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There are gorillas in Drew Craig's mist
In the media business, it's a jungle out there. And Craig, who's head of western-based Craig Broadcast Systems, a medium-sized company, says he's ready to defend his territory against much larger predators.
Craig knows that observers must be wondering, "How in the hell are you guys from Brandon going to survive as mid-sized players in an industry that is now dominated by 800-pound gorillas?", as he recently told attendees at the Broadcast Executives Society annual meeting.
The answer, he says, is to keep a regional programming focus while setting sights on national and international ventures, having a finger in many media pies, and embracing new technology even if the investment won't pay off anytime soon.
In November, Craig welcomes fellow broadcasters to his new home of Calgary, as co-chair of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters' annual convention. If any of his larger competitors takes him aside and tries to wheel and deal with him, you can bet that he'll say no. The company his grandfather built from square one is not for sale, he says. The gorillas will have to stomp somewhere else.
One of everything
At 42, Drew Craig has 25 years of broadcasting and two generations of Craigs behind him. As the oldest of the late Stuart Craig's three sons, he has the formidable task of carrying the family business into the 21st century, after more than 50 years on the air.
What started out in 1948 when his grandfather John Craig bought radio station CKX in Brandon from the Manitoba Telephone System has grown into a respectable, mid-sized player in Canadian broadcasting, employing nearly 600 people.
Craig Broadcast Systems seems to have one of every kind of venture that today's broadcasters are involved in.
The Craig family started its first television station in 1955, CKX in Brandon.
Today, it counts four conventional television stations that it says reach 20 per cent of English-speaking Canadians. CKX is now a CBC affiliate. The A-Channel in Portage la Prairie-Winnipeg, formerly called MTN or Manitoba Television Network, launched a year ago as the rebranded A-Channel, and the Calgary and Edmonton A-Channels were born in the fall of 1997.
While the company didn't provide ratings in comparison with other...