Community newspapers and a celebrity weekly
In 1955, Pierre Péladeau launched Nouvelles et potins, the first of a series of celebrity weeklies. When television sets began appearing in Québec households, he quickly grasped the new medium's future impact. His emerging stable of newspapers turned to covering television and its rising stars. They also assailed Québec's hidebound elites, which were being overtaken by the pace of social change, and attacked political dirty tricks, braving legal difficulties to do so.

Printshop
When his printer decided to launch a competing community newspaper, Pierre Péladeau counterattacked by opening his own printshop. In 1954, he bought the newspaper Le Canada's presses and opened a printshop, Imprimerie Hebdo, on what is now the site of the CBC building in Montréal. By the end of the 1950s, Péladeau's publications had an already-impressive combined weekly circulation of 500,000.

Comrades in arms
Charles-Albert Poissant, one of Pierre Péladeau's earliest confidants, was a 23-year-old accountant when he met the publisher of Le Journal de Rosemont. Attorney P. Wilbrod Gauthier met Péladeau in the course of one of the legal proceedings against his publications. The financial wizard and the brilliant lawyer would be Pierre Péladeau's closest associates for nearly 50 years.