Long-running weekly agricultural journal Ontario Farmer is expected to be under new ownership within weeks as federal regulators have cleared its sale.
The federal Competition Bureau on Wednesday issued a “no-action” letter for Sun Media’s planned sale of its 175 English-language specialty titles and daily and weekly newspapers to Postmedia for about $316 million.
Ontario Farmer, billed as the province’s only weekly farm publication, has operated since 1968 and today has a circulation of about 25,300 copies.
Quebecor-owned Sun Media has operated the paper since 1988, when it took control of the Bowes Publishers chain.
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London-based Ontario Farmer’s assets also include specialty farm periodicals such as Ontario Dairy Farmer, Ontario Hog Farmer, Ontario Beef Farmer, Western Dairy Farmer and Corn/Soy/Wheat Handbook. The newspaper’s business also includes a roster of farm show publications and equipment shoppers.
Other Sun Media assets in the proposed Postmedia deal are mainly in Ontario, but also include 38 daily and weekly papers in Alberta, nine weeklies and a daily in Manitoba plus the Winkler, Man.-based Prairie Farmer, three community weekly titles in northeastern Saskatchewan and the free daily 24 Hours in Vancouver.
Toronto-based Postmedia said Wednesday it expects to close its deal in “the next few weeks” pending the usual closing conditions for such deals being met.
“We are confident that our audiences and advertisers will continue to benefit from the strength of their favourite brands,” Postmedia CEO Paul Godfrey said in a separate release Wednesday.
The company, he said, expects to be “poised to better compete against foreign-based digital giants that have been disrupting the Canadian media landscape at the peril of distinctive Canadian voices.”
The Competition Bureau, in its no-action ruling Wednesday, cited a “lack of close rivalry” between Postmedia’s English-language newspapers and those owned by Sun Media’s Quebecor Media (QMI) arm, as well as “existing competition from free local daily newspapers.”
The merged newspaper business, the bureau said, also has an incentive to “retain readership and maintain editorial quality in order to continue to attract advertisers to its newspapers,” and will operate under “increasing competitive pressures from digital alternatives in an evolving media marketplace.”
Postmedia, the bureau said, also made “persuasive submissions suggesting that the effects of any lessening or prevention of competition would be offset by meaningful cognizable efficiencies.” — AGCanada.com Network
