Fashion Television's Jeanne Beker has built an international profile hopping between fashion capitals as host of her popular show, now syndicated in more than 100 countries.

But Beker, once described as a "global glamazon" by a U.S. columnist, may have to spend more time around Toronto these days, as the voice and face of CHUM Television's attempt to turn one its most successful shows into a 24-hour digital TV channel.

The 16-year-old, Toronto-based Fashion Television, also seen on the E! network in the United States, is a half-hour collection of short bits about various runway shows, designers and trends, and it will become the flagship program for the new Fashion Television Channel.

But is there enough substance in the fluffy world of fashion to make a 24-hour channel worth watching? Beker thinks so, stressing that the new channel will be about more than just the latest hemlines.

"Oh, there's more than enough, yeah. You could fill a zillion hours of fashion," Beker said a few weeks before the launch. "It's not just fashion, I mean, the parameters are so broad. It's style and it's the way we live. It could be the dishes we eat off and the restaurants we hang out at and the nightclubs we go to. You know, it's the scene.

"And it's art and architecture and photography. I mean, it just goes on and on."

According to its press kit, the Fashion Television Channel will have a program schedule that leans heavily on shows purchased from elsewhere, largely from the United States.

But obviously, FT will be shown in liberal amounts, along with Ooh la la, another CHUM-produced fashion program. There will be a news show and various short segments produced in-house - including one in co-operation with Canada's Flare magazine. And Beker will also periodically do one- or two-minute commentaries called Jeanne Unzipped, which the press kit says will give viewers a "quick inside look at the kissy-kissy world of fashion."

There will be Canadian-produced specials, documentaries and perhaps panel discussions, Beker says, and FT's 16-year archives of raw tape from behind the scenes will be mined for retrospectives. Interviews chopped up for segments on Fashion Television, the show, may be run longer on the channel.

But Beker, who also writes about fashion for Southam Newspapers and the New York Daily News and will be launching her own clothing line in Canada in September, acknowledges that the amount of original programming on the channel will depend on how far its tiny budget can be stretched.

"The problem is, is there enough money in the budget to support all that kind of production? ... The material's there, but someone's got to put it together," she said.

The new channel will stitch its longer, mostly bought programming together with its shorter original segments in what CHUM Television calls its "flow" format, which it uses on some of its other channels, such as arts channel Bravo.

"The wonderful thing about it is that we're not confined to that really strict kind of format," Beker said. "There are all kinds of great bits that go on backstage, you know, when my camera's rolling and I have wonderful precious tape, but it never really fits into the story that we're doing ... whereas with the channel... we'll be able to just, you know, slop everything into - I don't mean slop into a derogatory way - in a delightful way ... it could be quite a tasty stew."

Joining Beker on the channel will be Glen Baxter, familiar to viewers of Toronto's CITY-TV as an entertainment news reporter. Baxter said he would love to be host for a men's fashion version of FT someday but will start off with a series of short segments on style, cars, design and clothes aimed at males called Glen for Men.

He has already shot a segment on BMW's update of the British classic Mini, giving the car a test drive at an automotive journalists junket in Perugia, Italy.

Beker said she is excited about being able to do men's fashion and to showcase the Canadian fashion scene on the channel, something FT hasn't done because of its international audience.

"That was a big, big part of our pitch [to the federal broadcast regulator]. I went to Ottawa with the team and we were pitching the channel and we promised all kinds of coverage of the the Canadian scene," Beker said. "I think, personally, that should be our raison d'être."

Beker is optimistic that digital TV will flourish and that her new channel will appeal to as wide an audience as FT. "Who watches Fashion Television? Everybody. There are kids watching it. There are little old ladies watching it. Teenagers and men and women alike, you know, it's 50-50 down the line," Beker said.

"I think we all have this penchant for fashion now, this insatiable appetite, and, you know, I don't see it going anywhere.

"I mean, I was thinking for a while, `Okay, fashion, well this will be over in a couple of years and I'll be looking for the next big thing.' But, I don't know, I think the more imagery that we're exposed to, the more information we get, the more savvy we all become."