Bell Canada has agreed to purchase Astral Media for $3.38 Billion Canadian to combine the two Canadian media giants.
The acquisition will combine Bell’s 35 radio stations from the old CHUM group with Astral’s 84 creating numerous overlap over per market cap. The radio stations are an afterthought in this deal as Bell is looking for more video content it will control as it will add 22 English and 13 French networks to its possessions.
INSTANT INSIGHT: To Americans the closest comparison to what Bell will be in Canada would be if Time Warner Cable, Verizon, Disney’s TV holdings (ABC & ESPN), and Cumulus were one company holding the #1 or #2 spot in mobile phone, cable television, network television, sports, and radio holdings. Between Bell and Rogers there will be two companies dominating much of Canadian media.
More details from The Globe & Mail and a history of Astral from Reuters.
Joseph 
Carl 
I can see an awful lot of radio stations getting spun-off into a new major group.
Maybe there’s a wealthy Canadian who has a passion for radio in his/her blood who would purchase the radio stations that the combined Bell/Astral will have to divest.
The stations that Bell/Astral will have to divest by themselves, if they are all picked up by a single owner, become an instant major radio group.
I can just as easily see one of the smaller companies growing larger…NewCap or the Evanov group, perhaps.