Seeking to Address Canadian Needs, ABC Forms Canada Board

By: Jennifer Saba The Audit Bureau of Circulations has formed a new board specifically addressing the needs of its Canadian members. Six individuals representing advertising agencies and publishers have joined the ABC Canada Board bringing the total of director seats to 12.

The new members are Ted Boyd, CEO and partner of 58Ninety; John Clinton, senior vice president and general manager of magazines at GTC Transcontinental Media; Phillip Crawley, publisher and CEO of The Globe and Mail, Sara Hill, president, M2 Universal; Lorraine Hughes, president, OMD Canada; and John Milne, senior vice president, business and professional publishing group, Rogers Publishing Limited.

Brian Segal, president and CEO of Rogers Publishing, chairs the board. The first meeting will be held on July 16 in Toronto.

?On behalf of my fellow Canadian directors and the entire ABC board, I welcome the new directors to ABC and I look forward to working with them on the tasks ahead,? Segal said in a statement. ?Our expanded representation will allow us to focus even more on the changing Canadian marketplace and the individual needs of ABC?s Canadian members.?

The board was formed to give Canadian members more autonomy and control over rules and reporting, said ABC. The first item on the agenda is to review the separate rules and articles ABC drafted for its Canadian publishing divisions.

ABC came under fire last year when three big Canadian newspaper chains ? including the publisher of the Toronto Star -- dropped its membership in favor of the Canadian Circulation Audit Board (CCAB). Torstar, Sun Media and Transcontinental, which represent 30 dailies, defected from ABC because they said the bureau was not seeking out Canadian input. The three publishers issued a joint statement in April 2008 calling for a ?Made in Canada? approach to auditing.