A Music Man and His New Beat

IN the world of power - suits, lunches and limousines - that is the corporate sector, his name is definitely not marquee prominent, but ask people in the entertainment industry, "who's the man", and you'll probably get "Izham, of course".
In fact, call Ahmad Izham Omar on his mobile, and if it is his voicemail that you've got, you'll hear a tongue-in-cheek introduction: "You've reached Izham The Man..."
"Yeah, I recorded that four years ago... never thought of changing it. When I was in the entertainment industry, people would often say, `Izham, you're the man' and I've kinda adopted it (the tag)," says the former Positive Tone record label owner.
"But nowadays, I'd received calls from Tan Sris who would leave a message like `yeah, you're the man, I am a bigger man'," he laughs.
This 34-year-old songwriter-arranger-producer - who has a string of Anugerah Industri Music awards to his name and successfully introduced the likes of Innuendo, Poetic Ammo, Too Phat, OAG, Ruffedge and VE to the local music scene - has just moved into broadcasting. He is the chief executive officer of Malaysia's newest free-to-air TV channel, 8TV.
He sees his latest endeavour as an "exploration... I like exploring, be it for new experiences, new ways of doing things or seeing new places."
"I've done most of the things that I wanted to in the music industry. Now, I want to see what I can do in broadcasting."
And he doesn't think he would need an approach that is far different from how he ran Positive Tone, which he set up when he was 24 years old and fresh out of business school.
"Yes it is a different medium but the methodology (of running the business) is the same."
It was 11 months ago in March 2003 that Media Prima executive director Abdul Rahman Ahmad and director Shahril Ridza Ridzuan approached him with the 8TV proposition.
"I thought these guys were nuts for considering me for the post. I have no television experience. Some people would even say I am naareve in the television business.
"I mulled over the offer for a month and I came to realise that they wanted someone who's not ingrained in the industry. And so everything I've done so far has been based on taking calculated risks."
8TV is part of the Media Prima Bhd group, which includes Sistem Televisyen Malaysia Bhd or TV3 (with which it is sharing infrastructure and resources) and New Straits Times Press (M) Bhd.
The new channel comprises two networks - one targeted at the young, urban audience in the 15-35 age group, and the other at the Chinese community - which is a first in the industry.
Since last Thursday, 8TV is on air from 3pm to 2am daily. The programmes range from news to entertainment, and sports to talk shows.
Currently, transmission covers only the west coast of the Peninsula, but will reach the east coast by April, and Sabah and Sarawak within a year.
At 8TV, Izham's seeing to everything from concept to content, and marketing to client-servicing. The team doesn't just report to him – the members propose and discuss ideas, and work out the programmes and plan collectively.
He reported for work just last September, but it wasn't quite the Izham that his inner circle of friends and associates know who turned up at the office. He was in suit and tie.
"Yeah, I have put on a suit before but that for functions and events, never to go to work.
"I felt really uncomfortable. For the longest time, I've been (known to be) easy-going and suddenly, I was wearing the only suit I have."
Happily, it was just an aberration as a week later, the suit returned to its rightful place in the closet.
And on the very day he decided to dress down (he was in a T-shirt with the word "Rock" emblazoned on it), Media Prima chairman Datuk Seri Syed Anwar Jamalulail just had to drop by at 8TV.
"He took one look at me and my T-shirt and said, `Izham, we have to be different.'"
8TV's tagline, by the way, is "We are Different."
Izham says his wife of seven years, Suffrianna Ahmad Suffian, did ask him to tweak his image a little. "She says I am in the corporate sector now and that I should dress the part."
That might have been much easier had he gone and studied law in the UK when the opportunity arose in 1987.
"I was offered a scholarship to do that but I told my parents I wanted to do music instead. My mum nearly fainted, but they still supported my decision.
"In fact, they financed my education in Boston. For that, I am indebted to them," says this true blue Petaling Jaya native and former Sekolah Menengah Sains Selangor student.
He went to the Berklee College of Music and studied music production and engineering; and much of his parents' concerns must have been assuaged when he followed that up with a Masters in Business Administration from Suffolk University, also in Boston, graduating Magna Cum Laude in 1994.
