Montreal: TVA Group has expanded its cross-media content assets with the acquisition of Trustar, Quebec’s largest magazine publisher.

tva is paying $46 million for the publisher of generalist weekly magazines such as 7 Jours, Derniere Heure and Le Lundi, $23 million in cash and the balance in new class b non-voting shares issued from treasury and priced at $25 a share. Trustar also holds a 50% stake in the weekly tv listings mag TV Hebdo. On Jan. 18, the date the deal was unveiled, tva shares closed at $21.50 on the tse.

Trustar has annual revenues of $50 million, representing about half of all yearly sales of French-language magazines in Quebec. Trustar founder and president Claude J. Charron will sit on tva’s board of directors.

tva president and ceo Daniel Lamarre says the two companies ‘have several hundred million dollars’ for additional acquisitions.

Majority owned by cable company Groupe Videotron, tva has already stated an interest in acquiring assets in the English-Canadian market, including specialty tv channels, a production/distribution company, and publishing interests.

Initial expansion efforts have included the production of several Fox Family Channel tv movies by subsidiary TVA International, a wide-ranging coproduction agreement with Cirque du Soleil Images, and franchising a turnkey home-shopping service.

Videotron and tva recently acquired Quebec’s largest Internet portal operation, Netgraphe/La Toile du Quebec.

In other news, tva reports first-quarter profits of $12.3 million on top-line revenues of $71.6 million.