Keith Pelley was named president of Rogers Media this past September, part of a trend that saw senior leadership changes at many of the country’s top broadcasters. Pelley, a results-driven media executive with an extensive background in sports, led the Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium to resounding success, delivering Olympic content out to an astonishing 99 per cent of Canadians via the consortium’s multi-platform coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.

Sports is the through line in Pelley’s career, with stints as the president of both TSN and the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts. It should come as no surprise that rumours of Rogers purchasing the majority share of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment surfaced only months after Pelley became president of Rogers Media. In fact, career aside, it’s arguable that sports has played a crucial role at every stage of his life.

Case in point: I first encountered Pelley in 1977 when he and I were fiercely competing against one another in the Etobicoke Minor Football League.

From those formative years to present day, Pelley’s love of sports, and competitive instinct, have driven him to the top of the Canadian media world. At age 46, he oversees one of the nation’s largest and most diverse companies, an entity that owns and operates the Toronto Blue Jays, Rogers Centre, Rogers Sportsnet, the CityTV network, OMNI television stations, 53 radio stations, 70 consumer magazines and trade publications, The Shopping Channel...and probably more to come. Rogers Media is a group of assets that last year generated revenues of $1.4 billion.

And while I’ll admit my former gridiron rival may have surpassed me in the professional ranks, let it be noted: back in ‘77, we (Advertiser/Guardian) whitewashed them (Rosedale Shopping Centre) 14–0 in the peewee championship – a final in which I rushed for 111 yards and one touchdown. Just saying.

TORO recently caught up with Pelley at his office in downtown Toronto to discuss the changing media landscape, the current state of Canadian patriotism, the primacy of content, and – of course – sports.

I played sports my whole life, and it continues to inform my thinking about how business operates. Can you reflect on the influence of athletics on your own career?

I’ve been very fortunate because I love sports and I’ve had the opportunity to be involved with sports my entire professional career. Everyone who grew up playing sports dreamed of becoming a professional athlete. Well, I stopped growing at age eight! (laughs). So I got involved in the next best thing. I love media. I love sports. And I became a fanatic for sports television, which has now evolved to sports content, at an early stage of my career. And it has just been a great ride.

Let’s discuss the stages of your career. Did you begin on the production side at TSN? It’s relevant, in that many of the leading executives I interview seem to skip formal business training altogether and work their way up in the industries that they’re passionate about.

I enjoyed high school, but I enjoyed high school because of the sports. But the minute that I got to Ryerson, it changed everything. I just loved the media. I wanted to be on air, and hosted a show for Channel 47 in my second year – which is OMNI now, which is kind of funny. But I realized quickly I wasn’t very good on air. But I ended up loving the industry and getting in at TSN. And it became not only a passion, but television and television production became something of an obsession. At one point I had 13 or 14 televisions in my house, and I had a full monitor wall, and for me work was not only a privilege but also a huge enjoyment.

Let me return to a sports analogy for a moment. When a former player gets a chance to compete against his old team (for instance, when Donovan McNab now faces off against the Philadelphia Eagles) there has to be a bit of extra incentive to do well. That said, I want to know if  you have an extra-competitive edge when you think about Sportsnet now going up against TSN?

Well, sure. I thoroughly enjoyed my time at TSN and it provided me a great opportunity, and I certainly never would have thought that I’d be wearing Sportsnet clothing. But now the competitive instinct is definitely there, and I’m Sportsnet through and through. And if you play sports, and if you play it on a level where you want to be successful, you need to be competitive. Well, I’m ridiculously competitive. And so Sportsnet for me is the No. 1 sports brand and we want to beat TSN. And I want that passion and that attitude for everyone that works on that brand.

And you’re only as good as your teammates, right? So does that thinking lead to the decision to bring Scott Moore onboard from CBC Sports.

Well, I think I felt I owed Scott because he gave me my first job at TSN a long time ago.

But I think that you’re right – you’re only as good as your team. There are some very very strong people here and we’re adding to that lineup and you’re going to see some pretty special things happen down the road.

Moving from TSN to the Toronto Argonauts was also an interesting career move for you. And while running a CFL franchise is obviously quite different from overseeing a MLB team, are there any lessons that you can carry over?

You know, we always talked about Rogers being a fantastic company – a company that is targeting growth, and then of course everyone in the industry always said that this was the greatest media job because it included sports in terms of traditional mediums, other types of businesses, and, as well, as a team and a stadium. And I can tell you, though it’s difficult to explain. But until you have worked for a team and watched that team play...well, the only other thing I can compare it to is to cheering for your son or daughter at the rink or the arena. It’s the same thing. Game day you are buzzing with anticipation. It’s a rush. Grey Cup 2004 and winning that and parading through the streets of Ottawa and then shortly after being in a ticker tape parade and sitting there with Pinball [Clemons] with the Grey Cup.

So, yes, you can compare the Argos and the Jays because they are professional teams. And I just became the biggest baseball fan overnight. And I just happen to be here at a very good time when Paul and Alex Anthopoulos have put together a team that’s poised to be successful on the field.

Let’s talk a little about the CTV-Rogers Olympic Consortium. The scale of it was phenomenal – but what, to your eyes, was the biggest challenge going in?

