Ted Rogers Was A Family Man To Both His Kids And His Employees

Ted Rogers was a family man who was close to his kids.

But this dynamic media mentor also had another family – the people who worked with him, and he spent as much time or more with those at the office as those at home.

They’ve been deeply touched and saddened by the loss of such an iconic figure, who believed in letting the talent he hired do their jobs and rewarding them for their efforts.

Many didn’t get a lot of work done on Tuesday, as they sat back and remembered the titan, who died of heart failure just after midnight.

“He never lost his humility,” recalls Ontario Conservative leader John Tory, who was an executive with Rogers Communications before going into politics.

“And I think that’s allowed people to see a sort of a glimpse of that character, the sort of quirky sense of humor, the loyalty that he had to anybody, whether they are someone driving one of our trucks at Rogers or working at a call centre.”

But Rogers was about more than just making money. He was fascinated by technology and the rapid advancements that saw the world go from monaural radio to HDTV and home theatre in just a few decades.

It was his uncanny ability to see those developments ahead of everyone else that kept his employees in awe.

“He had the ability to see trends, see things and as they were developing or before they developed, cable TV, FM, cellar radio, Internet,” recalls Phil Lind, the vice chair of Rogers Communications. 

But even if you aren’t a customer, you owe him a debt of gratitude. “That original cable company made it possible for UHF stations like Citytv and Omni … to go from an inferior, over the air signal to this pristine, beautiful signal into everyone’s houses,” notes Leslie Sole, the CEO of Rogers Media Television.

Last October, in what would prove to be one of his final public appearances, Rogers told Citytv’s Breakfast Television what drove his passion to succeed. “My mom said, your father worked so hard and died at 38 and now he’s gone and so she said, ‘look, your job is to get the name back into communications … That was at age 8!”

In typically visionary fashion, Rogers was able to take technology he didn’t know much about and be able to see how it could work. “He did not use a computer, but he had the vision for what high speed Internet could be. The same thing with cell phones,” remembers V.P. Jan Innes.

But despite his accomplishments with his business family, he also felt his greatest success was his wife and kids waiting for him back home.

“Ted loved his family and was a terrific family man,” remembers Tony Viner, the President & CEO of Rogers Media. “And he cared deeply for all of his children and his wife and so, at the end of the day, I think that he would see himself as a successful family man.”

Success was something that Rogers courted. And for those who were lucky enough to work closely with him, it was something he was also able to pass on to them as an enduring and unforgettable legacy.