I suppose it was kind of inevitable. The independent media company Branchez-Vous!, known for its boring-looking Web portal, its news service that cribs other news services, and other websites including Showbizz.net and Fanatique.ca, has been bought by Rogers Media for $25 million, pending approval from shareholders (though administrators with 76% of the stock have already agreed to the takeover).
As much as the media holdings are valuable, though, the acquisition’s main value seems to come from the advertising network used by bloggers and more mainstream sites like Le Devoir and Rue Frontenac.
Financially, the deal is pretty sweet for B-V. The 40-cents-per-share price is 242% of the company’s closing share price on Thursday and about double what the stock has been trading over the past six months at least.
But as much as I think the company is worth every penny of the asking price, I can’t help but feel a bit sad at the loss of one of the few truly independent media sources left in Quebec.
It’s not that I think Rogers is evil (okay, I do think Rogers is evil, but not more than its competitors) or that there will be some radical change to the way Branchez-Vous operates (they’ve already said all management and employees are staying). It’s that a decision that was made by a small management team might now have to go through focus groups to remove any chance that it might offend anyone or detract in some way from the company’s branding.
And even though the acquisition seems to be like a poodle eating a horse (Rogers’s holdings in francophone Quebec are pretty limited – Châtelaine, L’actualité and LOULOU, plus some lesser-known magazines and trade publications – and its web properties get about a quarter of the traffic of Branchez-Vous’s network), expect B-V to look more like Rogers by the end of this than Rogers looks like B-V.
Expect, for example, that Branchez-Vous freelancers are forced to sign Rogers Media’s draconian contracts, that would grant Rogers the ability to freely reuse B-V content in its magazines.
And next time there’s a labour conflict involving a media company (as was the case with Rue Frontenac), expect them to think a lot harder before deciding to take sides.
Most of all, a company that already took itself far too seriously will now do so even more.
But I guess it could have been worse. They could have been bought by Quebecor.
Happy to see some success coming from a local business, but I have not been impressed by anything that comes out of this network. Like you say, it must be for the ads.
Will they actually pay their journalists now? I considered contributing to their video game site, jouez.com, but decided to pass on it because the sole pay was to keep the review copies of games. That’s roughly 8 cents a word for a 750-word review (much less so if the reviewed game is for the Nintendo DS). If it were an amateur site, that’d be fine, but not a site that strives to be a serious media outlet.
Another move that adds to a major media blob, likely taking away what was unique about BV and replacing it with Rogers corporate sterile blandness. I wouldn’t be shocked to see Rue Frontenac finding themselves needing new ad partners in this deal, as Rogers may be more than willing to play nice with the other major media company that happens to own the JdM.
All we need now is a merger between Rogers, Bell, Cogeco, and Astral to complete the assimilation of most Quebec media. They are the borg. Resistance is futile.
(oh, but on the plus side, they will retail 20 different brands in each marketplace so we think we are still choosing!)