But the plans never excited the media world as much as they excited Fehervari. A cursory scrutiny of the new channel's finances showed that the plans were too ambitious for the means he had at his disposal. Telenet took a long time to finally agree to admit Exqi to its cable network. Alfacam, a quoted company, was restricted in how much it could invest, and Fehervari and his wife put up an estimated €5 million of their own money - but it was a long way from being enough.

When finally the deadline agreed with Telenet arrived, in October 2009, the vast majority of the programmes he had promised failed to materialise. Those included a daily news programme, a sitcom and variety show featuring Stany Crets and Peter Van den Begin, who had been poached away from VTM, and a quiz devised and presented by Jan Verheyen, better known as the director of films like Los and Dossier K. Investors had been hard enough to find. In the absence of programmes, there were no viewers; in the absence of viewers, no advertisers.

"His plan was noble, but there's a price ticket on plans like that," commented Verheyen. "Especially if you want to make them work in a market that's saturated, and where nobody is sitting waiting for a new channel."

The new channel finally appeared in February this year, to a lukewarm response, even from its creator. "What was left over," Verheyen told De Morgen, "was a sad, hollowed- out version of the original project." "I've made some wrong decisions in the last 25 years. This is clearly the most awkward," Fehervari said.

Alfacam owns 20% of the doomed broadcaster, and its failure led to a write-off of €4.7 million - mostly
due to Exqi's use of Alfacam facilities, studios and equipment. Alfacam's turnover was up substantially, from €17.1 million in 2009 to €23.3 in the first half of this year. TV services, the sector in which Alfacam has been making a name for itself worldwide, accounted for €20.1 million of that. Most of Alfacam's activity is international - 84% outside Belgium and about 60% outside the EU. Among the major recent contracts were the World Cup in South Africa and the Winter Olympics in Vancouver in February.

Fehervari still holds two worthwhile vestiges of his dream left over from the rubble of Exqi: the frequencies allotted to Exqi FM and the analogue frequency on Telenet's cable, which could be of interest to existing broadcasters like SBS Belgium.