It was a terrific vision by Ivan Fescan to put together such a gargantuan group of assets that could televise the games like never before. And we really coined that phrase pretty quick, we were going to “cover it like never before.” Canadians were going to watch what they want, when they want, how they want. But it really became a clinic on logistics. Because when you’re starting out with 11 networks and televising them in 26 different languages – we had over one million feet of cable! – and I just think that the overall magnitude of the consortium was our biggest opportunity and our biggest advantage, but it also provided the biggest challenge.

And you only had one opportunity to do the games in your own country, and we looked at it as 400,000 Canadians experienced the games in Vancouver, and the other 33 million through one of our platforms. And so it was a privilege but also a huge responsibility to be the group that was really in charge of capturing the imaginations of all Canadians and creating the memories that would be indelibly etched and showcasing our country, our people, our culture, our athletes – not only to Canada but to the rest of the world. It was great.

Did you get to enjoy it on a personal level or was there just too much on your plate?

I enjoy it more and more every day (laughs)...and in two years I’ll enjoy it even more! It’s like back to playing minor football in 1977 – right? Memories get stronger and stronger with every passing day. I didn’t get to one event. But the enjoyment that I got out of the games was watching everybody come together – watching two competitive companies like TSN and Sportsnet work together for 17 days, coming together and pulling on that exact same rope. And I got unbelievable satisfaction out of watching our athletes succeed. It was truly an opportunity and a great privilege to have got to know the athletes leading into it. The creation of the “Belief” campaign allowed athletes to become household names well before the games and we got to know them. So when Tess and Scott came into our studio after winning the pairs, and you know them really well at that point because you’ve dealt with them, or Jon Montgomery right after his win – that was living the games through the athletes, and watching them succeed, it really personalized it for me. I couldn’t have cheered more for Scott and Tessa, and had a tear in my eye when Jon Montgomery won.

There is a misconception that Canadians aren’t patriotic, though it’s true that we don’t go in for the rah-rah American style of patriotism. But I think Canadians are intensely patriotic, we just don’t show it all the time. Do you agree, and did you notice an upsurge in national pride during and after the Olympics?

That was the dream of a man who is now an icon, John Furlong. That was his dream: to showcase Canada and let us be patriotic. And we articulated his vision. We showed them that it’s OK to shout and cheer as loud as you possibly can. And I don’t think that I’ve seen anything where Canadians came together more than the Olympics. And hopefully that’s changed the country forever.

I think so. And if you look at Marketing magazine’s top 10 media players of 2010, it’s quite clear that patriotism was an effective strategy for many of the country’s top brands. Molson Canadian’s “From the Land” campaign, Scotiabank’s “Show Your Colours”, and even Hudson Bay Company’s Canada red mittens...

Sure! And I think – if you take the red mittens, which became a huge phenomenon – we were a huge part of that. The media is so powerful when it congregates and has one shared vision. And that’s exactly what happened at the Games, and we provided platforms and showcased Canada like never before. And the more that we did that, the more that it became fashionable. And the games have perceived the way that our country is perceived internationally, but it also changed the way that we perceive ourselves. And it is now fashionable to be Canadian! And we feel very proud that everyone at the consortium had something to do with that.

Based on that experience, and reflecting on what a disparate collection of media assets you now oversee at Rogers Media, would you consider somehow tying them together with a similar patriotic strategy?

The good news I would say is that we have some powerful Canadian brands. The Olympics was a brand, and Canada was a brand, and we brought the two together. And we have to look now at taking the strong brands that we have at Rogers Media and exposing those brands across all our platforms and all our divisions, and that’s something that we’re really committed to – the need to be horizontal in all our integration. It’s pretty exciting when you think of the likes of Maclean’s and Chatelaine and Citytv and The Fan and Sportsnet, and it goes on and on.

It’s an interesting time now – convergence is everywhere.

There’s no question that there’s consolidation. But at the end of the day it’s all about content, and acquiring content across multiple platforms, and how you use that content. We have a significant advantage in that we own content in the Blue Jays – content that makes up 162 occasions, or 190 if you include the pre-season. But overall when you’re in this consolidated world it is about content and providing opportunities for the consumer, and we like where we sit in terms of our position.

I think consumers are not only accessing content from these multiple platforms but they are accessing content simultaneously. For instance, I will be watching television and also have my laptop beside me.

We learned that in studies leading up to the Olympics. First of all, Canadians and consumers worldwide consume media completely differently than they did three or four years ago. They really want ultimate choice. And they want to be able to experience that game or that show on whatever medium they want at whatever time they want.  

There was a lot of talk about the internet and online viewing cannibalizing linear video, and so on. People are consuming media very differently, and they are consuming multiple media at the exact same time. And we’re no longer in the broadcast business. I like to say that we’re in the content distribution business. And it’s changing and continuing to evolve – an exciting time.

All the major broadcasters now have new senior management: Paul Robertson at CanWest and Kevin Crull at CTV. Do you feel that you are part of a new wave – in the sense that there’s a new group of people running all these big media companies?

No, I’ve never thought about that. I would say that I wish Paul and Kevin...moderate success (laughs). The whole industry has changed and anytime that you have new people coming in they tend to want to make their mark and they tend to want to be more competitive. Should be fun.