Slaight Communications

Slaight Communications is a Canadian radio broadcasting company. The company was first formed as Slaight Broadcasting in 1971, when owner J. Allan Slaight acquired CFGM in Richmond Hill. Slaight later also acquired CFOX in Montreal and CHOK in Sarnia, and launched CILQ in Toronto.

The company later sold off all of its original assets, and continued to operate its radio holdings through the Standard Broadcasting division after Slaight bought out that company in 1985. As Standard, it remained the largest privately owned multimedia company in Canada until it sold its radio and TV broadcasting assets to Astral Media in 2007.^[1]

The company continues to operate holdings in non-traditional broadcast platforms such as satellite radio and Internet radio. Slaight also continues to hold minority investments in three other small radio station groups.

Standard Broadcasting

Standard Broadcasting was founded as Standard Radio Manufacturing in 1925 by Edward S. Rogers, Sr., ^[2] but soon became known as Rogers Vacuum Tube Company and later became the Rogers Majestic Corporation Limited.^[1] Rogers launched what would become radio station CFRB in 1927 in order to demonstrate a batteryless alternating current radio receiver he had invented.

In 1929 Standard Radio Manufacturing Corporation was renamed as Rogers Majestic Corporation Limited

The broadcasting division of the company was renamed Standard Radio Limited in 1941 when the Rogers family sold off the assets of Rogers Majestic two years after the death of Edward Rogers. In 1945, Standard Radio was purchased by Argus Corporation and in 1966 Standard Radio Limited was renamed Standard Broadcasting.^[1]

Argus was acquired by Conrad Black and his brother in 1978. Argus subsequently sold Standard to Slaight in 1985 and merged into Slaight Broadcasting.

Merged operations

Standard Radio logo

As Standard, the company under Slaight operated 82 radio stations in English Canada and two television stations in northern British Columbia. It also owned a significant minority interest in the radio station operators Milestone Radio, Haliburton Broadcasting Group and 3937844 Canada Inc. in Canada, and Martz Communications Group in the US. The company also operated divisions in e-commerce, videotape and DVD distribution, retail marketing and audio and video post-production,^[1] and was the primary shareholder in the satellite radio provider Sirius Canada.

In 2006, the company announced an initial public offering via an income trust; these plans were later cancelled due to "market conditions". On February 23, 2007, Astral Media announced that it had signed a letter of intent and had entered into exclusive negotiations regarding the acquisition of "substantially all of the assets" of Standard.^[3] A formal agreement was later announced, with the proposed transaction being approved by the CRTC on September 28, 2007. Astral would eventually be taken over by Bell Media in 2012.

Astral did not acquire Standard's Internet and satellite radio assets, nor its minority interests in various other radio stations.^[4] The transaction was finalized on October 29, 2007, and Standard changed its name to Slaight Communications the following day.

Current assets

After selling its Standard Radio assets to Astral Media in October 2007, Slaight Communications remained the owner and operator of Internet radio portal Iceberg Radio,^[5] which was subsequently also sold to Astral in a separate transaction. The company is still a partner, along with Canadian Satellite Radio Holdings, Sirius XM Radio and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, in Sirius XM Canada.

The company also retained its minority shares in the Haliburton, Milestone and Martz radio groups, although all three groups have since sold off many or all of their assets as well.

Standard's minority share in 3937844 Canada was also not transferred to Astral, but was wholly acquired by its majority owner, Newcap Broadcasting, in a separate transaction which also took place in 2007.

In 2010, the company invested in Mediazoic, a webcasting software project.^[6]

References