From music to business studies? "I already knew back then that I wanted to start a recording label. Doing the MBA was a mind-breaker for me."
He set up Positive Tone when he returned home, and still only 24 years old.
To help finance his education, he had worked at Taang! Records, a company specialising in punk music in Boston. His responsibilities included overseeing mail orders and European transactions.
As for his move into the broadcasting industry, Izham says: "I have some of the former Positive Tone people with me here and they tell me that what I am doing here is not much different from what I had done there".
With Positive Tone, he was spotting and promoting local talent, while at 8TV he now has an even bigger platform to showcase the creative side of Malaysians and Malaysia, according to him.
"If we can have Malaysian elements in the music that we have taken overseas, there is no reason why we cannot do that with our film productions. There are many Quincy Joneses, Quentin Tarantinos and Stephen Spielbergs out there," he says.
His competition? Surprisingly, he does not include the existing TV stations.
"It's the clubs, bars, joints, PDAs, mobile phones... pursuits that take people away from good television."
As such, 8TV won't be operating just like any other TV station. "For one thing, we're not going for the mass market... we want to carve out a niche, give people what they want to see - highly rated shows and good local productions.
"I don't want to be a slave to market demand but I would want to service it as best I can. I think Rahman and Shahril are fine with that."
Izham admits that as far as corporate affairs are concerned he is still learning, and he looks up to Rahman and Shahril, and fellow former music man AirAsia's Tony Fernandes, who has created waves in the corporate sector.
At his first 8TV board meeting three weeks ago, "I was shaking in my pants", Izham confides.
Still, he seems to be enjoying himself, and having a "loony team" must help. His staff of about 40 range in age from 19 to 41.
"What does a 19 year old do? He surfs the Net. He's doing our website and interactive stuff."
And the oldest guy in the team is the news manager. Presumably, you need a mature head for that.
Izham is not surprisingly a huge fan of Lord of the Rings - and generally the fantasy genre of movies.
Actually, he still believes in fairies and had grown up reading Enid Blyton's books.
"Once when I was small, I used water colour to paint windows and doors on a tree, thinking that elves would come out of it," he remembers. "We limit our world through just the five senses. I believe we have more than five senses. There are things around us that we don't know about."
But he is not one who would go investigate things that go bump in the night. He doesn't like the dark - and doubly so, cockroaches.
"At home, my wife gets rid of the roaches. All other things, I will do."
He enjoys spontaneity, and has been known to drop whatever he is doing at the spur of the moment to do something that catches his fancy. On Christmas Eve, for example, the entire family broke into a jam session led by his 59-year-old homemaker mum, Jaybah Ibrahim.
"She's a big Beatles fan but she started singing Billy Joel's Just The Way We Were and my brother got into the act and sang another song. Soon, the entire family was singing and playing music. We had guests at that time and we kind of ignored them. They must have found us a bit weird."
He has two brothers Ahmad Imran, 37, and Ahmad Ikram, 22 and sister, Aireen, 30.
Izham plays the piano, guitar and saxophone, among others. There's a synthesizer and a guitar in his office, whose walls are adorned with posters of Sammy Davis Jr and tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon.
Izham's father is housing developer Omar Othman, 61. "He's still working very hard and no, I don't intend to take over the business from him because I have no interest in it."
Izham has two children - daughter Izelea, 7, and son Izaaq, 3. Wife Suffrianna runs what Izham describes as a "kedai runcit" for ships that call at Port Klang. Her company provides supplies to the ships.
Home is in Ulu Klang "somewhere behind the monkey cage," he says.
When travelling, Izham actually enjoys long waits at airports, especially very early in the morning.
To him, it is therapeutic. "You're in the airport and everything around you is very quiet. You can see, through the glass panel of the terminal, the city just waking up. Nice time to mull about things, ideas and possibilities."
What would be his ultimate getaway? Before he turns 40, he would want to go to the Amazon and "dip my fingers into the water, bait piranhas and find anacondas. Wouldn't that be cool?"