Shaking things up at Mother Corp.

he security guard at the front desk is taking his job very seriously as he tries to determine which cbc department I am headed to. I offer the name Ivan Fecan, careful to place the right emphasis on the right syllables as I enunciate – ‘Ee-von Fet-zahn.’ The guard writes Yvonne.

I tell him Ivan’s chromosomal makeup is xy. He repeats ‘eyevan’ and prints Yvan on the tag. As I appear to know where I’m headed, the standard security call is waived.

The name Ivan Fecan may not have had an impact on cbc’s security and maintainance personnel, but rest assured it’s known in the shiny new corridors of the corporation and in the independent production community in this country.

The resignation of Fecan as cbc’s vice-president English television networks in late November drew more ink than the premature departure earlier that month of president Gerard Veilleux, the government-appointed head of the corporation.

Fecan, a charismatic 40-year-old, has cultivated something only a handful of his contemporaries and predecessors at the cbc possess – a public profile. He became the poster boy for the faceless monolith.

The creation of Fecan’s public persona is as much a sign of the changing times in the Canadian broadcasting industry as it is a reflection of the man himself. cbc needed an Ivan Fecan, the youthful broadcaster who `done good’ south of the border. Someone who would take the groaning beast into the age of satellite technology and digital compression.

If competition was to get fiercer, the solution to public broadcasting lay in the Canadianization of the schedule and strong drama that could compete with any other in the world. There was also the added pressure of government cuts to cbc’s budget and an increased reliance on commercial dollars and sponsored programming.

The vision of a new public broadcaster was drafted by committee; Fecan was one of the executors. And as the original draftsmen moved on – Denis Harvey retired, Trina McQueen was bumped from her position as vice-president of news, current affairs and Newsworld, and Joan Donaldson was tragically injured – Fecan bore the burden of the critics’ gaze.

McQueen says although the spotlight has been on Fecan, it was the board that drove the restructuring. ‘They were more involved than I have ever seen the board involved during my time at the corporation.

‘There were always programmers who had that sort of profile and who naturally seem to be the people driving the process. It’s more comfortable or easy to look at that rather than look at a bunch of people in Ottawa. I’m not saying the office of program director is not important, but you are still in the middle of the sandwich,’ she says.

Nevertheless, Fecan left an indelible stamp on the organization. He may not have been part of the blueprint but he was one of the architects. Most people refer to his strength in scheduling, his touch with sketch comedy, his ability to pitch Canadian movies and miniseries to the u.s. networks, and his relationships with people in the industry.

In the Triassic era of the cbc, the emphasis was on information and news. In the mid-sixties, cbc managers took a stab at drama. They brought up Fletcher Markle, a former cbc producer working in l.a., to launch the new initiative. His legacy was Jalna, a clone of the bbc series The Forsythe Saga. In the ’70s, Beachcombers was successfully up and running and John Hirsch, head of drama, brought The King of Kensington and The Great Detective to air. In the early ’80s, the cbc (under John Kennedy) introduced shows such as Hangin’ In, The Plouffe Family, Seeing Things and Empire. Anne of Green Gables was a runaway hit and Street Legal was launched.

But times were changing. Denis Harvey, then vice-president of English television, and his management team had decided the corporation must increase its Canadian content to 90%, draft better writers for shows such as Street Legal and develop some comedies using home-grown talent.

‘The current history of cbc television probably began in 1987 on a very snowy March night at Deerhurst, Ont. when Denis (Harvey) assembled a couple hundred of the top English televison programmers and they discussed the future of cbc television,’ says McQueen. ‘From that, a study group was appointed, which included Michael Harris and Joan Donaldson.

‘They reported in 1988, just before Ivan came back from the u.s., and the report suggested a whole number of ways to implement Canadianization. From then on, Denis and his group, which included Ivan, struggled hard to get towards the Canadian goals,’ she says.

Harvey, who had kept in touch with Fecan during his two-year stint at nbc, enticed him back and gave him free rein. Harvey needed a person who understood the infrastructure of a public organization such as the cbc, but who was also cognizant of market forces and prepared to take programming in a new, more competitive direction.

