IT’S FAIR TO SAY THAT as a young librarian in Winnipeg that there was no way Phyllis Yaffe could envision a career path that would take her to the top of one of Canada’s largest TV companies.
She grew into larger roles, as librarian at Seneca College in the 1970s to executive director for the Association of Canadian Publishers, vice-president of marketing at kids magazine Owl and then in the ’80s she was elected to the board of the foundation to underwrite new drama for pay TV (now the Harold Greenberg Fund) and was chair when she left in 1993 to pursue a license for Showcase Television.
While Yaffe (right) now oversees 13 specialty channels the company runs (BBC Canada, BBC Kids, Discovery Health Canada, Fine Living, Food Network Canada, HGTV Canada, History Television, Independent Film Channel Canada, Life Network, National Geographic Channel, Showcase, Showcase Action and Showcase Diva) – plus minority interests in others (Series+, Historia, Scream, and One) – her first love is clearly Canadian film and drama – which air on the first channel she launched: Showcase.
In her new role as CEO (she took that job June 1st) Yaffe also oversees the company’s Motion Picture Distribution Income Trust and its Entertainment arm – which used to make all kinds of movies and TV shows but now only produces the enormously popular CSI franchise (CSI, CSI Miami and CSI New York).
With all of the success of CSI and the way the broadcasting assets are churning profit, some say this is a great time to sell the company. No way, says Yaffe. The company’s share price is as high as ever, its debt load coming down. It’s in acquisition mode.
For an update on what’s going on at Alliance Atlantis, www.cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien had a one-on-one with new CEO Phyllis Yaffe. What follows is an edited transcript.
Greg O’Brien: How does a librarian from Winnipeg end up becoming CEO of one of the biggest media companies in Canada?
Phyllis Yaffe: I guess the only answer to that is just the way I did it. The only thing I can say about it is life unfolds as it does. I didn’t plan this. And I don’t know about people who say they plan their lives and that it all goes in one single direction. Did you plan to be doing what you’re doing now at this point in your life?
GOB: Gosh no, not really.
PY: So I answer that question saying I stumbled into the job at the Winnipeg public library. I loved it. I enjoyed every minute of it and I thought ‘well, maybe I could do this for the rest of my life’ but the person who interviewed me right at the beginning said to me her view was that I would have at least two careers before I was finished and the whole notion of getting one job and staying at it forever is over. Now I’ve had at least five careers, so she was right a bit – she just underestimated just how many things would change in the world.
I guess I would just say it was a natural evolution and you would have to follow how I did it.
GOB: That was actually pretty insightful of her back then, probably in the ’70s I guess.
PY: It was 1969 and yeah, it was insightful of her because in her case, she had actually worked in one place for her whole career and was just at the end of it when she hired me. It was very common to have a job and stay at it forever.
I often tell the story of how I went to see my father in 1993 – he was very ill – and said ‘I think I might leave my job and do this other thing and apply for this license for a channel.’ He said ‘I don’t know, that makes me nervous, you have a job, why would you leave it?’ And then my cousin said that day after I left, she went to visit him and he said ‘go talk to her and tell her not to change jobs.’
So, it wasn’t so uncommon to think what you have is what you stay with.
GOB: In 1993, were you still at Owl Magazine then?
PY: I was at Owl part time but I was also running the foundation to underwrite new drama for pay TV which is The Harold Greenberg Fund, so I had both those jobs, which I did together for about eight years.
The people on the board of the fund, when I went to them and said I’m going to quit and apply for this license with Alliance they said ‘don’t do it. Bad idea. You’ll regret it. It’ll be awful.”
GOB: And that license was Showcase, right?
PY: It was. And, when you talk about Showcase now, it’s very common for me to run into people who can’t remember television before Showcase – they just think of it as part of the landscape. It’s a big part of television in Canada and of course, it was an idea that a lot of people thought would never work.
GOB: How is Showcase different now from when it launched?
PY: I always joke that we were a little earnest with what we had to do and we took very seriously the mandate of the channel. I think what we’ve evolved to is filling a niche and serving an audience but not necessarily doing it with the same seriousness that we started off with.
What we found is that the minute Showcase went on air the movies – which were movies that had never been seen on television before –and the challenging nature of the programming just struck a nerve. Canadians immediately started watching and in big numbers. So, it was easy to see there was a direction you had to go in and we just continued to exploit that and now of course “Television without Borders” is accepted as part of the Canadian landscape.
