There may have been an unprecedented amount of purchase and sale paperwork churning through the corporate boardroom at TVA Group throughout 2000, but there’s little sign 2001 will do much to slow the chewing of trees.

In fact, if hints from TVA Group president and ceo Daniel Lamarre come to fruition, the group – which may have fresh capital at its disposal if federal regulators approve the purchase of tva parent Videotron by printing giant Quebecor – will try to keep buying or partnering in order to expand its presence in the English-speaking marketplace.

Perhaps partnerships are the more likely route, considering a recent statement by Quebecor ceo Pierre-Karl Peladeau. Speaking on the ‘Merger Mania’ panel, held Nov. 14 as part of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters annual convention in Calgary, Peladeau said Quebecor ‘is not currently looking for new acquisitions for a year and a half or two years.’

Companies don’t like to telegraph strategies to competitors, but Lamarre’s comments in an interview in early November reinforce Peladeau’s remarks. Asked if he thinks Canadian entertainment industry merger fever will end along with 2000, Lamarre replied: ‘Tough to say right now because I think the industry will have to digest the bce/ctv, the CanWest/Hollinger and the Quebecor/Videotron-tva [deals]. I think there is still room for people to maneuver. I think the most important wave [of convergence] is behind us, but nevertheless there are new groups emerging. I will describe ourselves as a new emerging group.’

But what would tva want to buy? There don’t appear to be any broadcast nets for sale. ‘No,’ Lamarre said, ‘but there are some strategic alliances that someone might want to contemplate. And the first step toward that, [is] I have to have specialty channels in English Canada first, in order to be there and make the Sun Media/tva synergy work. And secondly, then, I see other possibilities.’

Lamarre offered no other details, but added if tva is denied English specialty licences, it would not necessarily try to buy another company to become affiliated with a specialty. ‘There are people who don’t like being taken over, but who don’t mind sharing their assets – all the possibilities are there.’

But that is for tomorrow, as are rumors of an alliance with Telus. Now for a look back at the major changes tva made to the broadcast/new media landscape during 2000.

‘At the beginning of the year – because in our case it worked in two phases – in phase one, the TVA Group wanted to become stronger in the content business. In order to achieve that we had, in the course of the year, three major events. The first one was we became the controlling shareholder of Netgraphe, an Internet company [in a reverse takeover]. Then we bought Trustar, the magazine company which publishes about 70% of all the francophone magazines sold in Quebec.’ Then, to help boost the motion picture content stream for the Web, Lamarre says tva ‘did a third event: we bought Motion International. When you add up Motion, Trustar [now TVA Publishing] and Netgraphe it doubles the size of our company in terms of revenues.’

As for content available via Motion, Lamarre says, ‘the local content shows represented about 25% of [Motion’s production], so the remaining 75% is international content. In what we now call TVA International, there are two very strong divisions. [In] distribution – we’re the number one television distributor in the country – what we are going to do in the future is to use this leverage to become a very strong distributor of theatrical movies in Canada. That’s what I would describe as our number one priority.

‘Our second priority is animation. We had an animation division that was working quite well. But we thought that with the vacuum there is right now in the market with the misfortune of Cinar, we thought we could develop at a much stronger pace. We have hired about five months ago Louis Fournier, who was one of the vice-presidents of Cinar. What you’re going to see in the coming weeks is a lot of new production in our animation division, which is quite exciting for us because it brings to the table some huge Internet potential in terms of content. And it also brings licensing potential for us.’

Animation is, naturally, easy to repurpose for the Net. Lamarre says tva plans to mix tv content with content developed specifically for the Web. ‘We think that by tailoring some of the material to each vehicle, for the same franchise, we can have great use on television and on the Internet.’

tva moved toward increasing its content presence on the Net, following signal developments and Net-content mergers in the u.s. and Europe. ‘Because we work a lot with Canal Plus, it was a good example of that. M-6 in France was another example. And when you look south of the border, it was at a much higher level, when you see the aol/Time Warner deal…it was clear…

‘We don’t pretend we will become a mega-player like the ones you see in the u.s. But we could become a significant player. And we thought we were in pretty good shape after phase one. But then phase two happened. And we’ve been bought by Quebecor, and all of a sudden you can multiply the size of opportunities that our group will be able to get through this new group [Quebecor]. As you know, Quebecor is the number two printing company in the world. They have a tradition of developing outside of Quebec. They have a huge level of contacts. And in terms of our own convergence, now, we will have their newspapers, their magazines and their Internet vehicles that we are going to be able to integrate and leverage our position even more.’

For instance, he adds, ‘we have all of the Sun Media assets that we can now work with when we’ll be able to have a stronger position in English Canada.’

As for how Quebecor/TVA Group can effectively merge its French and English assets, Lamarre is direct: ‘By having a presence in English Canada. I hope we’ll have a presence in English Canada after the crtc unveils the new specialty channels….That’s one possibility. The other thing is for our Internet assets, now we’re looking at how can we integrate Canoe and Netgraphe. What is interesting now in deploying both companies is that you have Netgraphe, which is very strong in French Canada and in Europe… and you have Canoe, which is very strong in English Canada, which can open us other markets.

‘Obviously when you talk about international markets – it’s true on Internet, but it’s true in international distribution as well – when you talk international you talk [about communicating in] English. That’s something right now, we’re developing more and more of our content in English. Everybody understands that the main potential in production and distribution is in English. *