Moses Znaimer: Canadian Television Icon

By Curtis Sharp

Moses Znaimer is Canada's true television icon! Znaimer was born in Kulab, Tajikistan. He first arrived in Canada in 1948 as a postwar DP. His education was achieved at some very fine institutions such as McGill University in Montreal where he was an honour student. He then spent time studying at Harvard University.

Moses Znaimer is the man who brought Toronto's CityTV, MuchMusic, and MusiquePlus to the small screen. (On the west coast, we only get Muchmusic.) He was also the man who brought to us Bravo, a station for the new style arts. Worldwide he has helped bring music programming called "MuchaMusica" to Argentina and other parts of South America. He has recently led a bid to privatize ACCESS (Alberta's Public Educational Television service). Slowly he is building up a rather large empire in Canadian television. Apart from owning or forming stations he has also taken creative control of a CBC network affiliate in Barrie, Ontario called CKVR, which is being turned into a news, entertainment, sports-oriented station for the Central Ontario and Toronto region known as "The New VR".

"Moses is known to the Canadian arts and business communities for having brought an original drive in television and allied communications arts into a comfortable alignment with the practical demands of commerce. He is known to the international broadcasting community for his innovation, the Participatory and Interactive Storefront, Studioless, Television Operating System". ( http://www.chumcity.com/mztv/moses.html)

Moses Znaimer has won many awards in the Canadian television industry, including the 1998 Gold Ribbon Award for Broadcasting Excellence, the highest award an individual can achieve in private broadcasting. He has received awards for having a workforce that shows the different cultures in the Toronto area. The Human Rights Center acknowledged him for his contribution to the Tolerance and Creative Race Relations promotion. For making his on-air casting and his employment policies into a symbol of the many different cultures and lifestyles in Canada , the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews awarded him the Human Relations Award.

As well as being an icon in the Canadian television industry, he has branched out into the world of computers and the internet. On January 31, 1996, he helped bring America On-line into Canada. By branching out into the world of cyberspace, Znaimer was able to help people communicate with musical stars, movie stars and local heroes as well as family and friends through online versions of MuchMusic's Electric Circus and The Wedge.

I know I am missing a lot of things Moses Znaimer has accomplished in Canadian television , but the point of my story is that Moses Znaimer has gone from a postwar immigrant to a man who has changed television in ways no other person had ever thought of. Not only has he changed Canadian television, but he has changed the world when it comes to television. His interest in television started when he used his own money from his bar mitzvah to buy his family their first television set. He now owns one of the largest television set collections in the world. His museum of televisions-- Watching TV: Historic Televisions and Memorabilia from the MZTV Museum--displays over 70 years of television history. It has been shown all over the country but most recently at the Cinematheque Quebecoise in Montreal in 1998.

Canadian television icon? I say, "Yes!" World television icon? I say, "Yes.... in the near future!

Resources

MZTV. ( http://www.chumcity.com/mztv/moses.html)

Soules, Marsh. Moses Znaimer: TV's Revolutionary. ( http://www.mala.bc.ca/~soules/media212/znaimer.htm)