TED ROGERS(Edward Samuel Rogers). Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 27 May 1933. Educated at the Upper Canada College in Toronto; The University of Toronto, Trinity College, B.A., 1956; Osgoode Law School, LL.B., 1961. Married Loretta Anne Robinson, 1963, children: Lisa Anne, Edward Samuel, Melinda Mary, and Martha Loretta. Read law for Tory, Tory, DesLauriers & Binnington; called to bar of Ontario, 1962; established Rogers Communications in 1967; currently president and CEO of Rogers Communications, Inc.; also a director of the Toronto-Dominion Bank, the Canada Publishing Corporation, the Hull Group, Wellesley Hospital, and Junior Achievement of Canada. Address: P.O. Box 249, Toronto-Dominion Centre, Suite 2600, Commercial Union Tower, Toronto, Ontario M5K 1J5

The founder and chief executive officer of Rogers Communications Inc., Ted Rogers has become Canada's undisputed new media mogul. A tireless worker, over the last 30 years Rogers has ceaselessly expanded his business undertakings by plunging headlong into each new communication technology. He has compared his corporate machinations to the likes of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and Time-Warner Inc., maintaining that only by building Canadian companies of comparable size and diversity can Canadians be assured of a distinctive voice at the forefront of the electronic highway.

Established in 1967, Rogers Communications has grown into one of Canada's largest media conglomerates. Rogers Communications is the largest cable television business in Canada with 50 systems that embrace close to 35% of all Canadian cable subscribers. As a broadcaster and television content provider, Rogers Communications owns over 40 radio stations, CFMT in Toronto (a multicultural television station), YTV (a youth-oriented specialty cable channel), the Canadian Home Shopping Channel, and a 25% stake in Viewers Choice Canada, a pay-per-view cable service. It also owns a chain video stores. In telecommunications, Rogers holds a major stake in Unitel Communications Inc., a long-distance telephone company, and owns 80% of Cantel Communications Inc., a Canada-wide cellular phone service. As a result of its 1994 takeover of Maclean-Hunter Ltd., Rogers Communications is the majority share holder of the Toronto Sun Publishing Corp., which publishes five newspapers across Canada, and is also the owner of 191 periodicals in Canada, Britain, the United States, and Europe. In 1993, Rogers Communications generated revenues of $1.34 billion; the addition of the assets from Maclean-Hunter will bring the revenues of Rogers Communications close to $3 billion.

Rogers' interest in broadcasting continues a family tradition. His father, Edward Samuel, was the first amateur radio operator in Canada to successfully transmit a signal across the Atlantic. He later invented the radio tube that made it possible to build "batteryless" alternating current (AC) receiving sets and in the 1920s founded Rogers Majestic Corp. to build them. Until then neither radio receivers nor transmitters could utilize existing household wiring or power lines, and the batteries that powered radio receivers were cumbersome, highly corrosive, and required frequent changing. Edward Samuels' "batteryless radio" greatly increased the popularity of broadcasting. The elder Rogers also established CFRB (for Canada's First Radio Batteryless), a commercial radio station in Toronto that grew to command Canada's largest listening audience. In 1935, Edward Samuel was granted the first Canadian license to broadcast experimental television. He died eight years later at the age of 38, when Ted Rogers was five. After Edward Samuels' death, the Rogers family lost control of CFRB.

In 1960, while still a student at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, Ted Rogers bought all the shares in CHFI, a small 940-watt Toronto radio station that pioneered the use of FM (frequency modulation) at a time when only 5% of the Toronto households had FM receivers. By 1965, he was in the cable TV business. In the 1970s he bought out two competitors--Canadian Cablesystems and Premier Cablevision--both larger than his own operation and, by 1980, Rogers Communications had taken over UA-Columbia Cablevision in the United States, to become for a time the world's largest cable operator, with over million subscribers.

Rogers has since sold his stake in U.S. cable operations to concentrate on the Canadian market. His forays into long-distance and cellular telephony, his ownership of cable services such as the Home Shopping Network and specialty channels such as YTV, and the acquisition of Maclean-Hunter's publishing interests make Rogers a key player in the unfolding of the information superhighway.

While the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunication Commission (CRTC) has generally given its assent to Rogers' corporate maneuvers, there are many who believe that the Commission has neither the regulatory tools nor the will to adequately monitor or control the activities of Rogers and other large cable operators especially in regards to pricing and open network-access. While cable rates rose an average of 80% between 1983 and 1993, Rogers was busy adding to its corporate empire and up-grading its technical infrastructure ($1 billion over the past five years). Rogers Communications has paid no dividend to its shareholders since 1980 and has posted profits only three times in the last ten years. It is hard not to conclude that cable subscribers are bearing the costs of Rogers' grand corporate scheme to lead Canada into the information age. As smaller cable operators tremble at the prospect of competition from direct-to-home satellites and telephone companies, Ted Rogers has ensured that Rogers Communications is well positioned for life after the era of local cable monopolies.

-Ted Magder