Skip to main content

A Rogers Communications store in OttawaCHRIS WATTIE

Canada's struggling network television business has taken another hit, with CITY-TV's decision to cut jobs and gut its local news production across the country.

CITY-TV said yesterday it is restructuring its operations, with about 60 layoffs at its stations across Canada. The changes also mark a major blow to local news programs. Although the shows Breakfast Television and CityLine will remain on the air in all CITY-TV markets - Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg - the 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts will continue to be produced only in Toronto and have been cut everywhere else. Newscasts at noon and 5 p.m., as well as weekend news and CityNews International have all been cancelled. In the cities where the morning show Breakfast Television ran to four hours, it has been cut down to three hours.

"Today's changes, although difficult, are necessary to align our operations with the economic and regulatory realities of our industry," the chief executive officer of Rogers Media Television, Leslie Sole, wrote in a release. Rogers Media, a unit of Rogers Communications Inc. , owns the five CITY-TV stations across Canada.

The cuts to local programming come at a time when broadcasters have been forced to scale back their smaller operations. Both CTV and Global have closed stations in recent months to cut costs.

Rogers Media Television spokesperson Koreen Ott said the morning show will provide local content and news in all its markets. "We strongly believe in local television and we're strongly committed to local television. We're just focused on the areas that deliver the best results," she said.

Changing viewer habits and "the overall state of the economy" were the factors behind the company's decision, Ms. Ott said.

Rogers was among the cable operators that went before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) in November to argue against the broadcast networks' claim that they should be paid for their signals. The broadcasters argued that the model of network television is broken, while companies such as Rogers and Shaw Communications Inc. insisted that local television is profitable.

"The difficulty, as it was explained to us, is that they [CITY-TV]have to stand on their own two feet within the Rogers family [of companies]" said David Lewington, a national representative with the Communications Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, representing workers in Toronto. "And they couldn't justify some of the expenses they had versus the revenue."

Mr. Lewington also placed blame for the current situation on the CRTC, which eased federal rules on local news programming requirements.

"The CRTC made this possible," he argued. In decisions last summer, it "reduced the number of hours that local broadcasters, and particularly CITY-TV, has to put on the air. So, that opened the door for companies like Rogers and also CTV to reduce staff and to cut back programming."

Rogers would not specify which employees were let go yesterday, though Ms. Ott did confirm that 6 per cent of its 1,000 employees across Canada were affected. Rogers has owned CityTV since 2007, when it bought the network for $375-million from CTVglobemedia.

Report an editorial error

Report a technical issue

Editorial code of conduct

Tickers mentioned in this story

Study and track financial data on any traded entity: click to open the full quote page. Data updated as of 27/03/24 6:40pm EDT.

SymbolName% changeLast
RCI-N
Rogers Communication
+0.27%41.2

Interact with The Globe