Canoe floats Rogers' boat

Media giants set aside rivalry for mutual gain

By TIMOTHY LERICHE, SUN MEDIA

Media rivals Rogers Publishing Limited and Canoe Inc. will join forces online to present Rogers' magazine content at Canoe's Internet portal.

And Canoe, a Quebecor Inc. company, expects to continue lining up new content and business partners in Canada and abroad to widen the scope of its canoe.ca site.

"Rogers and Quebecor are competitors, so why are we partnering?" asked Patrick Lauzon, executive vice-president of Canoe, anticipating observer questions.



"Online is a very different landscape in terms of where our competition is,"
said Lauzon " . . where we could be the best in is in managing and distributing content. We feel we can work with other publishers to build a single entry point."

. . . Rogers' publications includ(e) Chatelaine, Maclean's, Today's Parent, Flare, LouLou Magazine, Glow, Canadian Business, and Chocolat Magazine . . .

"We're taking 11 Rogers properties and putting the canoe.ca heading on all of them," said Lauzon. "It's a mutually beneficial agreement. There's a business arrangement that I can't really discuss in details."
. . .

Canoe attracts 6 ,781,000 online visitors a month -- about half in French. Its other linked services include employment, personals, autos and continuing education.

. . . Louise Clements, vice-president of digital and interactive at Rogers Consumer Publishing, (related that) the 11 Rogers sites attract about 1.25 million "unique" visitors a month -- meaning repeat visitors are not counted.

"We think it's a great fit," said Clements. "We have high quality content in both languages. We go very deep and they go very broad. Both parties are going to benefit from increased traffic and increased time on the site."
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BCE (Bell) bought CTV*, didn't they, back some 5 or 6 years ago? With LCN, it's TVA who provides the news on Canoe.ca. Does that mean BCE and Quebecor are competitors but now NOT Rogers, who partners with Videotron, a Quebecor property, on cellular networks?

Who then, in media, are we NOT talking about as a participant in this media onvergence on the web at Canoe.ca? asks Blogaulaire, puzzled.

For starters, and merely skimming the surface: it's NOT ( . . probably not??) Transcontinental, CanWest Global, CBC, Telus, Murdoch, Black, Bronfman . . . AOL Time-Warner, Disney, Stronach's T.V. sports cable . . lots of empires, some very powerful Canadian ones at that, are not implicated above. But are we certain EVEN THOSE don't fit into this picture SOMEWHERE. (But how?) (Who owns Hearst?)

Well . . I guess everything and everybody in media is intertwined, inter-connected. BCE as well. We'll have to just wait and watch for more shake-outs. Like the way we've seen media constantly converge. The 'drama' has lasted now for some 30 years . . and we're still counting fewer and fewer players.

Until very recently, cross-ownership was a fairly specialized aspect of the concern over concentration in the media, but it has taken centre stage in Canada in recent months as the result of three major deals: the purchase of Hollinger daily newspapers by CanWest, owner of Global Television Network; the alliance between the Thomson group, owner of the Globe and Mail, and BCE, the new owner of the CTV network; and, finally, the acquisition of the Vidéotron group (TVA) by Quebecor.

Within a matter of a few months, following the merger of AOL and Time Warner, the Canadian media industry has undergone a profound transformation.

Media Studies (2002)