TORONTO — He joined Canadian media and telecommunications giant Rogers Communications in 1969 as its first Programming Officer, playing a key role in the Beautiful Music that first made CHFI-FM 98.1 a success in the nation’s biggest market.
Over the next 54 years, he and the late Ted Rogers helped to build Rogers into a dominant provider of broadband internet, cable television services, and wireless phone services — modern-day additions to its 55 radio properties, cable television networks including SportsNet, and the CityTV broadcast TV network. Oh, and there’s the ownership of Toronto’s Major League Baseball team, along with 75% ownership of every other sports team that matters in the region.
Now, Canadian media industry leaders are pausing to remember Philip B. Lind, who died on Sunday at the age of 80.
Starting with just one FM radio station, Rogers has grown to become one of the world’s biggest media companies, with a footprint that perhaps could never be seen in the U.S. thanks to anti-competition regulatory policies.
From majority ownership of the National Hockey League’s Toronto Maple Leafs, the National Basketball Association’s Toronto Raptors, the Canadian Football League’s Toronto Argonauts, the American Hockey League’s Toronto Marlies, and Major League Soccer’s Toronto FC to CFTR-AM “CityNews 680” in Toronto, the nation’s No. 1 AM radio station, and distribution of cable channel FX in Canada, Rogers’ footprint is enormous.
Much of that success can be tied to Lind, a long-standing member of the Rogers Board of Directors who served as Vice-Chair at the time of his passing.
“Phil left an incredible legacy and made an indelible mark on Rogers,” the company said in a brief statement that now replaces his biography on the corporate website for Rogers.
In addition to his leadership at Rogers, Lind served as Chairman of the Board of the Central Canadian Public Television Association. This saw the distribution of educational, noncommercial content in the U.S. through such stations as WNED-17 in Buffalo, largely viewable in the Greater Toronto Area — thanks to Rogers’ own cable TV services.
Lind was also a director of the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Albright Knox Foundation Canada, associated with the newly rechristened AKG Buffalo Art Museum.
“Phil worked for Rogers for 54 years, nearly 40 of them with my father and helped build Rogers into the telecom and media powerhouse it is today,” said Edward Rogers, Chair of Rogers Communications. “He has been involved in every key decision in the company’s history and we are forever grateful for his countless contributions.”
From the February 1994 Maclean Hunter deal to the Rogers-Shaw deal, Lind played “an integral role in every major transaction in the company’s history,” Rogers said in a statement, adding that Lind “was a tireless advocate for multilingual, multicultural and specialty programming.”
“Phil has been a constant steady force for over five decades,” added Edward Rogers. “We will miss his deep devotion, relentless determination, and sage counsel.”
— With reporting from RBR+TVBR in North York, Ont., and London, Ont.
