Mary Powers

World Screen Weekly, July 13, 2006

VP of Communication

CHUM Limited

When Mary Powers earned her degree in economics, she had no idea she would spend 18 years working at the Toronto-based broadcaster CHUM Limited. “After university, I went into banking and thought that was going to be my life,” she says. “But this wonderful thing called Citytv [came along] and, like everyone else at the time, I really wanted to work there.”

Citytv, one of CHUM’s 33 TV outlets, is the local station in Toronto that broke the broadcasting mold. With its “studio-less” concept of news, entertainment and event programming, it revolutionized television. So did the audience participation formula for music programming introduced by MuchMusic, also operated by CHUM. The company has branched out into thematic channels in Canada and has sold the Citytv and MuchMusic formats around the world.

Powers has grown with the company and today she is the VP of communication. “Over the years I’ve gone through the promotions and marketing sides of a conventional television station,” she says. “I’ve worked on marketing of our international distribution and right now I’m concentrating on corporate communications as a publicly traded company, including investor relations.” As Powers explains, she has a multifaceted job that concentrates on messaging to CHUM’s many constituencies: the press, shareholders and regulators. “Whether it’s communications or marketing, at the end of the day, you have to know who you are as a company, what you stand for, and make sure you are consistent in your messaging,” says Powers.

As CHUM has expanded its businesses, from local stations to channels to international program distribution, Powers has made sure the company’s brand is clear to all clients. “The consistent message from CHUM, whether it’s international program sales or format sales, or promotion to our viewers in Canada, is that we are a very modern company in outlook,” she says. “We have a unique product that we are very proud of. We produce a great deal of our own content, and as a broadcaster, that is our point of differentiation.”

Powers has stayed with the same company for nearly two decades because it is forward thinking and has given her the opportunity to grow professionally. “It’s an amazing company; it’s one of the best broadcasting companies to work for,” she says. “We’re incredibly progressive and always on the cutting edge in programming, technology and channel formats. More importantly for me, it’s always been such an interesting petri dish because CHUM believed in promoting from within, which is why I was able to progress through the company as quickly as I did. It was never a matter of, Did you have experience for the job? It was more a matter of, What is your passion for the job? If you had good ideas and were prepared to work hard, there was nothing to stop you.”