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overview
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overview
This profile considers Canada's Shaw group.
the group
The Calgary-based Shaw group (including Corus Entertainment)
embraces cable and satellite television, an ISP and telecommunications,
animation and other childrens programming, and radio and
television broadcasting.
It is Canada's second-largest
cable tv group. It competes with Canwest
Global, Rogers and BCE.
A chronology of the group is here.
An indication of holdings is here.
development
Shaw was built by James Robert Shaw, son of engineering
entrepreneur Francis Shaw and brother of Leslie Shaw (who
developed ShawCor, a pipeline services giant, in parallel
with Shaw).
Shaw established the group in the mid-1960s after moving
to Edmonton from Ontario to run regional operations for
the family's pipe-coating business. He expanded into cable
television during the cable boom of that decade, going
on to invest in satellite broadcasting and content production.
Corus Entertainment was founded in 1999.
Shaw had acquired Cancom (Canadian Satellite Communications)
in 1998. That broadcaster had been founded by Rolf Hougen,
British Columbia TV, Western International Communications
(WIC), Selkirk Communications
and Telemedia in 1980. The
intention was to link seven radio stations and four television
channels (in Vancouver, Hamilton, Edmonton and Montreal)
with regional cable companies. Amid major losses BCTV
acquired the dominant stake from its fellow investors,
with control subsequently passing to WIC. That group was
then split by Shaw and CanWest,
with Shaw gaining control of Cancom.
studies
There is no major English-language study of Shaw or Corus.
A profile is provided in Gordon Pitts' Kings of Convergence
(Toronto: Doubleday 2002).
For an industry overview see Ken Easton's Building
an Industry: History of Cable Television in Canada
(Lawrencetown Beach: Pottersfield Press 2000) and Vertical
Integration in Cable Television (Cambridge: MIT Press
1997) by David Waterman & Andrew Weiss.
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