‘I think Ivan was the right person at the right time,’ says producer Kevin Sullivan. ‘He pulled cbc up by the bootstraps and gave it a spank on the bum, and I didn’t mean that in a perjorative way. As broadcasting and communications was about to explode internationally, we were still at the fledgling stage.’

Fecan focused his energies on finding talent. In order to reshape existing shows and develop new ones with few dollars, Fecan undertook a restructuring by taking away all their budgets, pooling the funds and demanding that everyone – whether a cbc insider on the payroll or an independent filmmaker in the private sector – compete for resources.

‘(I) took the position that whoever has the best idea gets the money to produce the thing,’ says Fecan.

It was an unpopular move inside the cbc and it made enemies. From the outside it made perfect sense; tap into a young talent pool and have better access to Telefilm Canada’s new broadcast fund. He could get a better bang for the buck.

‘In some ways we were forced by a political decision (to work with independents), but I welcomed it because I believe all of the talent is not just in the cbc,’ says Harvey.

Of course, inside and outside the corporation, there were favorites. And Fecan promoted their best efforts, taking their projects back to nbc and pushing for a sale. Ratings increased, advertisers returned and foreign sales increased.

Sullivan developed the popular Road to Avonlea, Street Legal flourished with new writers and Degrassi’s audience grew with better scheduling. Producer Bernie Zukerman, on contract with the cbc, was able to push through his mow The Squamish Five against opposition and later produced the hits Love and Hate and Conspiracy of Silence. Other top-notch shows such as Boys of St. Vincent and Liar, Liar, Kids in the Hall and codco were developed under Fecan.

His six-year tenure was not without some flops. The sitcoms In Opposition and Mosquito Lake died horrible deaths with critical drubbings. The most recent attempt, Katie Ford’s Material World, did not fare much better, and Fecan, who regards the media’s harsh censure as ‘blood sport,’ decided to regroup by emphasizing sketch comedy shows which traditionally have been better received.

According to Fecan, Canada’s top talent has been driven away by an ‘inhospitable environment.’ The critics ‘examined them on the basis of whether it would end Western civilization as we know it,’ he says. Fecan says talent in Canada is not allowed to grow and points to the fact that a writer for the CTV Television Network’s Snow Job (also a flop) went on to write for Cheers. Because cbc cannot mount the number of shows u.s. networks are capable of handling, he stuck by certain ones.

Some believe his loyalty to select talent has also worked against him. Anywhere else, Friday Night! with Ralph Benmergui, a great concept terribly executed, would have been axed ages ago.

Perhaps because of his need to grasp the programming reins tightly, perhaps because of the media’s own desire to have a point man, or maybe because of the ingratiating thank-yous at award shows, Fecan has been a lightning rod for criticism.

He has been at the center of debate over whether cbc has drifted from its mandate as a public broadcaster and has become increasingly commercialized. He had to weather the storm over the radical rescheduling in which the The National and The Journal were axed and a new one-hour news program was installed at 9 p.m.

People are already speculating that the news will be returned to its former time slot.

Ironically, McQueen, who was shunted from news and current affairs when she protested some of the changes, says: ‘I supported the move and I still believe it could have been the right move, but I think we went into that too quickly. I had argued, not necessarily with Ivan, but with the president and the board, that we needed to make it more than a schedule change, we needed to make a programming change, and I believe we should have taken a year to develop a particular program for that schedule. If I had my druthers, I would have moved The National and The Journal straight from 10 o’clock to nine o’clock.’

‘But,’ she adds, ‘with the news at 10, we really had no place on the cbc where we could put programs which were challenging or for special audiences that would enable us to say something different from other television networks.

For the few detractors, there remains debate over what a public broadcaster should be and there are new shows around which to center the debate.

Fecan tried to straddle popular programming that would bring in commercial revenues and shows that would reflect the actual mandate of the public broadcaster.

It may be too early to tell whether the path he laid for the board is the right one for a public broadcaster. But to his credit, quality Canadian programming by independents was produced during a time of tremendous budget cuts.