Posts Tagged ‘Canada’

Consumers want interactive, on-demand and customizable experiences in their online automotive searches, yet newspapers aren’t delivering that well enough, according to the Canadian Newspaper Association.

The association, it seems, was actually more optimistic about the future of print than were the newspapers who presented at the Ink & Beyond national newspaper conference, according to the Toronto Star. The event’s Under the Hood presentation discussed newspapers’ dependency on automotive advertising.

Paul Anger and Jon Wolman, publishers of the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News spoke about their Detroit Plan for the JOA, saying that print wasn’t important, journalism was. The good news in Detroit was that 96 percent of subscribers have been retained and the money saved in printing reductions have allowed the papers to evolve their digital offerings to auto and other advertisers.

The plan, begun in 2008, cut home delivery for both papers to Thursday, Friday and Sunday only, the biggest advertising days. The print publications still existed all seven days of the week, but in smaller express versions distributed by news racks. An e-edition is available online each day as well.

“Look at it this way,” said Anger. “At least in the States, the milk man doesn’t deliver fresh milk anymore. Doctors haven’t made housecalls for decades. But we still get milk, and we still get medicine. It all comes down to the journalism. It all comes down to the product.”

Canada’s largest newspaper chain, Canwest LP, has been sold for C$1.1 billion to a bondholders group led by National Post president Paul Godfrey. The newspaper assets of the Asper family’s Canwest Global Communications Corp. had been up for auction, after receiving creditor protection in January. The winning bid trumps several other offers, including one from Torstar Corp. Here’s news coverage from the Post, Globe and Mail and Toronto Star — and some financial opinion from the Globe and Mail here. (And a Bruce Annan blog item below.)

Shaw Communications just announced that it has entered an agreement to acquire all the television businesses of Canwest Global Communications Corp. Along with approximately $2 billion cash, the total purchase price includes about $815 million of net debt at CW Media Group.

“We are pleased to announce that we have come to an agreement with all constituent parties involved in a restructured Canwest, including Goldman Sachs, and are excited about the opportunity to acquire the entire company now,” said Jim Shaw, CEO and vice chair, Shaw Communications, in the announcement. “The recent restructuring initiatives undertaken by Canwest have positioned it as a pure play Canadian broadcaster and we are excited about this transformative transaction for Shaw as we believe the combination of content with our cable and satellite distribution network, and soon to be wireless service, will position us to be one of the leading entertainment and communication companies of Canada.”

Shaw Communication’s core business is broadband cable TV, high-speed Internet and digital telephone services. It also owns Shaw Direct for direct-to-home satellite services.

Update March 13: The Globe and Mail reports that Torstar Corporation, publisher of Canada’s largest newspaper The Toronto Star, is one of the bidders for Canwest newspapers. (Torstar owns 20 percent of Black Press, previously identified as a potential buyer.) Also named in the story as backers of various bids are Fairfax Financial Holdings (the Toronto company, not the Australian one), Onex Corp., Alberta Investment Management Corp. and Australia’s Macquarie Group. And Dennis Skulsky, head of the Canwest newspaper group, has resigned.

(Original item follows.) The Asper family is involved in one of “about” six bids to acquire Canada’s largest newspaper group, Canwest LP, according to the Globe and Mail. The newspaper goes on to list the usual suspects — David Black of Black Press, Glacier Media Inc. and an executive buyout led by National Post president Paul Godfrey — and speculates that the others are “private-equity investors.”

The print portion of Canwest Global Communications Corp. was put up for sale by its creditors, Canada’s largest banks, earlier this year, and bidding closed March 5. Many others expressed interest in parts of the newspaper chain, but the banks want to unload all 11 dailies and 35 community papers for a minimum C$950 million.

The Globe article doesn’t say who’s bankrolling the Aspers in the newspaper auction, but Leonard Asper resigned last month from the company his father created, and then joined Goldman Sachs in its efforts to block Shaw Communications’ purchase of the bankruptcy-protected broadcast and cable side of Canwest Global.

Following on Craigslist’s decision to remove the Erotica category from its U.S. sites, the leading free classifieds company is now considering doing the same in Canada.

That from University of British Columbia law professor Ben Perrin who says that the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) and an Ontario police force have been discussing the issue with Craigslist.

Perrin said that there have been at least “six cases in the Greater Toronto Area where the Peel Regional Police have identified Craigslist as being primarily involved for the sale of these victims of sex trafficking.”

An Ontario man convicted in Canada’s first human trafficking case last year used Craigslist to sell a 15-year-old girl as a prostitute, Perrin said.

Sgt. Marie-Claude Arsenault of the RCMP’s Human Trafficking Coordination Centre said that Craigslist seems receptive to working with Canadian police. “I’m hopeful and positive that we’ll be working with Craigslist and it will be a positive partnership.”

Perrin added that “there’s an agreement to move forward to the next stage” and that “we have every indication that they’re taking this very seriously.”

Susan MacTavish Best, a spokeswoman for Craigslist, said the company “had a thoughtful and productive conversation with Mr. Perrin and law enforcement this past week.”

Craigslist has 50 sites in Canada. Unlike in the U.S., there is no phone number or credit card validation for users posting to the Erotic section.

Canada is also easier on sex predators, with no mandatory minimum sentence for trafficking people under 14 as in the United States, where those who traffic children under 14 must serve at least 15 years, while the offence against children between 14 and 18 amounts to an automatic 10 years behind bars.

Canwest has announced it will be the exclusive Canadian supplier of ShopLocal. The ShopLocal Canadian site will bring together content from SmartCirculars (online flyers) as well as from display ads placed in Canwest newspapers. All of this content will be searchable by shoppers on Canada.com and Canwest newspaper websites as well as on sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Lycos, Local.com and through Canwest’s partnership with Oodle.

