For a company of such size, Rogers proved surprisingly nimble this year: it invested in new programing for the five Citytv stations it snapped up last year, gambled on a young but growing media offering from the U.S, and even surprised advertisers with something new in publishing.

When the CRTC forced CTVglobemedia to shed the City assets from its acquisition of CHUM Ltd., Rogers swooped in with a $350-million offer. That deal enabled Rogers—already a player in multicultural and specialty TV, thanks to the OMNI stations and Sportsnet—to add Citytv stations in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Toronto stations to its portfolio.

Housekeeping at City began in earnest this year. Staples like Ed the Sock and Speakers Corner were out, as was prime-time fixture Great Movies. They were replaced with network and cable fare from the U.S., including Lipstick Jungle, the critically-praised 30 Rock (which moved over from CTV) and Nip/Tuck.

Moreover, all five City stations are moving from independent prime-time schedules towards one harmonized schedule from coast to coast.

“It’s a good strategy,” says Bruce Claassen, chair of Genesis Vizeum, especially when it comes to buying new shows. “The guys in L.A. don’t want to sell half-decent shows to a single market—they make no money that way. If you want to compete, you have to offer regional scale.” The result, Claassen says, will be better shows (instead of movies that people can watch uninterrupted with on-demand anyway), leading to increased ad revenues if ratings grow.

Rogers’ print division, meanwhile, experimented with Maclean’s, Profit and MoneySense magazines in September. Each title created three covers for a single issue, with Hyundai’s Genesis luxury sedan securing space on the back of each. While the triple-cover concept was not exclusive to Rogers titles, Tatania Tucker, media director at Hyundai’s agency Bensimon Byrne, says the first-time-in-Canada execution was most accommodated by Rogers.

“We find Rogers to be [among] the best at being proactive in coming to us with opportunities,” says Tucker. And when it comes to innovating with print, “Rogers is always the first one in the door... The general consensus [from Hyundai] was ‘home run.’ ”

But perhaps the boldest move for Rogers this year was its partnership with Boston-based word-of-mouth agency BzzAgent. Seeing word-of-mouth as a separate and growing medium, Rogers now offers advertisers access to 30,000 Canadian “buzz agents” that take advertised products to the streets, advocating on their behalf.

The program generated significant interest from Kraft and Procter & Gamble, which have both have signed on, among others. The partnership will likely fall just short of its year-one financial goals, but Chris Emery, vice-president, corporate sales for consumer publishing, attributes this to the uncertain financial climate in the fourth quarter. Emery points out that Rogers “hasn’t even put that many resources into it yet.” If word-of-mouth’s growth in the U.S. is any indication, Rogers’ gamble was a safe one. PQ Media Group measured it at more than US$1 billion in 2007—up from US$76 million in 2001—and that number is expected to nearly triple by 2011.

Such growth might not be a sure thing in Canada, but it’s admirable for a company of Rogers’ size to invest in “what’s next” as opposed to “what works.”