Bell Media Shakeup and Layoffs: 1) Trudeau Says He’s Furious Over Bell Media Layoffs, Calling It A ‘Garbage Decision’; 2) Bell Ends Some CTV Newscasts, Sells Radio Stations
1) Trudeau Says He’s Furious Over Bell Media Layoffs, Calling It A ‘Garbage Decision’
Courtesy of Barrie360.com and Canadian PressPublished: Feb 9th, 2024
By Sammy Hudes and Laura Osman
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau trash-talked BCE Inc.’s widespread layoffs Friday, calling cuts to Bell Media a “garbage decision.”
“I’m furious,” Trudeau told reporters at a press conference in King City, Ont.
Bell Media said Thursday it is ending multiple television newscasts and making other programming cuts after its parent company announced job reductions and the sale of 45 of its 103 regional radio stations.
Trudeau said the company should know better.
He said radio stations and small community newspapers are increasingly being bought up by large corporations that lay off journalists and change the quality of their offerings.
“Then, when people don’t watch as much or engage as much, the corporate entity says, ‘Oh see, they’re not profitable anymore, we’re going to sell them off.’”
Bell Media’s advertising revenues declined by $140 million in 2023 compared with the year before, and its news division is seeing more than $40 million in annual operating losses, chief executive Mirko Bibic said.
The prime minister said the move is eroding quality local journalism and Canada’s democracy.
Stories from local communities are what binds the country together, he said.
“We need those local voices, and over the past years, corporate Canada — and there are many culprits on this — have abdicated their responsibilities toward the communities that they have always made very good profits off of,” Trudeau said.
“So yeah, I’m pretty pissed off.”
The company said less than 10 per cent of its 4,800 eliminated positions would come from Bell Media, which includes both news and entertainment teams. As part of the shakeup, it said “multi-skilled journalists” would replace news correspondent and technician teams in some provinces.
Experts say the layoffs could lead to further deterioration of local newsrooms and lower quality journalism, which audiences notice.
Journalists are increasingly being tasked with doing more despite fewer resources, said Concordia University’s Magda Konieczna, who researches local news.
“Can one human being do video and audio and text and ask good questions and come up with story ideas? Yes, of course it’s possible. But they’re not going to do any of those things as well as they would have if that was their pure focus,” she said.
“Ultimately, you get stories that are not as deep, not as contextual.”
As part of Bell’s programming changes, weekday noon newscasts at all CTV stations except Toronto have ended. It also scrapped its 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts on weekends at all CTV and CTV2 stations except Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa.
Bell ended evening programs The Debate, This Hour and Top 3 Tonight on CTV News Channel, which will be replaced by a four-hour news broadcast on weeknights beginning at 6 p.m.
At BNN Bloomberg, weekday daytime programming is “being streamlined” to reduce the number of separate broadcasts.
W5 has also shifted from a standalone documentary series to a “multi-platform investigative reporting unit” featured on CTV National News, CTVNews.ca and other news platforms.
“The result, I think, is that audiences don’t hear or see the local content they used to see,” said Christopher Waddell, a professor emeritus at Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication.
“Audiences aren’t stupid and audiences notice when changes are made, when things they used to listen to or the programs they used to get no longer talk about their own local community … In a world where there’s lots of competition, when you do things that alienate your audience, you pay a pretty big price.”
Decisions like those made by Bell can lead to “a vicious circle or a death spiral,” said Waddell. If fewer viewers feel inclined to tune in to their city’s CTV station because they become disillusioned by gaps in local coverage, advertisers won’t pay as much.
“So that means there’s less revenue, which means they lay off more people, which means there’s less coverage and less local programming,” he said.
2) Bell Ends Some CTV Newscasts, Sells Radio Stations
Courtesy of Barrie360.com and Canadian PressPublished: Feb 8th
By Sammy Hudes
files – Barrie 360
Bell Media is ending multiple television newscasts and making other programming cuts after its parent company announced widespread layoffs and the sale of 45 of its 103 regional radio stations.
In an internal memo to Bell Media employees on Thursday, it said news stations such as CTV and BNN Bloomberg would be affected immediately.
The radio stations being sold are in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada.
The memo, signed by Dave Daigle, vice-president of local TV, radio and Bell Media Studios, and Richard Gray, vice-president of news at Bell Media, said weekday noon newscasts at all CTV stations except Toronto would end. It is also scrapping its 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts on weekends at all CTV and CTV2 stations except Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa.
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This would impact CTV2 news in Barrie, which also provides weekday newscasts at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m.
Daigle and Gray said “multi-skilled journalists” would replace news correspondent and technician teams reporting to CTV National News in Alberta, Manitoba, Quebec and Atlantic Canada, while other correspondent changes would be made in Ottawa.
Earlier in the day, Bell Media’s parent company BCE Inc. announced it was cutting nine per cent of its workforce.
The company, in an open letter signed by chief executive Mirko Bibic, said 4,800 jobs “at all levels of the company” would be cut. Fewer than 10 per cent of the total job cuts are at Bell Media specifically.
