Natyf TV is a French-language, diversity-driven TV channel available across Québec. To find out more about it, we sat down with its founder, Jean-Yves Roux, who generously and enthusiastically shared the obstacle course he went through for its creation. Because not just anyone can launch a TV channel!
In 2011, Jean-Yves realized that it was long past due that French-language television content better reflect the many faces that make up our society. That same year, Netflix was new on the market, and almost no one knew about it. In 2011, most Québec households consumed television content the old-fashioned way: via cable.
But Québec soap operas, TV shows and films rarely showed ethnoculturally diverse people, despite the fact that they represent a significant proportion of Québec society. There were even regular complaints to the CRTC, and research into the issue was conducted in 2001 and 2006. As you might expect, the studies’ findings were clear: our television landscape lacked colour.
Jean-Yves, who was already involved in Québec arts and culture, saw this omission as an opportunity: to make French-language television content produced and broadcast in Québec more representative.
The back story
Jean-Yves Roux grew up in the neighbourhood of Saint-Michel, in eastern Montréal, an environment he describes as socioeconomically precarious. Jean-Yves was sensitive to those around him and soon became aware of the realities of his community. From a young age, he got involved in his neighbourhood through youth centres to give his classmates an alternative to the street.
Jean-Yves began to feel that the world of arts and culture could offer an offramp and be an excellent outlet for these young people.
This idea was reinforced in him at the beginning of the 1990s. At the time, Jean-Yves was spending his summers in Brooklyn, New York, with his father’s family. The U.S. in the 1990s was seeing the rise of hip hop, the counterculture movement that was trying to change the world for the better. The music had a major influence on Jean-Yves, who made it his mission to give it a life here in Québec.
Since then, he has always been driven to bring opportunity to people who need it.
The process
Already in the world of the arts as an artist’s agent and in video production, Jean-Yves Roux took the bull by the horns and decided to establish his own TV channel.
Resolute in his idea of better representing diversity in Québec’s television landscape, Jean-Yves applied for a broadcasting licence from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Council (CRTC) in 2011.
In 2012, his efforts resulted in him obtaining a specialized French-language multicultural licence. This meant that Natyf TV, Jean-Yves’s channel, would be available only by subscription. It wouldn’t be part of the basic service package of available channels.
Thus began the tour of the major Canadian telecommunications companies. He knocked on the doors of Videotron, Bell, Cogeco, Rogers, and others in that world. His goal was to find a company that would agree to bring Natyf TV to viewers. He had no luck. Jean-Yves was told that the Québec television offer was complete enough to satisfy every culture and that there was no need for a multicultural channel to be added to the existing offer. Plus, a number of American channels, which were well ahead of us in terms of diversity on television, were available to round out the picture.
But what they didn’t understand was that Jean-Yves was talking about a French-language channel, which would build its offer around the francophone world, not just Québec.
It took until 2016 for Jean-Yves to convince Bell to host Natyf TV. And it was no cakewalk.
In fact, his efforts took a full year. In 2017, he signed the contract bringing Natyf TV to Bell Canada, and on June 14, 2018, the channel was officially launched. Don’t forget that the project started in 2011.
In 2018, Natyf TV had tens of thousands of subscribers and was striving to present content that would take people to new places, never before seen in Québec, featuring a broad range of people. Natyf was taking shape, and the future looked bright.
Fast forward to 2020, with the collective awareness-raising of the death of George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. These dramatic events demonstrated the gaping social disparities in our society.
That lit another fire under Jean-Yves Roux to do more to make society more inclusive and open to others. He believed that democratizing access to TV content from francophone cultures around the world was an excellent way to expand people’s horizons. And he had the perfect platform to reach the public.
With this in mind, he submitted a new licence application to the CRTC in 2020. This time, he was after a “compulsory” licence, which would enable Natyf TV to be included in the broadcasters’ basic service package. It would take six months just to find out whether the application was accepted by the CRTC. It took around 18 further months to hear back from the agency.
