Barrie's TV news station is likely to be among the many local newscasts impacted by Bell Media’s announcement Thursday morning that it's cutting both jobs and programming.
According to an internal 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, weekday noon newscasts at all CTV stations, except Toronto, will end. The company says 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.
Bell Media is the Barrie television station's parent company.
BarrieToday called the CTV Barrie newsroom — which, according to its website, currently has 10 journalists and three editorial staff members — to confirm how these changes would affect the local news division and its employees. A reporter was told they did not yet know how or if today’s announcement would directly impact them.
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.
In a different internal memo to Bell Media employees, and obtained by BarrieToday, president and CEO Mirko Bibic said the company implemented a restructuring in June 2023 in light of the “difficult operating environment” the company was facing.
“In many ways, the environment has become more difficult and further restructuring across Bell is therefore needed to succeed,” he wrote.
According to the email, Bell will be implementing significant reductions at all levels of the company, reducing its workforce by approximately 4,800 positions — or about nine per cent.
“We continue to face a difficult economy and government and regulatory decisions that undermine investment in our networks, fail to support our media business in a time of crisis and fail to level the playing field with global tech giants," Bibic said in his email.
At Bell Media, Bibic said advertising revenues declined by $140 million in 2023 compared to 2022.
"Across Bell Media’s news operations, we continue to incur over $40 million in annual operating losses despite having the most-watched network of local TV stations,” he told employees.
Bibic noted that while Bell’s transformation allows the company to “be faster and more agile,” it also requires them to move away from highly regulated parts of the business to new growth areas – and to align costs to the revenue potential of each business segment.
This means organizational changes and streamlining where possible, while also finding ways to free up capital and resources to invest in new areas, he wrote.
Bibic explained plans to use vacancies and natural attrition to minimize the impact on employees, having already adopted other measures including reducing capital expenditures over this and next year by over $1 billion following the CRTC’s recent decision, reducing its real estate footprint, cutting back on travel and expenses, and ending some of its long-standing partnerships.
“While we are reducing in areas where demand and revenue are declining, and where regulation is increasingly burdensome, we are continuing to invest and hire in growth areas," Bibic stated in his email. "We will therefore move forward with capital investments, strategic acquisitions, new partnerships and service launches where it helps improve our business."
A second internal memo noted news stations such as CTV and BNN Bloomberg would be affected immediately, according to The Canadian Press. Radio stations being sold are in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada.
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.
What all that means for CTV Barrie remains to be seen.
In July 2023, the union representing workers at CTV Barrie told BarrieToday the parent company’s desire to cut back on local programming is a “media job killer.”
“The creation of Canadian content, including local news and locally relevant programming, has always been a key component of this overall policy goal,” Randy Kitt, Unifor’s media director, wrote in a submission made to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
Its applications “undermine the very foundation of Canadian media policy," the submission says.
Bell Media had been requesting “relief” from its obligation to provide local content, and asked the CRTC to waive its obligations for the number of hours its TV stations must devote to local news.
Unifor represents more than 10,000 media workers, including 5,000 members in the broadcast and film industries. It has 315,000 members across Canada working in 20 sectors.
Last July, Kitt noted the Barrie station was down to about 30 members from nearly 120 in the 1990s.
“More and more and more, what you’re seeing and what the CRTC is allowing is the regionalization of news … (which means) more Toronto news and less Barrie news,” Kitt said at the time.
CTV Barrie currently airs an hour-long news program at 6 p.m., Monday through Friday, with a half-hour daily newscast at 11 p.m. out of its 8,500-square-foot building located at 33 Beacon Rd., just off Essa Road in the city's south end.
At one time, it was considered to be one of the largest in Canadian television and was also the first building in North America designed to integrate both television and radio into one facility.
The City of Barrie was also the smallest community in North America to have its own TV station, wrote Barrie Historical Archive curator Deb Exel in a Then and Now article published by BarrieToday last May.
At its height, the station employed roughly 150 people.
It’s also been considered a training ground for newer journalists before moving on to larger markets.
— with files from Canadian Press
