Astral Media - History

History

Astral Media's roots lie with Angreen Photo, a Canadian company founded in 1961. It was created when Montreal's Greenberg brothers, led by Harold Greenberg, founded it to operate the photography concession in Miracle Mart, a department store chain. Its acquisition in 1967 of rights at the Montreal Expo eventually grew into a 125-store chain, Astral Photo, the remnants of which are now owned by the Black's Photography chain. The store grew quickly into motion picture processing after acquiring the Pathé-Humphries motion picture lab. The name was changed to Astral Bellevue Pathé and later to AstralTech. The Astral Photo name disappeared when its Quebec stores became Black's.

Astral, in its present day form, was constituted in 1973 under the name Astral Bellevue Pathé Limited. Astral Media eventually undertook videocassette duplication and video wholesaling. Astral Media also produced or executive produced over 100 feature films and television programs and television miniseries.

In 1983, the Greenbergs acquired complete control of two pay television networks, First Choice (now known as The Movie Network) and Premier Choix TVEC (now Super Écran), at which point Astral ceased to be directly involved in film and program production. The company would later expand its television operations by launching new specialty networks. Later, it also became involved with the home video market, lasting from the mid-1980s until at least 1996.

In February 2000, Astral Communications changed its name to Astral Media.

In recent years, Astral Media has expanded into radio, beginning with the 2000 acquisition of Radiomutuel, and the 2002 purchase of most of the radio assets of Telemedia, although those companies' joint AM radio network Radiomedia was ultimately sold to Corus Entertainment for competitive reasons. Radiomutuel also owned a controlling share of outdoor advertising firm Omni Outdoor (now the wholly owned division Astral Media Outdoor), as well as several French-language specialty channels such as Canal Vie, Ztélé, Séries+, VRAK.TV, and 50% stakes in MusiquePlus and MusiMax (then co-owned with CHUM Limited).

On February 23, 2007, Astral Media announced that it had signed a letter of intent and had entered into exclusive negotiations regarding the acquisition of "substantially all of the assets" of Standard Radio. A formal agreement was later announced, with the proposed transaction being approved by the CRTC on September 28, and completed on October 29 of the same year. The transaction gave Astral Media a significant foothold in English-language radio.

In May 2010, Astral Media remodeled its image with the introduction of a new logo. The company now trades simply as "Astral" and all references to the "Media" part were removed from the logo and airwaves. However, the company's official name remains Astral Media. Following this change, Astral relocated its headquarters to a building that was renamed after itself.