Rogers hires Rick Brace as new president of media business

Share

Rogers Communications Inc. has hired Rick Brace, a veteran broadcasting executive with a deep sports pedigree, as the new president of its media business, seeking to make the most of its multibillion-dollar bet on NHL hockey rights and ownership stakes in baseball's Blue Jays and hockey's Maple Leafs.

Starting Aug. 10, Mr. Brace will head up Rogers' entire media arm, a $1.8-billion business that includes the City and Omni television networks, a large stable of radio stations and more than 50 publishing titles. But it is his long history with TSN and CBC Sports – key competitors to Rogers-owned Sportsnet – that stands out.

He will succeed Keith Pelley, who announced in April that he will be leaving to take over as commissioner and CEO of the European Tour, a professional golf circuit.

"Rick is a seasoned business leader with strong operational experience and a passion for the media industry that's second to none," Rogers CEO Guy Laurence said in a statement. "He's highly skilled at developing strong teams who perform, so he was the natural choice to tackle the challenges facing the media industry."

Most recently, Mr. Brace was head of specialty channels and CTV production for Bell Media. He cut his teeth as a producer and director with CBC Sports before moving to TSN in 1986, where he oversaw coverage of the 1988 Olympic Games in Calgary and rose through the ranks, becoming president of the network in 1998. (Bell Media's parent company, BCE Inc., owns 15 per cent of The Globe and Mail.)

Rogers has bet serious money on sports as the key driver of its media business in a difficult advertising climate. The company is claiming Sportsnet recently took over as the number one sports brand in the country for the first time ever, though TSN is still close on its heels. And Mr. Laurence recently proclaimed that Rogers made money on the first year of its $5.2-billion deal with the NHL, a deal that secured 12 years of hockey broadcast rights.

But in its most recent quarter, Rogers Media posted an operating loss of $32-million on revenue of $464-million – though Rogers cited a seasonal cycle in hockey-related expenses and revenues as a factor – as television viewership continues to shift online and media of all types struggle with declining ad revenues.

In a statement, Mr. Brace described the challenge of his new job as bringing "Canadians the content they want, where they want" as digital technologies disrupt traditional media models.

"This is an opportunity I just couldn't pass up," he said.

Mr. Brace is no stranger to the senior team at Rogers Media. He knows the departing Mr. Pelley from TSN and the broadcast consortium that led coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. And two years earlier, he and Scott Moore, the current president of Sportsnet and NHL properties, were on opposite sides of CTV's 2008 move to snatch the rights to Dolores Claman's storied Hockey Night in Canada theme song away from CBC. The coup ruffled feathers at the time, and led the CBC to commission a new opening tune that now plays on Sportsnet's Saturday night hockey broadcasts.