A year for consolidation in Canada's media sector?

My former colleague Barb Shecter — at not one, but two papers, in fact — makes the rounds of the possible scenarios for more consolidation in Canada's media sector in 2004-05. Some old rumours in this good read but also plenty of new ones, or at least some new twists. She touches on just about every major media company — including my employer, rumoured to be ready to sell the Globe to the publisher of [the Canadian version of] TV Guide this fall (although it's my gut instinct the Thomson family would die before that happened) — except for what I think might be among the juiciest of rumours: Torstar Corp. meets Gerry Schwartz and Onex Corp. meets the Asper family meets the National Post. This is one that's been around for a while now and it goes a bit like this: Schwartz' Onex puts some significant cash into Torstar Corp. and Torstar Corp. makes some deal — either an outright purchase or some sort of operating agreement — to become the publisher of the National Post, relieving Canwest of the financial burden of the Post and giving the Star its entrée into a national footprint
and putting an absolute lock on Toronto-area readership and and sales.
Aaah, the new year and rumours . .
Here's a clip from Barb's article

Media shakeup expected

Canada's broadcasters and publishers look set to head out on the acquisition trail

In the minds of investment bankers, 2004 will be the year of renewed consolidation in the Canadian media sector. After a flurry of activity when the new century began, calamities including terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and the collapse of dot-com companies took the steam out of what was then called convergence.
Yet according to a number of high-level executives at Canadian broadcasting, newspaper and entertainment companies, investment bankers are working overtime conjuring up matches, public floats and spinoffs.
“There's not a quarter that goes by that any of us in the business aren't being talked to about various combinations and permutations,” said John Cassaday, chief executive of Corus Entertainment Inc. . .