Asper, Izzy

Winnipeg media mogul who owned and ran CanWest Global until his death. His takeover of Conrad Black’s Canadian newspapers, including the National Post, was a strange moment in Canadian media history, and not just because Asper as a long-time Liberal Party backer would have hired V.I. Lenin and Tim Buck to host a talk show if it got ratings high enough to be profitable–or qualified under the CRTC guidlines as CanCon enough to get tax rebates. Black’s open desire to run an ideologically-driven newspaper cost him millions, and Asper couldn’t stop the bleeding, even though he shifted the editorial policy to make the paper indistinguishable from the Jerusalem Post. After his death control over CanWest devolved to Asper’s children, who didn’t realize that media convergence was just another meaningless slogan, and ran even its profitable parts into the ground.

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