WINNIPEG – New Zealand. Australia. Ireland. The U.K. Turkey. CanWest’s international media empire will only get bigger, Tom Strike, president, CanWest MediaWorks International, told www.cartt.ca on Wednesday.
Strike chatted with cartt.ca after the company’s announcement Wednesday morning that it is entering the Turkish market by purchasing a radio station there, one with national reach.
“We look at Turkey as an emerging market that we think has got tremendous economic upside to it both because of its population demographics and its position vis-à-vis Europe and its recent acceptance (of Turkey) for EU membership,” Strike said.
While Turkey is not an official member of the European Union yet, it has received a few early-stage approvals and is well on its way. “We believe the initiation of the process has already started to invigorate the Turkish economy,” he added.
The auction of Super FM is only step one in the Turkish government’s spin-off of some state-owned media outlets, and CanWest plans to take a close look at more Turkish media assets, Strike explained. “This acquisition is part of a larger government-initiated divestiture of a number of media assets so over the next couple of weeks there will be other radio stations available for sale and there’ll also be a television network or two for sale,” he said.
The move into Turkey is not something that should surprise anyone, Strike continued, because the company is always looking for acquisitions, nearly anywhere.
“We’ve had a great deal of success by internationally diversifying our company,” said Strike. “We’ve created a lot of shareholder value by going to places like Australia, New Zealand and Ireland, where a lot of Canadian and American broadcasters don’t go.
“We are in the process of identifying other countries where we think there’s interesting potential opportunity… We’ve got a number of things that are under fairly active consideration.”
And, with its recent license win in the U.K., look for the company to try for more there, too. “It’s our intention to apply for a number of other licenses there and see what happens,” concluded Strike.
