His house made news last summer—at $7.5 million, it boasted a record price tag for Calgary—but Jim Shaw saw a need for improvements. Some dark wood, leather and rows of books, to start with. "I'm doing a Winston Churchill room," declares the 51-year-old CEO of Shaw Communications, a history buff who cites the iconic British PM as an influence. "When you think about Churchill, you think about what? Powerful. Dark, lots of books—that sort of thing. And we put in a fan, just in case somebody wants to have a cigar."
Barely containing his excitement, Shaw moves the conversation toward the as-yet-unfinished pièce de résistance of his extreme home makeover.
"You ever see Batman? You know when Batman used to go to the phone, press a few buttons—da, da, da—and the library would open up and he'd slide down the pole to the Batmobile? Well, I don't have a pole, and I don't have a Batmobile or none of that, but that's where the washroom is going." He is almost in stitches over the concept of a hidden spy bathroom. "The whole wall will just kind of open up, then it closes." He shrugs unapologetically. "Hey, that's just how we think around here. We're just a little off the mark."
Shaw is laughing, but make no mistake—the Winston Churchill Wing isn't for recreation. It's a place where Shaw will meet with executives, investors, bankers and whomever else, at all hours of the day or night, seven days a week. The room is designed so that traffic coming in and out won't disturb his family in the rest of the house. It's a war room for a man who relishes a battle.
Over the past two years, Shaw has emerged as one of the most polarizing figures in Canadian cable and broadcasting. He has clashed with regulators, taunted the big TV networks and made life difficult for niche cable channels. But what many casual observers may have missed is that Shaw has been acting out from a position of steadily increasing power. In the convergence battles of a decade ago, content was supposedly king and the TV networks held all the cards. Yet today, cable companies have emerged the clear victors, holding the most important asset in the business: a near-monopoly over the biggest entertainment pipeline into homes—conveying not just TV, which was the original idea, but also Internet and phone service.
Even in a recession, Canada's second-largest cable company is having one of its most profitable years ever. Shaw Communications dropped $195 million last year just to stock up on wireless licences that will allow for expansion into cellphone service down the road. Its dividend has increased while other companies are slashing payouts. And last quarter, Shaw's subscriber growth began to accelerate despite a slowdown in consumer spending across the economy. In the year ahead, free cash flow at Shaw Communications is expected to reach half a billion dollars, the highest target the company has ever set for itself.
What's more, with the recent death of his ally and confidant, cable pioneer Ted Rogers, Shaw is thinking bigger. Not content to merely be one of the country's cable titans, he wants to be the cable titan. He's not planning to buy Rogers Communications, mind you. But soon enough, he can see his family-run company usurping Rogers at the top of the food chain in several key subscriber categories. "It just looks to me like there's a bit of the changing of the guard," he says. "With Ted gone, who is it that now leads the industry? It's Shaw. That responsibility falls to us now."
Shaw knows he is perceived as the Cowboy of Cable. The cliché sticks merely because he's from the West, rarely dons a suit and typically drops the g's from his sentences. "We're smokin' right now," Shaw recently told analysts on a conference call in his patented plain speak. Still, the label is not entirely unwarranted. For his entire life, Jim Shaw has been a shoot-from-the-hip kind of guy.
It's possibly the most significant trait that distinguishes him from his father, James Robert Shaw. The elder Shaw, who changed his name to JR, period (but no periods), is a gentle, soothing person to talk to—the sheriff to his son's outlaw.
