PUBLICLY CALLING OUT SOMEONE as a bigot is generally considered a poor way to build a business relationship with them.
However, the folks at English language Muslim channel Bridges TV, for whatever reason, believe this is their best chance at gaining carriage in Canada. And, not only have supporters of the channel labeled Rogers Communications, its founder Ted Rogers, and TV vice-president David Purdy as Islamophobic hate-mongers – claims that are wholly absurd – they’re also playing fast and loose with the facts.
Following up on a screed released October 18th, several Canadian Muslim groups said that a recent e-mail sent from Purdy which outlined a couple of ways Bridges TV could make it to the Rogers channel lineup, instead shows "a deeply Islamophobic culture at Rogers Cable."
Now, to be completely above board with Bridges TV, when I contacted its spokesman, Hunaid Baliwala, on Wednesday, he said these releases are not coming from Bridges but from potential Canadian viewers. He didn’t denounce the releases either.
Bridges launched in December 2004 in the States as a premium pay service and has recently moved to a digital basic model. According to several published reports, it’s available to fewer than 5 million American homes. It’s an Islamic faith driven English language general interest channel and is on the CRTC’s eligible satellite list.
Setting aside the fact that the Canadian Muslim community is certainly a fast-growing one – as well as the press releases’ overwrought claims that Bridges TV will "build greater understanding between the West and the Muslim World," – Wednesday’s release from Muslims Against Discrimination, Muslim Youths of Canada, Imam Sheikh Faisal, Canadian Council of Imams, and Mohamed El-Sadek, Mississauga Muslims Assoc., skews the facts and offers up rumor as truth.
"Comcast Cable, North America’s largest cable operator, offers Bridges TV as a FREE channel on Basic Cable," shouts today’s release. That’s true, but only for subscribers in Detroit, Michigan. Bridges TV isn’t carried anywhere else by Comcast, a company spokesperson told me.
The release also claims carriage on digital basic with Time Warner. Also true, but only in Buffalo, N.Y.
However, according to today’s release, "Rogers Cable is the only cable company that is trying to put one million Muslims of Ontario in an ethnic ghetto," it says.
Rogers, as has been reported here before, wants a proper business deal and is offering the same terms it offers to many other channels. While the Bridges supporters say the service is to be offered for free to digital cable customers, a Rogers Cable spokesperson told Cartt.ca that Bridges TV wants a wholesale fee to be paid to it from every Rogers Digital Cable customer, whether they want the channel or not.
Baliwala would not comment on Bridges carriage deals in the U.S. or what it is asking for in Canada. Wednesday’s press release claims that the U.S. carriers are paying two cents per month to Bridges. Baliwala said he couldn’t comment on that and said the channel’s CEO, Mo Hassan, would get back to us. He hasn’t yet.
The Canadian Muslim groups also slammed Purdy for daring to lump Bridges in with other ethnic services when he talked about it. "In his first proposal, Dave Purdy tells Canadian Muslims that they must pay an additional $30 to $180 a year for Bridges TV, similar to other foreign language channels," reads the release.
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This line of thinking apparently doesn’t cross the border since Comcast Detroit markets Bridges TV as part of its "Multicultural" services, in with MTV Espanol, CineLatino and others.
"With 2 million cable customers paying an average of $80 per month, Rogers Cable generates over $2,000,000,000 in annual revenue, much of it from one million Canadian Muslims," continues the release. Actually, Rogers Cable’s average revenue per cable customer is $52.67, as released by the company in its third quarter results yesterday.
"Rogers Cable gives majority of this $2 billion to networks that do not represent Islam and frequently misrepresent Muslims. In his second proposal, Dave Purdy is demanding an access fee from the disenfranchised Canadian Muslims and wants to pay nothing for Bridges TV, forcing financial suicide on the only Muslim-owned network," continues the release.
Finally, the release claims that the Islamic Forum of Canada "has received reports that last month Rogers Cable pressurized reporters into dropping stories on this issue," it reads. "
This, clearly, is fantasy and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of a free press. I asked a reporter I know who covers the industry from the newsroom of one of the largest newspapers in Canada if he had heard Rogers throw its weight around in this way. He said if the company had even tried such a tactic, "we would have worn that like a badge of honour," adding that kind of editorial pressure from a major Canadian corporation would have immediately rocketed the story to the front pages, not killed it.
From a Cartt.ca point of view, we are one of the few media outlets in the country covering this story (most of the consumer media doesn’t think it very important, actually: It’s just a TV channel after all.). Rogers is an key advertiser and subscriber here and we’ve seen no threats. Felt no pressure.
What this boils down to is choice. Rogers wants to let its customers choose Bridges TV if they wish, the same way they do with a host of other digital channels, of myriad content. This isn’t good enough for the channel’s supporters in Canada, so they have resorted to petty name-calling and intimidation.
For a channel with such lofty goals as claimed in the recent Canadian press releases – a TV service aimed at building bridges between cultures – its Canadian supporters instead seem intent on digging a wider chasm between the channel and the carriers it needs to deliver its message to Canadians.
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