DSE 2017 Mixer Sponsor Profiles: Capital Networks

March 13, 2017 by Dave Haynes

Capital Networks Limited has been a mixer sponsor for many, many years, and has also been a 16:9 sponsoring advertiser for a long, long time.

The Toronto-area company was started in 1991 in by Bill Trainor, who still runs Capital, though he’s moved up north to a custom-built place on a golf course, across the road from Lake Simcoe.

His company started as a software and services provider specializing in local news and automated playback systems for cable and broadcast TV, and that’s still a substantial part of the business.

But CNL found its way into digital signage in the late ’90s. I’m not sure if Elevator News Network, which put screens in office tower elevators, was the company’s first signage client, but I know when I ended up running ops for the company, we had dozens and dozens of Capital Networks servers and software licenses. So we go way back – same for Jim Vair, who runs sales, and Morgan Henderson, who runs marketing.

Capital was back then marketing the software of partner firm DiGiMATiON, but after 20 years of that, they stopped dating and got married. DiGi founder Jonathan White took on the post-merger roles of Vice President and CTO at Capital Networks.

The company has recently expended into Atlantic Canada, and quite separate from digital signage, has also found its way into running very lucrative home shopping channels on cable networks, the kinds that run canned half-hours on this and that and usually end with “But wait, there’s more!!!”

The company has also started working in what I think could be a powerful new vertical – data-driven visual communications in healthcare. Think meeting room signs for patient rooms.

On Capital’s website, it says:

We now supply products and services into various industry segments in more than 40 countries across six continents. Our solutions are used in a wide variety of applications including broadcast television, cable television, satellite, IPTV, digital signage, corporate communications, campus communications, emergency messaging, retail and large scale outdoor displays.

During the past 25 years we’ve been proud to work with a growing list of world class, repeat customers from across the globe and are grateful for the corporate referrals we regularly receive. Companies we’ve had the pleasure of working with include CBC, BBC, Rogers Communications, Open Text, US Marines, US Air Force, US Army, Curtiss Wright, Syncrude, Peel Regional Police, FLOW Jamaica, Woodbine Entertainment, Creswin Properties, Scotia Plaza, Cablevision, MTS, CoopTel, and more.

Capital isn’t doing the booth thing at DSE this year (they were at the giant HIMMS health care tech show last month), but I know Vair, Henderson and Kelly Smith are in Las Vegas for DSE week.