News

IT'S THE COCKTAIL HOUR, OCT. 6. THE GATHERING crowd is doing its best to mingle in the curious confines of the C5 bar, an appendage of the C5 (that's Crystal Five) restaurant that affords a majestic view of Toronto from the fifth floor of the Royal Ontario Museum. The bar, on the other hand, gives one the feel of being trapped at a kegger party in a gloomy, still-under-construction rumpus room. No one appears to have asked the urgent and clearly not-yet-resolved question: What colour should we paint the drywall?

This is a starkly minimalist setting in which to observe Ted Rogers, whose own home on Frybrook Road, in Toronto's Old Forest Hill, is warm and gracious and meticulously appointed with antiques.

Ted—everyone knows him as Ted—is seated on a couch attired in one of his strangely blue suits with a near-Vegas sheen. Those who have not seen him for a time would be surprised by the thin figure swimming in that suit. (Those who love him, and they are legion, will be shaken by the news four weeks' hence that Ted's weakened heart—that damned heart—will force his emergency admission to the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.)

Today, the communications titan is 75. Soon, he will head off to the Sandy Lane resort in Barbados to celebrate 45 years of marriage to the still-beautiful Loretta, with their children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews and their children in tow.

Sandy Lane is the luxe getaway known for its Bentley transfers to and from the airport, for playing host to Tiger Woods's sunset wedding, and for its Tom Fazio-designed Green Monkey golf course. These are not the key facts in this anecdote. The key fact is that Ted, who is forthright about his health, is pragmatically aware that he may not be around when his golden anniversary comes along.

This autumn, there has been a great deal of Tending-to-personal-business, including, on this day, the launch of his autobiography, Relentless. This is not to suggest that Ted has lost command of his faculties, or his sense of humour. Rising to address friends, family and the media, he recounts the quick-march production of the book with writer Bob Brehl. "He asked me about the intellectual strength of my friends, and I told him about that, and he said, 'Well, we can make the book shorter.'"

Two weeks after the launch, Ted is knocked sideways by the flu. Some would allow themselves to retire to bed in such a circumstance. Instead, Ted holds a five-hour strategic planning session and, the next day, carves time out of his schedule for a phone interview with me.

He responds willingly to my question about what the CEO of Rogers Communications Inc. (RCI) has on his to-do list by referring to his September-to-October diary. On the personal side—he prefaces his answer with: "As you know, I have heart failure issues"—the list includes maintaining a low- or no-salt diet and low-alcohol intake; going on a daily walk of six-minutes-plus ("Doesn't sound like much to you," he says parenthetically); and, poignantly, giving away clothes ("I'm one of those people who never gives away clothes—I just keep putting them back in the closet").

On the business side, he cites a review of wireless pricing; key management retention; and "customer-unfriendly procedures and policies." Meaning?

"Get rid of them."

Give me an example.

"Oh, my God," says the man once scorned for negative-option billing. "It all revolves around the fact that we have two separate billing systems. It's just awkward. People are put to a lot of what to them are stupefying requirements. They're unfriendly. So I'm blasting ahead, trying to get a new billing system around here."

Ted was supposed to stop blasting ahead ages ago. In the early 1990s, he said he would retire when he reached the age of 67. That deadline evaporated along with the birthday as Ted moved toward being still operationally in control of his company at 70. Then 75.

Progress has been made on the succession front, which may not sound like much given that Ted has been obsessed with this topic since the Beatles were still a band.

First, there is operational succession, which will be handled by the RCI board, and which will allow for an interim CEO. As per the plan, RCI chairman Alan Horn stepped in as acting CEO upon Ted's admission to the hospital.

And ownership succession, which involves family trusts, including a non-equity control trust that will manage the preferred shares held by Ted. "It is somewhat like the checks and balances between the U.S. president and the Senate and the House of Representatives," he says in Relentless.

That sounds about right.

