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Saturday, July 11, 2009
Man the lifeboats
A careful listener can find potential news anywhere. Even at a football game. If you are careful to read, watch or listen "between the lines", that is.
Last night, I was at home listening to the radio broadcast on TEAM 1040 of the B.C. Lions--Hamilton Tiger-Cats game. The press box was apparently alive with rumours that publishing executive Dennis Skulsky would become the President of the B.C. Lions, replacing the famed Bobby Ackles, who died last year.
If you consider that Mr. Skulsky is a high placed executive with CanWest MediaWorks Inc., which runs newspapers across the country, this might be a potentially very interesting rumour for non-football fans too.
The radio broadcast's halftime guest was reporter Matthew Sekeres of the Globe and Mail, who reports on the rumours on the newspaper's website this morning.
As Mr. Sekeres noted on the radio last night, there are lots of reasons to think that Mr. Skulsky may just be eager to do another job. Mr. Skulsky was a water boy for the Lions, and during his latter days of management with the Sun and Province newspapers, he formed an informal community group, the "Water Boys", to support the team. As noted in today's update, Mr. Skulsky has family here and fond memories of his years in Vancouver too.
Readers who have been following CanWest's financial woes--they've had several extensions of their "final" deadlines for their massive debts--might wonder, though, if Mr. Skulsky is only the first CanWest executive to look around for another job just in case. The high-profile Lions team Presidency--which would attract more press attention than an executive asking a friend about a possible job at a bank or a construction company or an auto plant--would be a comfy lifeboat seat for Mr. Skulsky (who, reportedly, would be a great President for the Lions, so I certainly wouldn't complain).
Mr. Sekeres made an interesting point about this during the radio broadcast. The "bond holders" holding the CanWest debt might want to make a clean sweep of not only the Asper family, but their executives as well. Such as Mr. Skulsky.
I would add that if such a housecleaning seems a given, the new owners of CanWest will want to make radical changes to the company to get to a break even position as soon as possible. Selling off newspapers and TV stations could be the least radical change. I can foresee two newspaper cities becoming one newspaper cities, or newspapers following the example of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in the U.S. and going internet-only and gutting their editorial staff. (If we think ideologically, how many conservatives on staff are going to be kept on when liberal executives and editors wield the scalpel?)
It's too bad that a "feel good" story, like Mr. Skulsky returning to Vancouver to help the B.C. Lions, can imply other, unhappy, circumstances. Unfortunately that can happen sometimes.
Posted by Rick Hiebert on July 11, 2009 | Permalink
Comments
Given Canada's political culture, I'm amazed so many conservatives and libertarians actually make a living as content providers.
Great post, Rick.
Posted by: Matthew Johnston | 2009-07-11 10:54:41 AM
They have at least some conservatives in their media up there? Our liberal papers hire pretend 'conservatives' like David Brooks and interview fake conservatives like Powell and Noonan and fake conservative commentators like Joe Scarborough
Posted by: GeronL | 2009-07-11 12:03:52 PM
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