Michael Bate

Michael Bate (born ca. 1947) is a Canadian media entrepreneur and one of the founders of the Ottawa edition of gossip magazine Frank.

Born in England, he grew up in Canada, attending the University of Victoria in 1965, and later studying history at Carleton. Bate was a long time Ottawa musician (pedal steel guitar) who worked as a radio producer and as a computer games developer (working on such titles as B.C.'s Quest for Tires, B.C. II: Grog's Revenge, and Ace of Aces). He also worked as a reporter for Canadian Press.

In 1989, Bate became a business partner with David Bentley to expand Frank from its Halifax roots by launching an Ottawa edition. Bentley eventually returned to Halifax and, under Bate's direction, the Ottawa edition of Frank blossomed in the mid-1990s. Paid circulation of the magazine peaked at under 20,000 copies nationally but it earned a notoriety that far exceeded its readership. The magazine infuriated then-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney for a mock contest to "deflower" his daughter. Mulroney said in a television interview that he wanted to get a gun and "do serious damage" to Frank's editor. Bate defended the piece as an attempt to show that the unpopular prime minister was exploiting his daughter for political gain.

Soon after he started at Frank, he was named by Chatelaine magazine as one of Canada's sexiest men. Robert Fulford, for example, called him Frank's "slanderer-in-chief"

Bate purchased Bentley's share of Ottawa Frank during the 1990s and later sold the franchise to Fabrice Taylor in 2003. Taylor moved the magazine's headquarters to Toronto and said he planned to turn it into a serious satire magazine. Circulation declined after the sale and the magazine went out of business in December 2004.

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