TORONTO – Publishing and sales veteran Grenville Pinto is now on the market. Until late last week, Pinto was the publisher of cable industry trade magazine Mediacaster, but his position was eliminated by the company and July 31st will be his last day.
He was hired as sales manager in February of 1999 and was soon promoted to publisher. Prior to that, Pinto was in sales with the Hamilton Spectator newspaper.
The magazine and its companion web site has been struggling for a while, but the timing of Pinto’s departure is somewhat of a surprise since the magazine had only just rebranded itself from Cablecaster to Mediacaster in June. (Full disclosure: I was editor of the magazine from October of 1997 to March of 2005.)
It’s unclear if or how the magazine will change going forward or what its future will be. An e-mail and phone call to senior publisher James Cook seeking comment were not immediately returned. The last print edition of the title appears to have been in March of this year. "They didn’t tell me what the future of the magazine will be," said Pinto when contacted by Cartt.ca. He declined further comment on the magazine itself.
While he considers his options, Pinto says he will likely concentrate on his first love – but something that’s always been a business sideline – music. An accomplished violin player, he plays gigs such as concerts, weddings, fashion shows and other events. "Music has always been a big part of my life," he said. (Check it out at www.gpinto.com.)
While he said he would still like to stay in the industry and said he has his ear to the ground, Pinto added: "this seems like a good time to give music a shot full-time."
"The (cable) industry has been a lot of fun," he said. "It’s a dynamic industry and that’s what makes it so exciting. It keeps you on your toes."
Cablecaster was launched by Northern Miner Press in 1989 before that company was bought by Southam Inc. in the early 1990s. When Conrad Black’s Hollinger Inc. purchased Southam later that decade, Cablecaster (along with some 35 or so other titles) went with it and eventually became a division of Hollinger Canadian Newspapers.
With Black’s and Hollinger’s much-documented troubles, Hollinger’s Canadian group (which owned a number of community newspapers, as well as magazine titles in the dental and trucking sectors, for example) went on the block and was purchased by Glacier Ventures, a Vancouver-based publishing company, in January of this year.