Initial Canadian retailers using ShopLocal’s comparison shopping engine include Canadian Tire, Mark’s Work Wearhouse and Toys R Us. Brick and mortar retailers can convert their local print promotions into digital formats

Canwest publishes the Ottawa Citzen, the Montreal Gazette and nine other dailies.

ShopLocal in Canada competes with Flyerland.ca.

When will the Yahoo brain drain stop? Another senior executive is leaving the company. Toby Coppel, Yahoo’s EVP and MD for Europe and Canada for the last 18 months, is on the way out. Coppel is being replaced by Rich Riley, now SVP of Yahoo Europe’s advertiser and publisher group. Coppel will remain in his post until the end of Q109.

Canada’s Yellow Pages Group (YPG) has entered into a multi-year agreement with Virtual Paper Inc. to become a reseller of My Virtual Paper to thousands of YPG directory advertisers across Canada. YPG will also use My Virtual Paper to convert some of its print directories into online, searchable directories.

The idea behind the partnership is intriguing. Many small businesses still do not have websites, only print materials (flyers, brochures, catalogs, etc.). The Montreal-based My Virtual Paper converts that print material into search engine optimized Web pages. By partnering with YPG, the technology can now reach thousands of new potential clients.

It works for businesses already on the Web too. A restaurant will now be able to post a menu on the Web much more quickly.

My Virtual Paper will be offered to YPG customers in the first quarter of 2009.

Canadian publisher and broadcaster Canwest Global has taken a whopping $1.01-billion write down on its Canadian television operations, citing dire expectations for advertising revenues to come. The loss reversed a year-earlier profit of $197 million.

Stripping out the impact of the write down and other charges, Canwest reported an adjusted loss of $38 million in the quarter, actually an improvement from the year before loss of $65 million.

CanWest CEO Leonard Asper said in a news release that the write down was “consistent” with similar actions by “many other” major North American media organizations. However, he also cited what he called an “unbalanced regulatory framework” for Canadian conventional TV broadcasters and increased competition from specialty TV and non-traditional media.

Fourth-quarter revenue fell to $726 million from $678 million in the same period a year before.

No specific details were released for digital media at Canwest, but the company has recently grown that division, adding a new vice president of strategy and product development, a vice president and general manager of mobile and a director of local digital products.

Earlier in the week, Canwest announced it will cut 560 jobs, or about five per cent of its workforce. The company employs approximately 10,500 people in Canada.

CEO Asper nevertheless reported that the fundamentals of its businesses remain sound, with strong operating profit and cash flows from its publishing operations and specialty channels, which “continue to out-perform the industry.”

Ad aggregator-indexer Oodle will soon be powering all of Canwest’s general classifieds, providing a seamless platform across the media giant’s properties, which include newspapers such as National Post and The Vancouver Sun, major portal Canada.com, entertainment site Dose.ca and GoLocal directories.

The deal gives consumers and advertisers a reach that stretches across Canada in a single interface. And while it doesn’t provide the platform technology, Oodle also indexes Canwest’s auto site, Driving.ca, property portal HouseHunting.ca and recruitment site Working.com.

“What Oodle and Canwest can do together is deliver the best of everything Canadians are looking for in a classified-search experience,” said Graham Moysey, SVP and GM of Canwest Publishing, Digital Media. “This brings together the Canwest advantage both for consumers looking for local listings and advertisers that want to talk to them directly.”

Several sites are already live:

– Times Colonist in Victoria(http://victoriatimescolonist.oodle.com )
– The Vancouver Sun (http://vancouversun.oodle.com )
– The Province in Vancouver (http://vancouverprovince.oodle.com )
– Calgary Herald (http://calgaryherald.oodle.com )
– Edmonton Journal (http://edmontonjournal.oodle.com )
– The Star Phoenix in Saskatoon (http://saskatoonstarphoenix.oodle.com )
– Leader Post in Regina (http://reginaleaderpost.oodle.com )
– The Gazette in Montreal (http://montrealgazette.oodle.com )
– Ottawa Citizen (http://ottawacitizen.oodle.com )
– The Windsor Star (http://windsorstar.oodle.com )and
– Canada.com (http://canadaclassifieds.oodle.com.

National Post’s platform is live, but not yet linked. Dose.ca’s site will be up soon.

“We are thrilled to be working with Canwest to bring together its depth of local listings in an even better way for both consumers and advertisers,” said Craig Donato, CEO of Oodle. “Canada.com visitors will also benefit from the extensive Oodle.com network with their free ads now automatically posted to our partner sites including Lycos, Local.com and MySpace.”

Canwest Global Communications Corp. is Canada’s largest media company and largest publisher of paid English-language daily papers. It also owns the Global Television Network and owns (or holds substantial interests) in conventional television, out-of-home advertising, specialty cable channels, web sites and radio stations and networks in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Turkey, Indonesia, Singapore, the U.K. and the U.S.

The Monster.com Employment Index for Canada has reported an overall drop of online job postings of 12 percent in the third quarter of this year. Nine out of 10 job categories declined in 13 Canadian cities.

Monster monitors job postings from a large selection of corporate career sites and job boards, not just Monster. The company uses an index that assigns points to measure relative job activity. So, for example, the overall employment index fell by 15 points to 145 in the quarter.

Only two Canadian provinces posted gains from the second quarter of the year: Saskatchewan and New Brunswick.

One job category tracked by Monster was up in Q3: art, culture, recreation and sports, which was up 12 points to a record high of 140. On the other side, online recruiting activity in both management and manufacturing jobs dropped 29 points.