Co-founders Ken McKenzie and Will Cote planned for years before publishing their first edition – and we’re still going strong
Happy 77th Anniversary to us!
The Hockey News, the brainchild of co-founders Ken McKenzie and Will Cote, was published for the first time on this date in 1947.
Since its inception, THN has evolved from a weekly tabloid-style newspaper published once a week during hockey season to a glossy magazine that is at the center of a growing multi-platformed network of nearly 50 team and theme sites that cover our favorite sport around the clock, on a year-round basis.
In short, if there’s hockey news to report at any time, The Hockey News is on it.
And that’s the way McKenzie and Cote envisioned it. Several months before they produced the 16 black-and-white pages that made up Volume 1, Number 1, they printed and circulated a detailed description of what they had in mind, something they had already been talking about and planning for years. Having already come up with the title and subtitle – “The International Hockey Weekly” – their description promised “complete coverage” of the following organizations:
· National Hockey League
· American Hockey League
· Western Hockey League
· Pacific Coast Hockey League
· Eastern (U.S.) Amateur League
· Quebec Senior Hockey League
· Ontario Hockey Association Senior “A”
· Western Canada Senior League
· Maritime Senior Hockey League
· Canadian Junior Highlights
The first editorial, unsigned but probably written by McKenzie, declared in its all-caps headline that “THIS IS HOCKEY’S OWN PAPER.” It elaborated on the co-founders’ plans for the benefit of readers who had taken a subscription, paying $2 (in Canada and Newfoundland) or $3 (in the USA) for a volume of 30 issues, including postage.
“It is the intention of HOCKEY NEWS to cover activities in the sport all across the United States and Canada,” the editorial said. “Readers can be assured of full-length features on clubs, leagues and personalities; of complete statistical coverage; of pictures and cartoons. It is the aim of HOCKEY NEWS to be the official clearing house of every piece of information possible about the sport.”
And “International Hockey Weekly” truly meant international in a global sense. “In Europe . . . the game has made rapid strides,” the editorial explained. “Interest in hockey in Britain is greater than ever before. Scores of Canadian youngsters travelled to Britain this fall to compete in the English and Scottish leagues. Teams in France have called on Canadian talent. And there is word that Swedish and Polish clubs are seeking Canadian coaches.”
It was an international circumstance, namely the Second World War, that had brought McKenzie and Cote together in the first place. After meeting at an RCAF camp in Calgary in 1944 and discovering they had a deep mutual interest in hockey, they wrote back and forth to each other after being posted elsewhere, enthusiastically sharing ideas for a hockey-themed newspaper inspired by The Sporting News, popularly known as “the Bible of Baseball.”
After the war ended and the two airmen were discharged, they turned up in Montreal and were soon hired to work at the NHL headquarters in the Sun Life Building. McKenzie, a former sportswriter, became the league’s first director of public relations; Cote became a statistician.
They secured the approval of NHL president Clarence Campbell before launching their paper, and McKenzie continued to work for the league as its publicity director until June 1963. In that role, he had access to the mailing lists of the then-six NHL teams, giving THN an immense potential subscriber base from Day 1. Once THN was up and running, Cote left the NHL’s employment to run the paper’s daily operations – financing, production, and distribution.
Their efforts worked, with THN reaching 20,000 subscribers and making a profit in its first year, and it only grew from there. Although it was criticized due to being seen as a “house organ” for the NHL, its immense role in publicizing the league and the sport as a whole cannot be denied. McKenzie justified the paper’s closeness with the NHL by citing not only his job with the league but also the willingness of team owners to allow THN to be sold in their arenas.
The two founders worked together until 1968, when McKenzie bought Cote’s share of the business, assuredly for significantly more than each man’s initial financial investment of $383.81. McKenzie sold out to New York-based Whitney Communications Corporation in two stages beginning in 1973, and the paper’s office moved to Toronto. McKenzie remained as publisher until 1980.
Transcontinental Media bought THN in 1986 and operated it until 2014, seeing it through multiple changes in the print media industry and in the publication itself. Notably, the black-and-white tabloid became a full-color paper in 2003. An even bigger shift happened in 2007 when the paper became the glossy magazine that it is today.
But the changes and challenges facing print media continued to mount, and finally Transcontinental sold THN and 14 other magazines to Quebecor Media’s TVA Group subsidiary in 2014. This ownership change did not reverse THN’s declining fortunes, and the end seemed near until Roustan Media, owned by hockey-obsessed entrepreneur W. Graeme Roustan, purchased THN in 2018.
“When I was informed that The Hockey News was going to cease publication in 2018 due to declining revenues and readership, I recognized the need to keep The Hockey News alive, so I filled that need by acquiring the business and making an investment in more and better content,” Roustan wrote in his magazine column in August of this year. “Readership and revenues responded immediately and continue to soar each and every year since.”
Roustan wrote those words in Volume 78, Number 1, which happened to be the 100th edition produced under his stewardship. He now ranks second behind McKenzie as the publisher with the longest tenure, with no plans to stop anytime soon. Roustan Media has successfully adapted THN to be an agile force in the online media world, presenting steady streams of content on multiple platforms, including the print product that made the brand famous.
“The Hockey News is still as important as it was when I was a kid growing up and playing hockey in Montreal,” Roustan said today, marking the anniversary. “It’s the Bible of Hockey and I’m proud to be carrying on its legacy as owner and publisher.”
The Bible of Hockey. It recalls the dream that brought Ken McKenzie and Will Cote together 80 years ago to create a hockey newspaper inspired by the Bible of Baseball.
They did it, and then some. So here’s to 77 years of providing first-rate coverage of the best sport in the world, with a fervent wish for at least 77 more.