Year Born: 1955
Year of Induction: 2004
Member of CAB Hall of Fame
Samson, Claire (1955- )
Claire Samson was born on April 12th 1955. After obtaining her MBA from the University of Montreal, she went to work for Telemedia Communications in 1973, where she rose to become Promotions Director by 1978. In March of that year she left Telemedia to join Societe Radio-Canada as Director of Communications, but she returned to the private sector in January 1989 to become Vice-President, Communications, for Tele-Metropole. In March 1993 she was promoted to Vice-President, Planning and Development, with responsibilities which included establishing the partnership with CanWest-Global in the launch of CKMI-TV, serving Quebec City and Montreal.
By March of 1993, she was back at Radio-Canada, this time as Director-General, Communications, French Services, with a mandate that included responsibility for planning the opening of the French news channel RDI.
The private sector remained convinced of Claire’s exceptional skills, however, and in February 1995 she was lured back to become Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer for the private French network, Television Quatre-Saisons, with the mandate to reposition the network in the Quebec market. She was also responsible for management of TQS’ financial, technical and human resources, as well as for station relations and government relations. After this assignment was completed, she left TQS in September 1997, only to re-emerge in the summer of 1999 as the Acting Director-General of Programs back at SRC.
In September of that year, Claire joined the Publicis communications group, only to move on in January 2000 when she was hired to become President and CEO of ACRTF, the Quebec Association of Television and Film Producers, an organization representing all of the independent producers of film and television programming with whom broadcasters and specialty and pay services dealt on a day to day basis. In this capacity, she had responsibility for government relations, as well as for the negotiation and implementation of fourteen collective agreements.
In November 2004, the CAB recognized her exceptional contributions to the broadcasting industry by inducting her into the CAB Hall of Fame.
Written by Pip Wedge – November, 2004