Transcontinental Media Upgrades Subscription Services to Meet Growing Demand

Montreal, March 29, 2004 - Transcontinental Media announced today that it will be phasing out the Montreal operations of its internal magazine subscription fulfillment division, which will be outsourced to the fulfillment service provider INDAS. INDAS is owned by CDS, a subsidiary of the Hearst Group.

INDAS currently has 185 employees in Toronto and Montreal and serves more than 90 business and consumer magazine titles in Canada. It already handles the fulfillment services for some of Transcontinental Media’s English language titles such as Style at Home, Canadian Living, TV Guide, The Hockey News, Elle Canada, Homemakers and Madame, serving 1.5 million Transcontinental Media subscribers.

“In 1993, when Transcontinental’s subscription fulfillment division began operations, Transcontinental Media was publishing 12 titles and had 484,000 subscribers,” explained Brian Master, Vice President of Circulation. “Since then, Transcontinental Media has grown rapidly, and now that same internal subscription division supports 23 titles, serving over one million subscribers. In the past year, it became evident that a specialist offering the latest technology could better meet the needs of those subscribers.”

Francois Blondin, Director of Circulation, added: “This expanded partnership with INDAS will prove to be very advantageous for Transcontinental Media, as we will benefit from INDAS’ expertise and technology in the area of fulfillment services. We think that our customers will greatly benefit from this new partnership, as we will now be able to offer online services, automatic debit, auto-renewal and extended customer service hours.”

Profile

One of the 10 largest commercial printers in North America, Transcontinental is Canada's largest printer of flyers, books and newspapers, and a strong second in the printing of magazines, catalogues and directories. Through its Canadian and U.S. direct marketing facilities, Transcontinental has the geographic platform and complete service offering needed to cover the entire North American market. The Corporation is also Canada's leading publisher of consumer magazines and its second-largest publisher of local and regional newspapers. In addition, it is engaged in the door-to-door distribution of advertising material, the development and integration of Web solutions, and the electronic aggregation of news and business information. Through this fully integrated network, Transcontinental is able to provide its customers total service. Transcontinental has more than 12,000 employees in Canada, the United States and Mexico, and reported revenues of C$1.9 billion in 2003.

Transcontinental is a Canadian corporation whose Class A Subordinate Voting Shares and Class B Shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker symbols TCL.A and TCL.B.


- 30 -

For information:

Media
Brian Master
Vice-President, Circulation Marketing
Transcontinental Media
Telephone: (416) 227-8204
masterb@transcontinental.ca

Financial Community
Stéphane Milot
Director, Investor Relations
Transcontinental Inc.
Tel.: (514) 954-4000
stephane.milot@transcontinental.ca