Corus Entertainment

Establishment

In September 1998, JR Shaw and Shaw Media CEO John Cassaday announced plans for Shaw Communications to spin-out its media properties, including radio stations and television specialty channels, into a new company. The spin-out would leave Shaw as a "pure play" telecommunications company. The decision to spin out the properties, into what would be known as Corus Entertainment, was meant to comply with Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) recommendations at the time which discouraged vertical integration by cable companies who also owned media properties. Corus would be a separate, publicly-traded company, first listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange in September 1999, but would still be primarily controlled by the Shaw family.

In September 1999, Corus acquired the broadcasting assets of the Power Corporation of Canada, which included four television stations and sixteen radio stations. One of these stations, CHAU-TV, was later re-sold to Télé Inter-Rives. In October 1999, it was announced that as part of the break-up of Western International Communications (WIC), Corus would acquire the company's 12 radio stations and most of its specialty channels, including stakes in Family Channel, SuperChannel and MovieMax!.

Growth, acquisitions

In September 2000, after negotiations and rumoured offers by other studios, Corus's CEO Normand Beauchamp, announced that it would acquire the Toronto-based animation studio Nelvana for $540 million; the deal was considered to be a complement to its children's television networks, including YTV, the Teletoon/Télétoon networks, and Treehouse TV, and its stakes in Family which had already licensed Nelvana programs in the past. Corus also stated that it planned to use the purchase to help launch a preschool-oriented cable network in the United States.

In March 2001, in response to complaints by the CRTC over its near-monopoly on ownership of children's specialty channels in Canada, Corus sold Family Channel to Astral Media for $126.9 million. Corus also sold its stake in Western Canada pay-per-view service Viewers Choice to Shaw for $22.6 million, and acquired the Women's Television Network (WTN) from Shaw for $132.6 million. Shaw had acquired WTN's parent company, Moffat Communications, in order to gain control of the company's cablesystem assets. In August 2002, Corus sold CKDO and CKGE-FM to Durham Radio.

In March 2004, Corus and Astral announced that it would acquire and swap radio stations in Quebec; Corus acquired the Radiomédia network (including CKAC) and Quebec City's CFOM, while Astral acquired CFVM-FM Amqui, CJOI-FM and CIKI-FM Rimouski, CFZZ-FM Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, and CJDM-FM Drummondville. Corus also sold its Red Deer, Alberta stations CKGY-FM and CIZZ-FM to Newcap Radio.

In July 2007, Corus acquired CKBT-FM and CJZZ from Canwest. In June 2008, CHRC was sold to the ownership group of the Quebec Ramparts hockey team.

Additional partnerships, Corus Québec sale

Also in August 2007, Corus announced a partnership with Hearst Corporation to launch Cosmopolitan TV. In March 2008, CTVglobemedia sold Canadian Learning Television to Corus for $73 million

Corus launched a Canadian version of Nickelodeon on November 2, 2009, replacing Discovery Kids. In 2010, Corus's sister company Shaw Communications re-entered the broadcasting industry through its acquisition of the media assets of the bankrupt Canwest, which re-formed the Shaw Media division.

On April 30, 2010, Corus announced that it would sell its Québec radio stations, with the exception of CKRS, to Cogeco for $80 million, pending CRTC approval. Corus cited their low profitability in comparison to their stations elsewhere as reasoning for the sale. On June 25, it was reported that Corus had agreed to sell CKRS to Radio Saguenay, a local business group. The sale of the Corus Québec stations was approved by the CRTC on December 17, 2010, on the condition that Cogeco-owned CJEC-FM and Corus-owned CFEL-FM and CKOY-FM be sold to another party by December 2011. On January 13, 2011, competing broadcaster Astral Media announced that they would seek legal action to stop the sale of these stations to Cogeco, citing the fact that it would own more stations than Astral in the Montreal market, making the competition unfair.

On November 9, 2010, Hasbro Studios signed an agreement with Corus to broadcast their productions on its networks. On March 26, 2012, Corus and Shaw launched ABC Spark, a localized version of U.S. cable network ABC Family, with Shaw owning 49%.

Re-organization

In March 2013, as part of Bell Media's proposed acquisition of Astral Media, Corus reached a tentative deal to acquire Astral's stakes in Historia, Séries+, and the Teletoon Canada group, for $400.6 million. This aspect of the deal, intended to quell concerns from the CRTC regarding Bell's total market share after the merger, was approved by the Competition Bureau on March 18, 2013. In an unrelated deal, Corus also announced that it would acquire Shaw Media's stakes in ABC Spark, Historia, and Séries+ in exchange for cash and its minority stake in Food Network. Corus indicated that these purchases were meant to help the company expand its television holdings in the competitive Quebec market. Corus also planned to open a new office in Montreal following the sale.

