During
World War I, Roy Thomson attended a
business college, and owing to bad eyesight, avoided
conscription. He went to
Manitoba after the war to become a farmer, but was unsuccessful. Thomson returned to Toronto, where he held several jobs at different times, one of which was selling radio receivers. However, he found selling radios difficult because the only district left for him to work in was
Northern Ontario. In order to give his potential customers something to listen to, he undertook to establish a radio station. By a stroke of luck, he was able to procure a radio frequency and transmitter for $201.
CFCH officially went on the air in
North Bay, Ontario, on 3 March 1931. He sold radio receivers for some time after that, but his focus gradually shifted to the radio station. Thomson purchased the
Timmins Daily Press in
Timmins, Ontario, his first newspaper, with a down payment of $200 in 1934 (an equivalent of $3,816 in 2021). He began an expansion of radio stations and newspapers in various Ontario locations in partnership with fellow Canadian
Jack Kent Cooke. In addition to his media acquisitions, by 1949 Thomson was the owner of a diverse group of companies, including several ladies' hairstyling businesses, a fitted kitchen manufacturer, and an
ice-cream cone manufacturing operation. By the early 1950s, he owned 19 newspapers and was president of the Canadian Daily Newspaper Publishers Association, and then began his first foray into the British newspaper business by starting up the
Canadian Weekly Review to cater to expatriate Canadians living in Britain. He aspired to a peerage, similar to the press barons of the UK, and moved across the Atlantic, settling in
Edinburgh. In 1952, Thomson bought
The Scotsman newspaper in Edinburgh from its destitute owners. In 1957, Thomson launched a successful bid for the Channel 3
commercial television franchise for Central Scotland, named
Scottish Television, basing it in the
Theatre Royal, Glasgow. It became highly profitable, with Thomson describing it as a "licence to print money". In 1959, Thomson purchased the Kemsley group of newspapers, the largest in Britain, which included
The Sunday Times. Over the years, Thomson expanded his media empire to include more than 200 newspapers in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. His
Thomson Organization became a
multinational corporation, with interests in
publishing,
printing,
television, and
travel. In 1966, Thomson bought
The Times newspaper from members of the
Astor family. In the 1970s, Thomson joined with
J. Paul Getty in a
consortium that successfully explored for
oil in the
North Sea. A modest man, who had little time for pretentious displays of wealth, in Britain he got by virtually unnoticed, riding the
London Underground to his office each day. Nonetheless, he made his son Kenneth promise to use the hereditary title that he had received in 1964, if only in the
London offices of the firm. in the
Entertainment District of downtown Toronto is named after Roy Thomson. == Personal life ==