By Adriano Marchese
Toronto Star owner Nordstar Capital and Postmedia Network Canada have terminated merger discussions after failing to reach an agreement, the two sides said.
The transaction would have brought various Canadian news properties, from the National Post to the Toronto Star, under one entity in an effort to reduce debt.
When deal was announced at the end of June, Postmedia Chief Executive Andrew MacLeod said that the rational was to create an entity with less debt, but one that had a national digital scale to compete with global technology giants while creating economies of scale.
Postmedia and Nordstar and Post media also said that an uncertainty around regulatory and financial issues also led to the decision to end negotiations.
The industry has been reeling recently after U.S. technology giants Alphabet and Meta both chose to remove Canadian news content from their sites and apps. The move came in response to a Canadian government bill, C-18, which sought to make tech companies pay for posting news stories to their platforms. The moves by the tech giants will make Canadian news hard to access readers in that country.
In response to the tech blockade, Postmedia on Friday paused all direct company advertising on Meta and its other platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. Torstar, under whose banner the Toronto Star and Metroland Media Group are under, halted advertising on those platforms at well.
“Torstar remains focused on addressing the existential threats to journalism in Canada, which have been amplified in recent weeks with the announcements by Meta and Google that they intend to block access to Canadian news,” said Jordan Bitove, owner of Nordstar and publisher of the Toronto Star.
Write to Adriano Marchese at [email protected]
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