History
Frank Griffiths established Western Broadcasting Company Ltd. in the late 1950s to hold his various broadcasting assets in British Columbia, including radio station CKNW and a majority interest in BCTV, at the time the province's CTV affiliate. WBC was publicly-traded for a time but was later reacquired by Griffiths's family.
In 1982, the Griffiths' media assets were again floated on the public markets in a restructured form via WIC. The Griffiths retained Western Broadcasting, which in turn held all of WIC's Class A voting shares; the Class B shares were sold to the public. Class B shares did not generally provide voting rights, but would be converted to voting shares should a majority of Class A shares change hands, a so-called coat-tail provision.
Over time, WIC would acquire various broadcasting assets from other companies, including Selkirk Communications – the other major shareholder of BCTV, and also the owner of independent stations CHCH-TV Hamilton and CFAC-TV (now CICT-TV) Calgary – as well as Charles Allard's company Allarcom, which had launched CITV-TV Edmonton and pay television service Superchannel. Its final major acquisition was Montreal's CFCF-TV, which it bought in 1997.
Read more about this topic: Western International Communications
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