Bell to sell majority stake in BGM..

[Me-At-Work]

First off, I appreciate all of the information that this site has provided since I started poking around here.

This news on Friday last week was very surprising, if you do not already know, or really care:

Bell anounced that they would sell their majority stake in BGM (operator of CTV, TSN and other speciality channels) - from 68% to 20 %. The shares were expected to be bought by Thompson (TorStar-Toronto Star) and the Ontario Teachers Pension Fund (getter bigger by the day - glad I own a part of it).

There seems to be no logical reason (yet) as to why Bell would sell control to a cash cow such as this (having a license to broadcast in Canada is a license to print money and simsubbing thrives in Canada, even though I despise it).

Speculation is how this affect third party companies, such as SC, which were forced to take CTV-HD, when they offered TSN-HD.

Anyways, just wanted to make a contribution to a great site. :


Me-At-Work

 

[Jumbo Dumbo]

Bell has been trying to unload BGM and all non core businesses since Sabia was kicked out as CEO 2 years ago. Teleglobe was shut down and no buyer has been found for Expressvu.

Effective control of BGM is now in the hands of the Thomson family (Woodbridge) whose patriarch used to own the Globe&Mail

 

[Me-At-Work]

What is Bell up to now???

The Financial Post on saturday reported that BCE has sold a large stake in CGI Group for $859 million. They go on to mention that several analysts are speculating that they will now try to buy controlling interest in Shaw communications. One of the end games - merge Expressvu and StarChoice. This would, in my opinion, suck greatly. We never experience channel substitution (sim-subbing) with SC because they can pick and chose this by area. Bell can not. This was the main reason for not using them or good ole' Ted Rogers for HD networks.

Anyways, hope it never happens.

Me-At-Work