When Moses Znaimer set Citytv loose on the streets of Toronto, it was a game changer. With their hand-held cameras, youthful zeal and edgy reporting, the videographers shook up the citys media scene. Then he added MuchMusic in 1984, instantly getting a young, hip audience to spend as much time watching tv as they were listening to their music on their Walkmans. He chose one of his early proteges, Jeanne Bekker, to be the face for Fashion TV.
But do the math. Citytv was launched in 1972. Thats 41 years ago. The teenagers who watched the first music videos are now getting into their 50s. The twenty-something hipsters who rejected the larger networks stodgy news reporting are now in their sixties. Inside, theyre still the same people on the look out for whats new and interesting, but theyre also aware that their bodies are aging and theyll have to think about where theyll live when they can no longer cope with daily responsibilities.
Znaimer is now 71 and, with a wee bit of hubris, he has come up with the term zoomers Baby Boomers with zip (and a Z for branding.) The word senior is anathema to him.
As well as being the founder, president and CEO of ZoomerMedia, hes now the president of CARP Canadian Association for Retired Persons and, after buying the company that published CARPs magazine, has rebranded it as Zoomer.
People always assumed that when he started MuchMusic they were powerful because they were young. He said they were powerful because they were many, says Carmen Ruiz y Laza, a well-known Vancouver personality whos helping Znaimer increase CARPs profile in British Columbia. Currently, CARP has 30,000 members in BC.
And theres no bigger demographic in Canada than Baby Boomers, the people born during Canadas economic growth spurt following the Second World War (1946 to 1964.) They account for about one-third of Canadas population.
Ruiz y Laza met Znaimer socially in 1999 and then helped facilitate the CRTC intervention that brought Citytv to Vancouver. A former casting director who now owns her own PR company, she was a producer for Citytvs Breakfast TV and has remained friends with Znaimer, who has an apartment here and often visits friends and family.
Hes so calm and so intense and so clever, she says of him. Hes kind and he actually cares.
Znaimer rebels against the notion that you have to stop doing anything when you turn 65, whether thats working, or being active, or wanting to learn. He encouraged Toronto lawyer and outspoken society watchdog Susan Eng to become CARPs vice-president of advocacy. Shes in there changing laws, says Ruiz y Laza.
In BC, Znaimer is also reaching out to zoomers through his television station, JoyTV, which is based in the Fraser Valley. He wants to integrate multi-culturalism into main street media, not make it separate, Ruiz y Laza says. If you look at the faces he puts on TV, its always been multi-cultural. Hes been the first to give people a chance, not because he had to, but because he wanted to.
She encourages Baby Boomers to join us in changing things for the better for all Canadians.
