Shaw looks to unload Corus Entertainment

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Shaw looks to unload Corus Entertainment

Postby kal » Wed Jun 13, 2018 12:40 am

Seems that Shaw has hired a bank to help it unload its stake in Corus Entertainment and to use the funds from the sale to more rapidly expand the Freedom Mobile business.

The Corus stake is valued at around half a billion dollars and includes specialty TV channels, TV stations and radio stations.
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Re: Shaw looks to unload Corus Entertainment

Postby Just sayin' » Wed Jun 13, 2018 4:53 am

Yup, Corus is in play. Toronto Globe and mail reporting TD Bank has been enlisted to find a buyer.
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Re: Shaw looks to unload Corus Entertainment

Postby Richard Skelly » Thu Jun 14, 2018 3:18 am

Look out below if Corus is “taken private” by vulture funds. Owners of the funds will load it up with debt to pay themselves special dividends. Then, just like Postmedia, the renamed entity would go public again.

The resulting Initial Public Offering would see a stake in the renamed company sold at, say, $10 per share. The funds would extract ongoing management fees and the newly public firm would devote every resource to making interest payments on the debt.

Typically, these situations don’t end well. Just look at Postmedia.
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Re: Shaw looks to unload Corus Entertainment

Postby RadioGuy89b » Thu Jun 14, 2018 1:52 pm

Sad, if the Corus portion ends up as just some sort of "investment"....it"ll be a challenging place as an employee potentially
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Re: Shaw looks to unload Corus Entertainment

Postby Richard Skelly » Thu Jun 14, 2018 2:51 pm

Yeah, NW’s current meh output may seem like a veritable Golden Era if, as I speculated above, Corus ends up in the hands of venture capitalists. Unless one of those funds is headed a real broadcast buff anxious to make the assets work and excell. So, too, there might be a big public entity like Bell or Rogers interested in buying the radio or tv divisions. Not sure how the federal Competition Bureau would look at that.

As far as radio goes, look (or listen) no further than once mighty KGO San Francisco. Bottom of the barrel, these days.
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Re: Shaw looks to unload Corus Entertainment

Postby slowhand » Thu Jun 14, 2018 3:21 pm

If it were not for the fact that the reasons for the death of Sears Canada were not widely known, it might serve as a good example of what might happen to Corus under private ownership.

My take on it is that Sears Canada was taken Private, its real estate and a few other valuable assets sold, maybe even some draining of the employee pension fund, big payouts made to the owners, and then it was left to sink or swim on its own. It sank, right to the bottom.
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Re: Shaw looks to unload Corus Entertainment

Postby the-real-deal » Thu Jun 14, 2018 6:58 pm

Yeah, Shaw is selling, after raping and pillaging the Corus radio network.
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Re: Shaw looks to unload Corus Entertainment

Postby freqfreak2 » Thu Jun 14, 2018 8:51 pm

There was once a fantasy that the radio business was about broadcasting - touching peoples lives and making a difference as part of society.

It was that dream that sucked a lot of us into first cracking open a mic, being the first to break a hit or present a hot news story.

Now it turns out that that fantasy was only about five minutes long and thinly spread over decades.

The dream is over, folks. It's no longer radio. It's just business.

Now don't get me wrong: I still love radio. I just can't listen to it anymore ... knowing that the moving needle, once a sign of connecting to listeners, is only there to indicate dollars pushed to shareholders.

Oh how a once-mighty mass-medium has fallen - all due to the greed of a few.
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Re: Shaw looks to unload Corus Entertainment

Postby Tom Jeffries » Fri Jun 15, 2018 12:34 pm

Freq2 - has it, sadly, right.

I retired 8 years ago, and I don't recognize a business that was such a big part of my life, for nearly 50 years.

All media is undergoing a sea change, because of the Internet.

Look at Newspapers, magazines and TV ratings...and even SPORTS ratings.

The times have changed.

What's next?

