Ted Rogers

Notable work and positions

Rogers Communications Inc. - Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer (1960-2008)

Biography

Edward Samuel "Ted" Rogers Jr. (1933-2008) founded what became Rogers Communications Inc. in 1960, when, while still a law student, he borrowed $85,000 to buy Toronto FM radio station CHFI. He went on to build the company into one of Canada's largest communications and media conglomerates, expanding into cable television in the 1960s, wireless telephone service through Cantel in the 1980s, and, with the 1994 acquisition of Maclean Hunter, magazine and newspaper publishing, adding titles including Maclean's, Chatelaine and Flare along with the Toronto Sun Publishing Corporation. Rogers Media's holdings eventually included Sportsnet, dozens of radio stations, City TV and other television properties, and the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team and Rogers Centre. He continued the legacy of his father, Edward Rogers Sr., a radio pioneer who died when Ted was five. Rogers was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1990 and inducted into the Canadian Business Hall of Fame in 1994. He died of heart failure on December 2, 2008, at age 75, with the company he founded worth an estimated $18 billion.