bids failed because their benefits packages were not large enough, and there was too little flexibility in how revenues would be carved up.

O’Farrell said the CRTC will set out priorities on where the programming funds may eventually go. The former head of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters also unveiled high-powered nominees for his MédiadeNovo fund board, led by phone and cable lobbyist Janet Yale as chair and pollster Allan Gregg as vice chair. Other Ottawa players named to the board include former U.S. ambassador to Canada Gordon Giffin, former mandarin Alex Himelfarb, ex-CFTPA head Elizabeth McDonald and former CBC president Robert Rabinovitch.

Rounding out the nominees are ex-CAB exec Elizabeth Roscoe and former M.P. Monte Solberg.

The board will begin handing out funds to Canadian content producers within three months of MédiadeNovo opening its doors for business, under O’Farrell’s proposal.

Joining O’Farrell in the MédiadeNovo head office is broadcast veteran Kevin Shea as chief corporate officer, indie producer Jeff Thiessen as chief strategy officer and former Canwest Global Communications Corp. exec Judy Tapp as director of marketing.

Drew Craig comes on board MédiadeNovo as a director.

Shea and Craig spearheaded two earlier bids to turn local avails into Cancon that failed on fear they would take advertising from domestic broadcasters and profit content carriers.

The MédiadeNovo bid also lined up backing from the ad community, including Hugh Dow, chairman of Mediabrands Canada. ‘Both the size and audience demographics of the currently unavailable U.S. cable channels are extremely attractive to Canadian advertisers, and will result in both new incremental revenue and revenue diverted from other non broadcast media,’ says Dow.

O’Farrell says he’s talking informally with broadcasters, but isn’t indicating whether they will back his application after opposing the earlier three bids.

As an enticement to broadcasters, MédiadeNovo will offer its technology used to insert Canadian commercials into the local avails of U.S. networks to also insert commercials into local TV signals distributed in distant markets.

‘There will be more consensus than less,’ says O’Farrell.