Alumni Gazette

Network ‘Bridges’ Cultures

Hassan

A few months after the September 11 terrorist attacks, Muzzammil Hassan ’85, ’96S (MBA) and his wife, Aasiya Zubair, were listening to a radio program that turned decidedly anti-Muslim. With so much negative commentary on Muslims and Islam in the news and all over radio and television, Hassan’s wife was concerned that American Muslim children would lose confidence in their identity.

“You have a business degree. Write a business model,” she said, urging him to create a television station geared toward the large Muslim-American audience.

“She got on my case,” Hassan says. “But I knew nothing about starting a television station. I’m a banker.”

What Hassan did know was that Muslim Americans have no programming that speaks to them.

“Our target audience had access to some foreign-language networks, but they were focused on life ‘back home,’ not here. Nobody was addressing our needs [as Muslim Americans],” Hassan says.

That audience of 8 million Muslims in North America—7 million in the United States and 1 million in Canada —constitute an affluent, yet underserved, market interested in programming reflective of their American subculture in a well-rounded way.

And so Bridges TV was born.

Hassan, who quit his job as vice president of M&T Bank in Buffalo to run the network full time, says that although religious shows are included in its programming, the network is “not evangelical.” Instead, it’s an entertainment channel, with programs on Middle Eastern history, travel, arts, and culture; movies with Muslim characters and situations; and news and community information.

As of June, Bridges has netted more than 8,500 subscribers with 40,000 waiting to sign up. Hassan expects the network to be on the air in October, broadcasting out of WNED in Buffalo.

“The idea is to target Muslims in phase one,” he says, “and in phase two, interest mainstream America, so they can learn more about Muslims.”