The Women’s Television Network, recently purchased by Corus Entertainment for $205 million, was merely a twinkle in the eye a decade ago.

As early as 1989, Ron Rhodes, working as a ‘hired gun’ on the startup of the Family Channel, discerned a need for a channel that cast its net a little wider.

‘Although we called it the Family Channel we showed Disney movies. And I thought that we really needed a family channel that dealt with family issues and was information-based.’

A conversation with his eventual partner in the Family application, Michael Inat, confirmed Rhodes’ suspicion that the opportunity for such a channel did exist.

In 1991, Rhodes left Family and started working fulltime on developing a new issues-based channel. And then it all started to come together in his mind: in pursuit of programming ideas for the new channel, Rhodes and Inat ‘started going around and talking to people to get some feeling of what programming for a channel like this might look like…. Then we went to social agencies and hospitals looking for programming ideas, thinking, ‘Is there enough meat there, can we fill out a programming schedule seven days a week?’ ‘ recalls Rhodes.

Problem solvers

‘And one day the light went on. In all the issues we were dealing with, the protagonists of the solving of problems were always the women. It was always the mothers; the fathers were never involved. The caregivers were the women, never the men.

‘And I thought, ‘Here we are dealing with family issues but it’s the women who do the work.’ And then I thought, ‘It’s not really a family channel, it’s a women’s channel, because women are the main protagonists of how these issues are solved.’ ‘

Not only that, Rhodes realized that specific differences in perception between the genders were not addressed in programming as it was then.

‘Men and women see things in very different ways. If you get 10 little boys and show them something and get 10 little girls and show them the same thing, they gather very different information from the same event. For example, [during] research, we showed a woman going into a store and robbing it of drugs. Men say, ‘She’s broken the law’; women say, ‘How sad, she must be desperate.’

‘This is why women require their own programming: they experience in a different way and take different things away from an event that a man would never be sensitive to.’

At the time, with the exception of Trina McQueen, then at CBC, most programming across Canada was decided and planned and delivered by men in their mid-fifties.

‘When we put together the [WTN] application, we took the position from the first days that this had to be a service programmed and run by women. Women would bring a different skill set.’

Funding initially came from a woman with a high media profile: Martha Blackburn, owner of the London Free Press, who Rhodes says was ‘critical and key to the success’ of WTN. After her untimely death, funding had to come from elsewhere. Rhodes went to a number of broadcasters for funds, ‘who all said, ‘Who needs a women’s channel?’ ‘

Even appeals to female investors bore little fruit ‘We tried to get women involved [as investors]. I can remember spending days on the phone trying to get women to invest.’

Barbara Barde, an independent producer initially involved as a shareholder and later WTN’s first VP of programming, raised about 8% of financing from women. Inat and Rhodes were both on the hook for substantial amounts, but it was not enough.

Enter Moffat Communications’ Randy Moffat. ‘We said, ‘This is what we want to do, this is our research, we’ll get the licence.’ And he looked at it and said, ‘Let’s do it.’ He picked up 66.66% and we went ahead.’

Linda Rankin, WTN’s first president and the designated spokesperson before the CRTC, ‘did a superb job at the CRTC hearings,’ Rhodes says.

WTN was awarded a licence that gave it the brief of producing and purchasing programming of specific interest to women.

After the presentation there were people to be lined up and programming to be collected.

Barde, a past president of Women in Film and Television, was appointed the first VP of programming. She had appeared before the CRTC in her capacity as WIFT president at hearings concerning the structure of the television industry. Inat and Rhodes approached her to work on the application in 1993; with the licence in place she moved to Winnipeg to work on getting the channel on the air.

She recalls those days of organizing the channel as hectic. ‘It’s the same for anyone launching a channel, you’ve got to find people to work there, people with some idea of broadcasting. You’ve got to find programming. Everyone’s got conditions of licence as to how much you have to produce and you don’t have a lot in the budget. Getting enough programming that meets the Cancon requirements means being judicious with the money. It’s a juggling act, you go with your best instincts.

‘The focus of WTN has always been the same: TV for, by and about women,’ says Barde. ‘I think WTN had a huge impact on bringing more women writers, producers and directors [to the fore]. It’s given an incredible amount of experience to women independent producers. I think it’s been a phenomenal success.’

Certainly the bidding war that took place once WTN was placed on the block in December 2000 seems to bear that out.

Barde, now president and executive producer of Toronto’s Up Front Entertainment, says she sees the Corus buy as potentially a great step forward.

‘I think it’s a great synergy. WTN could not continue to stand alone as a broadcast organization in terms of this being a period of consolidation. It would have had to be bought by somebody, and in terms of the companies that could buy it, Corus is perfect. I think by joining with Corus they’ll be able to do bigger and better things. It think it’s quite exciting, actually.’

Elaine Ali, president of WTN, calls the brief of producing and purchasing programming with women in mind ‘a tall order.’

‘We’ve now had some six years of experience and we’ve developed quite some expertise on women and how they spend time, what they watch,’ she says.

Ali says continuous research has enabled WTN to give the audience what it wants. There have been focus groups, surveys and, of course, direct contact between viewer and broadcaster.

‘We have a very active viewer line and very active e-mail. We interact with our audience very directly and in many different ways. We learn from that and we progress from that.

‘One of the main reasons Corus was so interested in WTN,’ Ali says, ‘was to gain access to a growing genre in specialty TV, which is women’s programming.’

And until the CRTC gives approval to the Corus purchase, things are very much business as usual.

‘I don’t know what’s going to change,’ says Ali. ‘Until this process is complete the ownership is not solid. It’s absolutely business as usual.’

A benefits package has yet to be determined, as does the matter of whether WTN maintains its Manitoba base. However, Ali is adamant that the alliance with a larger business will lend itself to greater economies of scale and similar opportunities.

‘There will be some things that will change and those are what we see as opportunities. [For example,] packaging opportunities in sales areas, cross-promotion opportunities, programming purchasing opportunities – that we do know about and that’s what we’re so excited about.

‘WTN has been a standalone specialty channel until now. We see this as a development process for our staff as well an opportunity to be involved in a large organization with opportunities on a larger scale, so I see it as a win-win situation.’ *

-www.wtn.ca