It may have been worth the wait, because the CRTC informed Jean-Yves that his licence application was complete and valid, and the process could continue.
The process
There is many a slip between the cup and the lip, as they say. Before granting final approval, once all the pieces of the application are assembled, the CRTC issues a call for competing applications. The application is then added to the public hearings schedule and is published in the Canada Gazette at least 60 days before the hearing so the public can provide favourable and unfavourable submissions in response to the licence application.
But in this context, “public” implies major telecommunications companies.
Jean-Yves remembers it like it was yesterday. The fateful deadline for written submissions about the application was 5 p.m. on November 7, 2022,
Until 4:49 p.m. that day, things were going smoothly. No one had opposed Jean-Yves’s project. At 4:50 p.m., the first opposition was submitted by a law firm representing a major telecommunications company. At 4:51 p.m., a second opposition arrived and, in the space of 10 minutes, more than a dozen had been submitted.
Presenting practically all the same arguments about market saturation, duplication of offers and other rebuttals already used, these challenges required a response within 21 days.
Everything was on the line. If Jean-Yves couldn’t convince all the stakeholders, his application would never come to fruition.
Solid preparation
Given the circumstances, Jean-Yves got out the big guns. He had seen this coming. So influencers broadcast the information online, even publishing the arguments against the project. Plus, Jean-Yves posted live videos and appeared as a guest on podcasts to talk about his intentions with Natyf TV and the importance for Québec’s francophone ethnocultural communities of obtaining CRTC authorization. A petition was posted online as Jean-Yves was drafting his argument in support of his project.
Plus, a journalist of African descent who is well respected in that world and who was working for a well-known media outlet reported on Natyf TV’s situation. Unfortunately, the report ran only once or twice on television. Determined, Jean-Yves posted the report online, and it went viral on Instagram.
In January 2023, Jean-Yves Roux received confirmation from the CRTC that his file was complete and that a response would be sent soon.
It arrived on August 31, 2023, and that day Natyf TV was granted a compulsory license by the CRTC, a little more than three years after applying.
Now Natyf TV could truly fulfill its purpose: bringing the public new talent and producers from racialized communities. It would be resolutely inclusive, offering productions that were turned down by other broadcasters a chance. These included the documentary Le Mythe de la Femme Noire, directed by Ayana O’Shun, which, after having been turned town by all broadcasters approached, found itself in the top 20 for the Québec box office after being accepted by Natyf TV.
What’s next
Jean-Yves is delighted with the direction Natyf TV is taking in the Québec media landscape and doesn’t intend to rest on his laurels. With his eyes firmly set on the French fact, Jean-Yves Roux was recently a panelist at a summit on French-language television broadcasting in Côte d’Ivoire and developed a streaming video platform to reach young viewers who watch television content almost exclusively online.
If he could offer just one piece of advice to people who want to become entrepreneurs, it’s to maintain a good attitude. On an entrepreneur’s journey, there will be more doors that close than that open. Sometimes, it can be easy to give in to pessimism, particularly in the face of injustice.
“You need to persevere and have a good attitude,” Jean-Yves Roux says. “Otherwise, it’s easy to lose contracts and opportunities.”
That good attitude no doubt came in handy throughout this process.
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Jean-Yves Roux receives tremendous support from the regional director for Montréal, Lynn McDonald, a seasoned professional with extensive experience in finance and specialized skills in television broadcasting. Her knowledge of financial and audiovisual communication issues combined with her strategic vision have made her an important ally for Jean-Yves. Their partnership is based on a solid foundation, forged naturally over time through mutual trust, respect for each other’s skills and their complementarity. Together, they form a dynamic duo, who can tackle complex challenges effectively and creatively.
Thanks to the engagement of invaluable partners: Économie Québec, through its agent Investissement Québec, the Government of Canada, National Bank, the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), the Fonds de solidarité FTQ, and Fondaction, Evol has a large envelope to support, through conventional loans, businesses with inclusive, diversified ownership that generate positive social and environmental impacts in line with the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDG).
