Standard Broadcasting

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1 Assets of now-defunct subsidiary Standard Radio Inc.
2 Television assets
3 See also
4 References

This article is about the history of the Standard Broadcasting, its remaining operations and its former radio & TV broadcasting assets, now owned by Astral Media Inc.

Standard Broadcasting Corporation Ltd. is a Canadian radio broadcasting company. It was owned by J. Allan Slaight, and is was the largest privately-owned multimedia company in Canada until it sold its radio and TV broadcasting assets to Astral Media Inc.

Through its former Standard Radio subsidiary, the company operated 82 radio stations in English Canada and two television stations in northern British Columbia. It also owned a significant minority interest in the radio station operators Milestone Radio and Haliburton Broadcasting Group in Canada, and Martz Communications Group in the US. The company also operated divisions in e-commerce, videotape and DVD distribution, retail marketing and audio and video post-production.

In 1971, the company received a special Juno Award for "Broadcaster of the Year".

In 2006, the company announced an initial public offering via an income trust; these plans were later cancelled due to "market conditions". On February 23, 2007, Astral Media announced that it had signed a letter of intent and had entered into exclusive negotiations regarding the acquisition of "substantially all of the assets" of Standard.^[1] A formal agreement was later announced, with the proposed transaction being approved by the CRTC on September 28, 2007.

Astral said it expects to close this transaction on October 28, 2007.^[2] Standard Broadcasting will continue to operate following the sale, as Astral will not be acquiring the company's Internet and satellite radio assets, nor its minority interests in various other radio stations.^[3] The takeover transaction was offically finalized on October 29, 2007.

After selling its Standard Radio assets to Astral Media in October 2007, Standard Broadcasting continues to operate as a much smaller version of itself. It is the owner and operator of Internet radio portal Iceberg Radio and is also partnered with Sirius Satellite Radio and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in launching Sirius satellite radio service in Canada. (See Sirius Canada.) The Sirius Canada minority ownership stake was not transferred to Astral, nor was Iceberg Radio.