Canwest

Canwest Global Communications Corporation, which operated under the corporate name Canwest, was a major Canadian media conglomerate based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, with its head offices at Canwest Place (now called 201 Portage). It held radio, television broadcasting, and publishing assets in several countries, primarily in Canada.

Canwest was founded in 1974 by Izzy Asper through the formation of CIII-TV in Toronto under the Global Television Network. The company expanded through the 1980s and 1990s, with the initial public offering in 1991 as a publicly traded corporation and the international expansion of its operations in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom and Turkey. Throughout the years, under Leonard Asper, who became its president and CEO in 1999, Canwest grew into a major media powerhouse by acquiring media properties such as Western International Communications and the Southam newspaper publishing. In 2007, with Goldman Sachs, Canwest acquired the broadcasting arm of Alliance Atlantis.

After years of debt, Canwest began to slowly collapse in 2008, amid the Great Recession and later entered bankruptcy protection in late 2009, which led to the sale of its publishing and broadcasting arms the following year to Postmedia Network, founded by National Post CEO Paul Godfrey and Shaw Communications, which later reorganized its media division as Shaw Media. On April 1, 2016, the broadcasting assets were subsumed into Corus Entertainment, an existing broadcasting firm also owned by the Shaw family.

Following the sale of assets, the company was renamed 2737469 Canada Inc., ceased to carry on business, and commenced bankruptcy proceedings under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act before finally being dissolved on May 27, 2013.

As of April 2009^[update] (prior to seeking creditor protection), Canwest owned, in whole or part, a variety of Canadian media assets, including:

The company had previously sold off some of the smaller newspapers it had acquired in the Southam purchase. Canwest also previously owned broadcasting operations in Australia (as majority shareholder of Network Ten), New Zealand (through CanWest MediaWorks New Zealand), the Republic of Ireland (as a minority shareholder of TV3) and Turkey (as the owners of four radio stations (Metro FM (Turkey), Süper FM, Joy FM, Joy Türk)).

In 1974, a group led by Israel Asper bought the assets of Pembina, North Dakota television station KCND-TV from broadcaster Gordon McLendon, moving the station to Winnipeg as an independent station CKND-TV. Asper, through his company, Canwest, eventually bought out his partners in the Winnipeg station. A few months later, the Asper group joined a consortium that bought CKGN-TV, a network of six simulcasting transmitters across Ontario that carried many of CKND's programs and was known on-air as the Global Television Network. Canwest bought controlling interest in Global, now using the callsign CIII-TV, in 1985, thus becoming the first western-based owner of a major Canadian broadcaster. He acquired the remaining stock in 1989.

Canwest subsequently invested in or acquired other independent TV stations across Canada. Eventually, his station group became known as the "Canwest Global System." In 1997, Canwest bought a controlling interest in CKMI-TV, the privately owned CBC affiliate in Quebec City. Canwest then set up CKMI rebroadcasters in Montreal and Sherbrooke. With this move, Canwest's stations now had enough coverage of Canada that on August 18—the day CKMI officially disaffiliated from CBC—Canwest scrubbed all local brands from its stations, rebranding them as "The Global Television Network," Canada's third television network. Throughout the 1990s, Global (and its antecedents) held Canadian rights to hit U.S. series such as Cheers, Friends, and Frasier.