An 'all Trump' channel?
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Re: Shaw looks to unload Corus Entertainment

Postby Richard Skelly » Sat Jun 16, 2018 12:43 am

Unfortunately Tom, there have been three all Trump channels since he descended the elevator in 2015. Kinda wonder how Donald would have fared if CNN, MSNBC and FOX News had given equal coverage to his Republican primary rivals. And if, these days, they covered important global and domestic news rather than “All Trump All The Time.”
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Re: Shaw looks to unload Corus Entertainment

Postby Coolcat » Sat Jun 16, 2018 10:32 am

With all the recent revelations coming out it is now known that the Clinton campaign wanted Trump to be the nominee, thinking he would be the easiest for her to beat. So word went out to the mostly left media to constantly have stories and interviews related to Trump so that he would win the Repub nomination. This explains why once he got the nomination the media dropped him like a used Kleenex. The Clintons thought they had enough on him to decimate him before the actual vote but as history proves they didnt. Even the last minute Comey revelation which many thought hurt Clinton was revealed to clean the slate before she became president so all of her hanky-panky would not be an issue once she won.

This explains why the Dems went ballistic when he won because they realized that they messed it up royally.
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Re: Shaw looks to unload Corus Entertainment

Postby freqfreak2 » Sat Jun 16, 2018 12:40 pm

Coolcat wrote:So word went out to the mostly left media to constantly have stories and interviews related to Trump so that he would win the Repub nomination. This explains why once he got the nomination the media dropped him like a used Kleenex.

I'm surprised to read of this here. Normally this sort of banter can easily be found elsewhere on the net (including some sites allegedly devoted to radio).

I have yet to find out the name of the organization responsible for "words" to "left-wing media" (an undefined entity), where the memos came from, who the players are, and in what dark hole they all met in.

Wouldn't details of such a plot make a splash somewhere [ie Wikileaks] - detailing names, dates, and email contents?

Until we have concrete details of such collusion in the media, always consider the source of such accusations and ponder their smoke-and-mirrors agenda before accepting any of this nonsense.
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Re: Shaw looks to unload Corus Entertainment

Postby jon » Sat Jun 16, 2018 1:39 pm

freqfreak2 wrote:I'm surprised to read of this here.

OK, back on track: The big unanswered question in my mind is: what is the alternative to Taking Corus Private?

Are any of the Major Broadcast Corporations interested? Are there any more Stingrays with their deep pockets waiting in the wings?
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Re: Shaw looks to unload Corus Entertainment

Postby freqfreak2 » Sat Jun 16, 2018 2:23 pm

jon wrote:Are any of the Major Broadcast Corporations interested?

Good point Jon.

What deep pocket is left that wouldn't have conflicts with maxing out their existing market ownerships (2 AM/2 FM).

If I ever won the MaxMillions, I'd be glad to piss it all away buying a Corus cluster or two.

If anything, Shaw's offer signals an end of sorts, a big corporation shedding its least-profitable property.

I can only imagine a handful of former Corus stations surviving five years post-sale, with a lot a frequencies going dark.

Remember that about 8 or 9 years ago Shaw said they weren't interested in mobile service, selling off frequencies that allowed for the arrival of Wind.

Ironic then that Shaw bought Wind, re-branding it as Freedom, leading to the necessary sale of Corus to inject cash to make up for lost time.

Long live radio. Sigh.
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Re: Shaw looks to unload Corus Entertainment

Postby groundskeeper willy » Sat Jun 16, 2018 5:53 pm

Perhaps the key enticement will be that the Shaw's are reportedly looking to put both their voting & non-voting shares of CJR on the table, and that's something that should definitely pique interest on Bay Street. If it was just a half-billion of non-voting "B" stock, TD would probably have to slice it up into manageable chunks for the market, but getting the chance to also snag "A"-series shares in the deal? That'll open the door to the possibility of a single buyer stepping up and buying the lot.

If TD does have to slice things into smaller allocations, they should still be quite successful in finding buyers. Despite the risk associated with media stock, there will be those who find the growth potential attractive, seeing as how CJR-B continues to linger down towards the bottom end of its 52-week low/high range. Buy at the current value of around $6.40 and if it hits $8 or more in the next year, that's a decent return for the investor / mutual fund / venture capitalist or whomever decides to roll the dice on this one.
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