Some in the media have spent their entire careers waiting to see who will get to run the show. Will his son, Edward, ultimately reign? Or perhaps daughter Melinda? What of Nadir Mohamed, chief operating officer of the Communications Group and a current member of the so-called Office of the President, created by Ted to help transition the company to a time when he's gone?

Ted's fundamental belief, also stated in Relentless, is that he "would like to see the Rogers family keep control of this company that I worked so damned hard to build over 50 years."

Buckets of ink have been spilled explaining why Ted is so obsessed by this: the sudden death of his father, Edward Samuel Rogers, at age 38 (Ted was 5). The moment, two years later, when his mother, Velma, relinquished control of Rogers-Majestic Ltd. Edward Sr. had created the world's first alternating current radio tube. He had built a radio manufacturing business in Toronto and launched CFRB radio in 1927. All, eventually, gone.

Or, phrased Ted's way: "I have always believed my father's estate got screwed."

The unvarnished Ted says he shies away from elaborate words because he doesn't know what they mean. "Screwed" is a nice, sharp word that works for him.

It's useful.

Take Bell Canada. "I always take the position that our company…got screwed in different ways by Bell, so I try to whip up a frenzy of emotions—favourable emotions—among our people."

The point is the way in which Ted is ruled by emotion. Emotional obsession?

"Well," he responds. "It is."

It isn't every executive who is game for an exchange about such matters, and it's the rare one who will courteously respond to the obvious question: "Have you ever gone into therapy for that?"

"Why in the world would I want to go into therapy? Our stock would sell for a 10th of what it's selling for."

In rebuilding the Rogers name, Ted built a reputation for being hard-driving and intemperate. "Intemperate" is not a word he would use. He would say he yelled a lot. Until the day, he says, when John Tory, now the leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party and a former Rogers executive, yelled at him to stop yelling. Ted says that somewhere in the middle of the two of them yelling at one another, he got the message.

So, have you stopped leaving middle-of-the-night ranting messages?
"'Stopped' would be a finality word," he says. He suggests "slowed down" might be more precise. And then he decides that "moving toward stopping" sounds right.

Moving toward stopping. As I write this, I don't know what it means. At this moment, Ted should be filling his daybook for the winter. Corporate goals for every day. Notes-to-self for the personal stuff. He can check off the anniversary party. "I'm hopeful that we can put the wallet down and maybe have it rest for a while," he says dryly of the five-star getaway. Every single note that remains undone at the end of December to be transferred to the first two months of 2009, a year that Ted Rogers, never in his wildest dreams, thought he would live to see.

TED'S BONS MOTS
The cable baron is known as much for his zingers as for his shiny blue suits

June, 2008
"PEOPLE LIKE ME CAN'T WORK WITHOUT ABSOLUTE CONTROL. I DON'T GET MOTIVATED THAT WAY"
—On why he never had any intention of changing Rogers's dual-class share structure

November, 2006
"IT'S VERY IMAGINATIVE, IT'S VERY CREATIVE AND IT'S BULLSHIT"
—On the networks' bid to charge cable companies to carry their signals

May, 2007
"WE WANT THE SUITS OUT OF HERE....WE TOLD THEM ALL TO GO TO HELL"
—On the networks' bid to charge cable companies to carry their signals

May, 2007
"THESE SCALLYWAGS WHO ARE GOING AROUND SAYING CANADIAN FIRM ARE INFERIOR OUGHT TO BE PUT IN JAIL"
—After wireless upstarts like Quebecor attack Rogers and other existing cellular providers for being slow-moving and uncompetitive on rates

May, 2007
"NOT IN MY LIFETIME"
—Ted admits he never expected to live long enough to see Rogers's debt ratings bumped up to investment grade

September, 2007
"ANYBODY WHO BUYS IT, IN MY OPINION, IS GOING TO GO DOWN"
—On rumours he wants to buy Shaw Communications (which he thinks would be nuts, as it's so well-run)