CFCF brings in new blood

Montreal: Three senior executives with CFCF Inc. have been replaced by a team of younger, more aggressive managers charged with leading the company’s broadcast operations into the high-tech future.

The new managers are in their mid-thirties and have expertise in new technology and broadcast financing.

CFCF Broadcasting Group president and ceo Charles Belanger says restructuring is part of a mid-term management program aimed at creating two single corporate entities, in broadcasting and cable.

‘We want to build an option so that in two or three or four years, if the board of directors so decides, the broadcast entity could go to the market and be listed as an independent corporation,’ he says.

Gone in the shakeup are Christo Georges, president and coo of cfcf-tv, the CTV Television Network affiliate in Montreal; Tom Froundjian, president of Champ-lain Productions, which owns and operates post-production company Supersuite; and Les Crosbie, vice-president, engineering and operations and former number two man at cfcf-tv.

Froundjian, a 20-year veteran with CFCF Inc. and a member of the Broadcasting Group’s management committee, says his dismissal came as a ‘complete shock.’

The new members of the Broadcasting Group management team are Ghislain St-Pierre, an engineer who has been named president and general manager of Champlain; Marielle Denis, vice-president, administration at CFCF Inc., who has been handed the task of rationalizing all management systems in the group; and Michael Ross, vice-president, administration at Television Quatre Saisons, who will assess the group’s financing options.

cfcf’s Broadcasting Group is now anchored by its two senior executives, tqs president Jean Fortier and Belanger.

Belanger says the restructuring will concentrate the company’s focus and energy, but each unit will continue to operate as an independent profit center.

The new team is also charged with seeking out opportunities in the national and international broadcast and production markets, says Belanger. ‘We want to make better use of all our resources by combining existing talents of both cultures… we think this is a unique feature of the cfcf signature.’

St-Pierre, described as ‘a young technical wiz,’ will oversee the group’s technological operations and has a mandate to move Supersuite beyond its current ‘break-even’ position. ‘(Supersuite) is not moving as we would like it to, it needs more muscle,’ says Belanger. ‘The operation is sound, but it can be even more innovative.’

Belanger says the three fired executives have been given ‘generous’ severance packages.

CFCF Inc. reported net earnings of $12.1 million on revenues of $161.3 million in 1993 following two years of heavy losses in the order of $100 million. The red ink was attributed mainly to the cost of launching the French-track tqs network, which led to the near financial collapse of CFCF Inc.

Belanger says the tv broadcast market in Quebec in 1994 is slow and the outlook for 1995 isn’t much better.

CFCF Inc. is majority controlled by the Pouliot family of Montreal and is the licence holder for cfcf-tv and the tqs network. The company is traded publicly on the Montreal and Toronto stock exchanges. It owns Champlain Productions, a post-production and production service company, and a 55% interest in ngi, a Toronto-based sales syndication company which recently signed a Canadian syndication agreement with Columbia TriStar Television.

Adrien Pouliot is president and ceo of CFCF Inc. and company founder Jean Pouliot is chairman.