There's a sign sitting on the desk in Leonard Asper's Winnipeg office that reads, "Quiet: World Domination in Progress." The joke is obvious to those who know the unassuming 43-year-old president and CEO of CanWest Global Communications. Although it's tempting to ask if it used to belong to his late father. Down the hall, the company boardroom is still decorated with framed copies of some of Izzy Asper's favourite lawsuits.(As a serial litigator, he had a lot to chose from.)Although it's not clear what has happened to his cherished reprint of the Magna Carta — a slightly odd keepsake for a man who was never that keen on the idea of relinquishing power. On paper, Izzy's youngest son took over the Asper family empire in 1999. But there was never a question as to who was calling the shots when the old man was alive. "I always get the last word in," Len quipped at the company's 2003 annual meeting. "Which is: Yes, Dad. Yes, Dad, whatever you say."

Izzy has been gone for four years now, but he haunts the company — and his three children — still. Most of Len's term at the tiller has been spent managing the fallout from his father's biggest deal, a $3.5-billion boa-constrictor-eating-an-elephant acquisition of 149 newspapers, including most of the country's large city dailies and half of the National Post, from Conrad Black's Hollinger International Inc. The 2000 spending spree turned CanWest into a dominant media player overnight, but it also saddled the company with more than $4 billion in debt, just as the high-tech bubble burst, sending markets and advertising revenue into a tailspin.

Earlier this year, however, there were hopeful signs that Izzy and Babs' youngest, the one he called "Farfel," might finally be stepping out from dad's oversized shadow. After years of debt-induced inactivity, CanWest was suddenly being remade at a dizzying pace. The company helped its balance sheet by selling off its New Zealand media assets for $314 million, and revenues for its core Canadian TV business were on the rise.(Although a planned sale of its interest in Australia's TEN Network, which was supposed to free up another $1.5 billion, had to be called off when the buyers failed to materialize.)It also spent $495 million to buy back the 26 per cent interest in its city dailies that it spun off into an income trust in 2005, paying $55 million less than it raised from the fund's original investors. And most audaciously, CanWest launched a $2.3-billion takeover of Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc., in partnership with New York investment bank Goldman Sachs.

The deal, which promises to give CanWest control of 13 of the country's most successful specialty television channels, including Showcase, the Food Network and HGTV, is Len's alone.(When everyone else was acquiring niche properties in the late 1990s, Izzy overruled his son's specialty wishes and kept the company focused on turning Global Television into a national network.)The markets however, don't seem to have much sympathy for people playing catch-up. After climbing up to the $12 range when news of the Alliance Atlantis deal broke last January, CanWest shares have steadily slid. On Sept. 12 they hit $7 — a 52-week low. Investors have been spooked, it seems, by the CRTC's abrupt decision to delay hearings into the takeover, originally scheduled for early September, until mid-November. And there are concerns that the convoluted agreement might not meet foreign ownership requirements.

The deal calls for all of Global and Alliance's TV assets to be combined in one pot. But CanWest is contributing just $262 million for an initial 36 per cent stake in the partnership, with plans to gradually work its way up to a controlling equity and then buy out its American partner in 2011. A broad coalition of arts groups including ACTRA, and the Directors and Writers Guilds of Canada, is calling on the CRTC to reject the formula, saying it is simply U.S. ownership hidden behind "smoke and mirrors." If the commission does demand that CanWest increase its stake to at least 50 per cent, it could end up costing the company $300 million to $400 million more. Money that it may have difficulty accessing given the current credit crunch, and its failure to find a buyer for TEN. CanWest's debt already stands at $2.6 billion, almost five times the company's EBITDA(earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization). Tim Casey, a BMO media analyst, has predicted the Alliance deal could end up forcing the debt to eight times EBITDA, awfully high for a traditional media company that isn't growing especially fast. By comparison, Quebecor's debt is roughly 3½ times EBITDA; Torstar's is close to six.

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