On September 1, 2013, Corus's television business was reorganized into five divisions; Corus Kids, Corus Women and Family, Corus Content Distribution and Pay TV, Corus Airtime Sales and Corus Média (for French-language assets). The Corus Kids division was subdivided into operations for YTV and its sister networks, the Teletoon Canada group (Teletoon, Teletoon Retro, and Cartoon Network), and Nelvana and Kids Can Press.

Acquisition of Disney Channel program rights, wind-down of Movie Central

On April 16, 2015, Corus Entertainment announced that it had reached an agreement with the Disney–ABC Television Group to acquire long-term, Canadian multi-platform rights to Disney Channel's programming library and associated brands. Alongside the licensing deal, Corus announced that it would officially launch Canadian versions of Disney Channel in English and French on September 1, 2015. New Corus-run Disney Junior and Disney XD channels were launched on December 1, 2015.

On November 20, 2015, Corus announced that it would shut down Movie Central and Encore Avenue to focus more on its specialty channels. Subscribers to the networks were migrated to Bell Media's The Movie Network and TMN Encore—ending the regional monopolies that TMN and Movie Central held in eastern and western Canada respectively. Bell Media made a payment of $211 million to Corus for assistance in coordinating this migration.

Amalgamation of Shaw Media

On January 13, 2016, Corus announced that it would acquire Shaw Media for $2.65 billion; the subsidiary consisted primarily of the broadcasting assets of the former Canwest, including the over-the-air Global Television Network and other specialty channels. The purchase, which was primarily used to fund Shaw Communications' purchase of wireless carrier Wind Mobile, was paid with $1.85 billion in cash, and Shaw took a 39% share of Corus stock. Corus CEO Doug Murphy described the transaction as being a "transformational acquisition that redefines Corus and Canada's media landscape".

The deal was approved by the CRTC on March 23, 2016. The CRTC considered the transaction to be a reorganization of the assets of JR Shaw rather than an acquisition, because the two companies were already considered to be a single entity for regulatory purposes due to sharing effective control via Shaw and his family. This also exempted Corus from the CRTC tangible benefits policy and scrutiny surrounding concentration of media ownership. The reorganization was completed on April 1, 2016. At the same time, multiple Shaw Media executives joined the company, including its former CEO Barbara Williams (who became the new executive VP and chief operations officer of Corus), and the company adopted a new logo.

Corporate governance

The current Chief executive officer (CEO) of the company is Doug Murphy. As of 2003, the CEO post had been filled by John Cassaday.

Sponsorships and industry partnerships

Corus is an industry sponsor of the University of Waterloo Stratford Campus; Gary Maavara, Corus' General Counsel, sits on the Waterloo campus' advisory board. The company also funds a couple of endowed chair positions, including Chair in Women in Management at the Ivey Business School (London, Ontario, Canada) beginning in 2003, and a Chair in Communications Strategy at the Rotman School of Management (Toronto) beginning in 2002.

Relationship with Shaw Communications

Corus Entertainment was formed from media assets that had been owned by Shaw Communications. Shaw and Corus are independent, publicly traded companies, but nonetheless, some reports indicate that the two companies continued to have a close relationship. For several years, Corus managed advertising operations (such as TV listings channels) for Shaw's cable systems, although this operation has since been discontinued. Executives have also occasionally moved between the two companies, with former Corus Television president Paul Robertson joining Shaw to head Shaw Media (the former Canwest broadcasting operations) in 2010.

Following Shaw's 2010 acquisition of Canwest's TV assets, the two companies incidentally became partners in certain channels including Dusk (later replaced by ABC Spark) and Food Network Canada; these partnerships were unwound in 2013. Otherwise, there was no connection or common programming between Corus's conventional and specialty television operations and those of Shaw Media. For example, Corus owns three over-the-air TV stations which were longtime CBC affiliates, and which agreed in 2015 to switch to Bell Media's CTV network, despite Shaw owning the rival Global network at the time. Since September 2016, following the merger of Shaw Media into Corus, the three CTV affiliates have held a secondary affiliation with Global to carry their national news programming.

As the two companies are both effectively controlled by JR Shaw, the CRTC considers Corus Entertainment and Shaw Communications to be a single entity in regards to certain policies, such as the "Diversity of Voices" policy and a vertical integration rule requiring television providers to carry three channels owned by unaffiliated parties for each co-owned channel they offer: due to the effective control, Corus networks carried by Shaw television services are subject to this rule. Additionally, the CRTC considered Corus's "acquisition" of Shaw Media to be a corporate reorganization of JR Shaw's assets, and not an outright purchase.