That’s one of those things you kind of sit back and look at and think “wow, that’s pretty impressive” because Canadian brands that stand alone without support from anywhere else in the world in any field are pretty rare. And, Showcase has of course spawned Showcase Action and Showcase Diva – and maybe others as time goes on – and they’re extremely successful.
It’s very rewarding to see all that happen.
GOB: And it’s evolved beyond just showing movies as well with your own Canadian content.
PY: I can’t say for sure because I haven’t counted up the hours, but there have been years when Showcase has been the creator of more original drama than almost any other channel, including the networks when it comes to hours – so we’re commissioning original series’, we’re part of the financing of a lot of Canadian movies… we’re certainly playing some role in almost every Canadian drama.
And the track record of Trailer Park Boys has allowed us to be seen as the place where you can actually turn a show into a big hit and that, I think, propels us onto a level that is equal to the networks.
GOB: Love those Trailer Park Boys.
PY: Well, you’ll get to see a movie of them, soon.
GOB: I grew up in northern Ontario and I know guys like that. I think I’m related to some, actually.
PY: We always joke about that but I think that’s part of their appeal.
GOB: Now when you say Showcase might spawn other channels, are you happy with where you’re at now with specialty services or do you envision applying for more?
PY: We think that there are more to be had. I think Canada has not reached the limit of its appetite for television channels, just like the United States hasn’t and other countries haven’t. But, we’d be careful about launching any new ones. We’d make sure we had something that was going to appeal to audiences with a unique offering but also something that would appeal to advertisers as well.
We launched Fine Living last September… it launched well and we’re very pleased with it. It’s done very well right out of the gate. We hope to get it some more subscribers but it’s a channel where the brand is clear, the schedule is almost all programming that hasn’t been seen in Canada before and the audience clearly found it and thought it was something different. When you have that combination, launching new channels isn’t something that’s impossible.
GOB: You had, or have, a license for the Do-It-Yourself channel, too, which is a Scripps Network, which you’re already partnered with (with Food Network, HGTV and Fine Living)…
PY: We hope to launch that one in the next little while. We’d love to launch it and think it has lots of potential.
GOB: I also wanted to talk a little bit about Canadian content and Canadian drama, given the crisis we’re often said to be in with drama in Canada. Showcase has done a lot, but what else can a company like Alliance Atlantis do to make sure there’s more Canadian drama put into the market.
PY: Showcase was invented to address that question. Obviously we’re the second window… it was invented to make sure that Canadian drama doesn’t disappear after its first play – and that’s what we have in the 7 to 10 slots every night of the year. We are 100% Canadian drama between 7 and 10 every night of the entire year and that gives people a place where they know they can find Canadian drama and that part of our schedule does very well.
We’re at the point now where, because of the issue around less drama being made, we’ve had to – and want to – go to the new approach which is ‘let’s create drama.’ And, this year at the CTF (Canadian Television Fund), we did very well. We got almost all of our slate approved by CTF and we’re making two or three series’ outside of the CTF that we’re going to do with non-CTF funding with some foreign partners or American partners.
Our Canadian drama answer is ‘let’s make more’. Let’s make more inside the funding system. Let’s try and make some without the funding system and let’s make sure it has a regular place where Canadians can always go to find Canadian drama and that’s what Showcase does… and as we look at what Showcase does, with it being a border-pushing channel, we’re always looking to do things that nobody else will do and offer people stuff that clearly you wouldn’t find on any other channel.
GOB: Now what about your other channels? Life is the oldest, HGTV launched in 1997… how are those doing? Do you see any sort of slowing in the self-improvement/home-improvement market at all?
PY: No. HGTV has had a wonderful run over the last few years and continues to grow its audience. It has enormously successful shows – obviously Mike Holmes being the star of the network but Jim Caruk in Real Renos and Sarah Richardson and all of the Designer Guys – Steven Sabados and Chris Hyndman are phenomenal successes.
What’s interesting about lifestyle television is in Canada we have stars made up of sports figures and politicians and the music world – and then we have the lifestyle world. It’s fair to say that most (Canadian) actors, when they walk down the streets will go unnoticed, but if Mike Holmes walks down the street, he is a recognizable hero. People like that have truly become the superstars of Canadian television and we don’t see any of that changing. We see it continuing to grow and our job is to find the next three or four of those, which is something we’re working on.
