In 1985, First Choice had a big problem. Awarded a national pay-tv licence in 1982 at a time when many thought that pay-tv would replicate hbo’s performance and deliver 30% to 50% of cable subs, it had only managed to get 10% penetration. By 1985, it was crucial to First Choice’s future that it go back to the crtc and get more realistic Canadian content conditions of licence. But at the same time, First Choice had to show credible support for Canadian content.

The answer: the Fund to Underwrite New Drama for Pay TV – later called the Harold Greenberg Fund – a support fund of $1 million a year. But who would head it up? First Choice needed to select someone of unimpeachable integrity, someone with sensitivity to Canadian culture, and someone who had no conflicts of interest.

As counsel to First Choice, I immediately thought of Phyllis Yaffe. Originally a librarian from Winnipeg, she had just finished a stint as executive director of the Association of Canadian Publishers. The acp was the trade association for Canadian-owned book publishers, a group for which I had done much pro bono work over the years. If Phyllis could manage the acp successfully – a fractious group with high cultural aims, negligible profits, and a hotbed of policy wonks – then Phyllis could run anything.

So I introduced Phyllis to Harold Greenberg, and she was named to head up fund. In this role, she set up and managed what was one of the first of the private independent funds to support Cancon in the broadcasting system. But more important, she gave funding a good name. fund was run with enthusiasm, scrupulous fairness, and low overhead.

At the beginning, it was difficult to enlist board members for fund, wary as people were about the checkered history of pay-tv. But once Phyllis got fund going, it became a problem to get anyone to resign.

Flash cut to 1993. I get a call from Robert Lantos. ‘I want to apply for a specialty channel – one with international festival movies in the late evening and nothing but Canadian drama in the heart of prime!’ But how do you win a licence in a format for which there is no u.s. precedent? To make this a winning proposition, I told Robert he had to have a credible president and ceo for the new service. It would be best if it could be someone new, someone above the fray, someone confidence-inspiring, and someone who would not only be able to help win the licence but would also run the service.

Is it any surprise I recommended Phyllis?

So Robert and I lured her away from fund, and a new licence, called Showcase, was born. Phyllis turned out to be a superb president and ceo – smart, funny, compelling and loyalty-inspiring. And Showcase became one of Canada’s most successful and innovative specialty services.

The rest is history, or should I say, History Television.

The history specialty licence was won in 1996 against the formidable competition of a&e and NetStar. Phyllis was a key player in that hard-fought contest. And it is a tribute to Phyllis’ leadership that since the launch of the service, History has steadily increased its viewership so that it is now the third most popular Canadian specialty service, after tsn and Space: The Imagination Station.

With the Alliance Atlantis merger, Phyllis has become the mother hen to a stable of specialty services. All are doing well. And more digital services have been applied for. In fact, one of the aac digital applications is for a book channel.

This would bring Phyllis back to her roots with Canadian book publishers. But she would get to stay in television as well. Not a bad trajectory for a librarian from Winnipeg.