Ed Rogers, master of all he surveys
The telecom scion has bought a controlling interest in MLSE. His handling of the Blue Jays does not offer a great deal of hope. PLUS: Links to other things!
When news broke about 12 years ago that Rogers and Bell had teamed up to buy 75% of MLSE, I got a frantic call from a producer at CTV. If I’m being honest, most calls from a TV producer are frantic: they are scrambling to book a guest RIGHT NOW for a segment that is usually airing imminently. I think I could have handled being a TV news producer for about two days and then would have walked into the sea.
Anyway: They needed someone to talk about the merger. Did I have any particular insight into the deal? I did not. But I knew one thing: this partnership wasn’t so much a marriage of convenience but a marriage of necessity. Neither Rogers nor Bell could contemplate the idea of their rival getting sole control of the broadcast rights for the Toronto Maple Leafs. (The Raptors were more of an afterthought due to the complicating factor of them sucking for most of their existence at the time, but 82 games of content is still 82 games of content.)
The good thing about a typical TV interview is that you really don’t need much more than one point. And it turned out to be an accurate one. The Rogers-Bell uneasy alliance lasted through executive changes at both companies, they divided the Leafs and Raptors broadcast inventory like they were separating Halloween candy, and everyone was reasonably happy. There were rumours about continual bickering, including a possibly untrue story in which the CEO of one of the telcos could only get internet access from the other company at his cottage, and his counterpart refused to boost the signal, but mostly it was peace in our time.
Until Wednesday. Now Rogers has bought out Bell, seemingly because Bell is short on cash and wants to preserve its shareholder dividend.
What does this mean for MLSE’s properties? My answer: 😬
The longer version of the answer can be found here, at theScore.
The second-half Blue Jays: what, exactly, have we learned?
Speaking of Rogers properties, the Toronto Blue Jays have had a decent second half. Well, a decent August anyway. September, less so. But I’m genuinely unsure what to make of *waves hands around* all this. The column-length version of the preceding sentence can be found here.
Back to getting yelled at by random people on the internet
I wrote a column for the Toronto Star on the seeming end of the federal carbon tax. It was well-received by all who read it and I was complimented for my insights.
Actually, no, it made a lot of people mad. Some of whom went to the trouble of searching for my email or Twitter account, neither of which are attached to the article, just to vent their anger at me directly. Thanks for reading!
The source of their ire can be found in full, here.
Politicians who bristle at the notion of a carbon tax like to imagine that there is some other way of reducing emissions through regulation or elaborate trading schemes and then they eventually figure out that the other options are either more costly or less effective or both. If Jagmeet Singh can figure some way to make corporate “big polluters” account for the entirety of the country’s emission-reduction goals, he will be the first.