GOB: With the new pay TV applications now public, I’m curious why Alliance Atlantis didn’t have an application in there.
PY: It’s a serious business to apply for a channel and you have to be sure that it has an opportunity to succeed and although we think that there is room for lots more television in this country, I guess our concern was that given the cost of entering that business, which is stable and mature and well-served, was it an opportunity or was it something that was just provoked by others?
Our interest is making sure there’s a real business opportunity, not just a chance to create something that makes everybody excited but actually has the opportunity to succeed.
GOB: When it comes to the digital transition with MSOs, I know that your company was one of the broadcasters who have worked out a deal with Rogers… how do you envision the transition to digital going with the rest of the MSO world?
PY: It’s important to hear what the Commission decides in this because we’ve heard the range of responses. It’s fair to say that it’s a pretty big range. The Rogers guys have a very good approach to it and I have to say in this case Ted himself was the driving force in getting us all to a table and talking about what the future could be. I think he did a terrific job and that all of the players worked really hard at coming up with something we thought was fair and equitable.
I assume the Commission has to look at that with a fair amount of confidence that if that many programmers and Rogers can figure out something that seems to make sense and agree on it, that’s a pretty good sign of where the industry would like to go. I appreciate there are big players who disagree but I’m hoping the Commission will have a positive view about that and if that (agreement) becomes the roll-out then we would try to make that apply across the board.
GOB: And once that’s done, you can start shooting the Trailer Park Boys in high definition.
PY: We started to shoot some of our lifestyle shows in high def this year and we intend to get into that business over the next year or two but it takes a little while for us to amass enough content. Luckily our partners in the U.S., Scripps, are heavily into the transition there as well so we think we’ll be able to do some lifestyle channels in high def in the near future and with Showcase, a lot of drama is now being shot in high def.
Paradise Falls was always shot in high def… and clearly the costs of production are coming way down and a year or two from now I think we’ll actually see it’s practically equal in terms of cost of programming and then I think we’ll see the transition happen quite quickly.
GOB: When do you anticipate a Showcase HD channel or Showcase high def content.
PY: I’d say before the end of ’06, we should have something in the way of high definition. I’m not sure it’ll be Showcase – I’m not sure what it’ll be but it will be high definition from Alliance Atlantis.
GOB: I wanted to talk about the corporate situation as well. With your promotion to CEO and (company co-founder Michael MacMillan’s) move to executive chairman, there’s been talk on two fronts. One that it frees up Michael to go do acquisitions. Or, on the other hand, frees him up to go and try and sell the company. So, are you looking at any acquisitions?
PY: This is a business where everyone is on the lookout for acquisitions, but to be fair the story could be told of all of our competitors that everybody would like to buy something that makes sense with their business, so we always look at that, but our view is that we are acquirers, not sellers. Michael is not out there trying to sell the company. We have no interest in that.
We’re growing the business. We’ve done a lot of the heavy lifting to get us to a point where we can look at our future and feel really confident about it. Obviously the transition over the last three or four years into a broadcast-driven company has given us the ability to have a strong balance sheet, a strong team, clear leadership in an industry that we’re focused on – and we’ve parted company with some of the businesses we feel haven’t got as much of a future for us.
We created the income trust with the motion picture group. We’ve created a strong unit trading with the public and all of that is done to give us the flexibility to plot our own destiny and that’s exactly what we’re trying to do.
GOB: The thing that has many salivating is that the broadcast assets are doing very well and the CSI franchise, the only part of the company’s production arm left, is doing so well, making the company so valuable, that now would be the best time to sell.
PY: We think that the future is very, very positive as do the analysts. When they look at the company, our debt will be down, our flexibility is at its highest, our operating businesses are doing very well and CSI is a wonderful property that has really years and years of great opportunity ahead of it.
People forget that CSI is just entering its sixth year as a show and CSI Miami is entering its fourth season while CSI New York is only in its second season. So, there are many years of great television to come from that franchise… they’re all in the top 20 in the United States – CSI Las Vegas is the number one drama and Miami is I think number four or five and New York in its first year was the top-rated new show on CBS.
