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Bell Media is also Canada's largest radio broadcaster, with licensed radio stations in 55 markets acrossCanada. Bell Media owns Astral Out-of-Home, one of Canada's most dynamic and innovative out-of-home advertising companies.
For more on Bell Media, please visit www. Matthew Garrow, Bell Media, This was a crucial year in the evolution of Astral, from being a major producer of film and television product to being a leading player in the broadcasting field.
The pay services First Choice and Superchannel launched on February 1st, but by the end of the year, Astral had acquired control of both First Choice and its French-language counterpart, Premier Choix , it being a condition of CRTC approval that Astral would get out of the production business altogether, to avoid any possibility of conflicts of interest. Harold Greenberg succeeded Don MacPherson as President of First Choice, a position he would retain until shortly before his death in During the year, after it had become apparent that all the pay services were sustaining substantial losses, various mergers resulted in First Choice gaining exclusivity for Eastern Canada, while Superchannel would serve the rest of the country from Winnipeg to British Columbia.
By the end of the year, both channels had moved from general interest programming to concentrate almost exclusively on movies. Although out of the production business, Astral remained totally supportive of the Canadian film production industry. Astral diversified further by launching Astral Media Outdoors, a company that would offer multiple advertising opportunities through such media as posters, billboards, transit shelters and street furniture. Two new specialty channels in which Astral had ownership positions were launched: The Family Channel and Canal Famille.
Astral launched a new national pay-tv specialty channel, Viewer's Choice, which would carry major feature films, sporting events, concerts and other special events. Astral launched two new speciality channels, Moviepix later to be called simply Mpix , a channel presenting classic films, and Canal D, a French documentary channel. President Ian Greenberg announced Astral's intention to concentrate its endeavours on "pure play media" and its outdoor advertising business.
In September, the CRTC approved the licensing of Teletoon, a new specialty channel to broadcast predominantly animated programming for children in both English and French. The company also became sole owners of two French-language specialty channels, Premier Choix and Canal Famille.
The year also saw the launch of the Comedy Network, a new specialty channel, in which Astral had a The facility offered producers of animated television programs a wide range of services previously performed in the Orient. On February 7th, the Greenberg family was saddened by the loss of Harvey, another of the four brothers who had together founded Angreen Photo Inc.
Astral formed a joint venture with Radiomutuel to create TV Plus Media, to sell advertising and offer joint marketing opportunities to specialty television channels. The application was heard on September 3rd, but no decision was forthcoming before the end of the year. The deal also brought Astral a number of non-broadcasting assets in the fields of outdoor advertising and broadcast sales.
On February 25th, after having been known as Astral Communications for nearly 29 years, the company changed its name to Astral Media. In turn, Astral sold to Corus its interest in the Comedy Network.
Previous agreements with other groups were not successful. The conditions related primarily related to the required scheduling of specific percentages of certain categories of program content.
On May 29, Astral closed the transaction with Corus. The service was initially planned to serve major cities in Ontario, Quebec and B. Two satellite radio services, Sirius and XM, were licensed at the same time, and achieved some success. While by this time Astral had grown its radio ownerships to 30 stations, the company still had an appetite for further growth. In pursuit of this objective, Astral made a serious attempt in the summer of to acquire the assets of the CHUM group.
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