Some employees have already been notified or were to be informed Thursday of being laid off, while the balance will be told by the spring. Bibic said the company will use vacancies and natural attrition to minimize layoffs as much as possible.
Unifor said 800 members it represents were laid off in the Bell cuts, around 100 of which from the media sector and the balance from the telecom sector.
“Executives and shareholders are doing just fine while our members are being thrown out of work, including once again in the media,” said Unifor national president Lana Payne.
“Our union does not accept the use of government policy changes as a smokescreen to justify the company’s actions.”
Bell is also ending evening programs The Debate, This Hour and Top 3 Tonight on CTV News Channel, which will be replaced by a four-hour news broadcast on weeknights beginning at 6 p.m.
At BNN Bloomberg, weekday daytime programming is “being streamlined” to reduce the number of separate broadcasts.
Daigle and Gray also said W5 will shift from a standalone documentary series to a “multi-platform investigative reporting unit” featured on CTV National News, CTVNews.ca and other news platforms.
The job cuts mark the second major layoff at the media and telecommunications giant since last spring, when six per cent of Bell Media jobs were eliminated and nine radio stations were either shuttered or sold.
In a separate internal memo, Bell Media president Sean Cohan said the company intends to divest 45 radio stations to seven buyers: Vista Radio, Whiteoaks, Durham Radio, My Broadcasting Corp., ZoomerMedia, Arsenal Media and Maritime Broadcasting. The sales are subject to CRTC approval and other closing conditions.
“That’s a significant divestiture and it’s because it’s not a viable business anymore,” said Bell chief legal and regulatory officer Robert Malcolmson in an interview with The Canadian Press.
“We will continue to operate ones that are viable, but this is a business that is going in the wrong direction.”
While the sales signal Bell’s recent struggles, new ownership could be beneficial for the divested stations, said Dwayne Winseck, a professor at Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication.
He pointed out the buyers are mostly “well-established, smaller, regional and local broadcasting stations.”
“This might be OK. It could be not a bad thing,” said Winseck.
“They’re more connected to the communities. They don’t have the punishing demand of the financial markets of Bay Street that Bell has.”
Malcolmson said Bell Media is in the midst of a “digital transformation” for both entertainment and news.
But whether or not prioritizing digital growth is viable for the company in terms of generating profit remains to be determined.
“We’re investing in it; we’ll see,” said Malcolmson. “Without some form of regulatory supports, it’s tough.”
He blamed the federal government for taking too long to provide relief for media companies as well as the CRTC for being too slow to react to a “crisis that is immediate.”
That extends to two pieces of legislation intended to help Canada’s struggling media sector: Bill C-18, also known as the Online News Act, meant to force tech giants to compensate Canadian news outlets for their content, and Bill C-11, which updates the Broadcasting Act to require digital platforms such as Netflix, YouTube and TikTok to contribute and promote Canadian content.
Ottawa remains in a standoff with Facebook parent company Meta over C-18, with the company continuing to block news links on its platforms. Meanwhile, the federal government capped the amount of money broadcast media can get from Google’s $100 million annual payments at $30 million, with the remainder to go to print and digital news outlets.
“In practice, it’s not going to do anything. It’s underwhelming to say the least,” said Malcolmson.
The federal government argues it has done a lot to help the news industry and accused the company of breaking its promise to invest in news after being granted more than $40 million in annual regulatory relief.
“They are not going bankrupt. They’re still making billions of dollars,” Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge said on Parliament Hill on Thursday.
“They’re still a very profitable company and they still have the capacity and the means to hold their end of the bargain, which is to deliver news reports.”
Thursday’s job losses at Bell Media are also directly tied to regulator direction on Bill C-11, Malcolmson said.
The CRTC held a hearing late last year exploring whether streaming services should be asked to make an initial contribution to the Canadian content system to help level the playing field with local companies. The commission hopes to implement new rules in late 2024.
But the Bell executive said the company needs immediate relief, which could come from a fund it has proposed that would see streamers subsidize local or national news.
“We hope they do that but we can’t wait two years for that to happen, so then you see actions like this today,” he said.
Bell has fought other regulatory decisions over the past year that it says makes things harder for its struggling broadcast division.
That includes an October application to the Federal Court of Appeal seeking to overturn a CRTC decision that renewed its broadcast licences for three more years. It argued that decision was made without a public hearing and could result in the regulator prejudging its requests last June to waive local news and Canadian programming requirements for its television stations.
Bell Media’s advertising revenues declined by $140 million in 2023 compared with the year before, and the company’s news division is seeing more than $40 million in annual operating losses, Bibic stated in his letter.
On Thursday, Bell said it could also further scale back network investments on its telecom side as it remains at odds with the CRTC over what it calls “predetermined” regulatory direction.
Asked about the company’s image in light of continued cuts, Malcolmson noted the size of Bell’s executive team has been reduced in recent years and executive salaries remain frozen.
“We have a duty both to our shareholders and to our employees to make sure we manage the business in a rational way,” he said.