TORONTO — Citytv will no longer produce local newscasts in Calgary, Vancouver and Edmonton, and Toronto’s will be severely gutted, after the company announced programming cuts and the elimination of about 60 jobs Tuesday. But the broadcaster’s small bureau in Red Deer has not been affected.
Citytv, owned by Rogers Communications Inc. (TSX:RCI.B), announced it is restructuring television operations, cutting newscasts and jobs in cities across the country effective immediately.
Jobs and programming have been affected in Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver and Edmonton, and there will also be job losses in Winnipeg.
The company has two “video journalists” in Red Deer — one full-time and one part-time — who cover Central Alberta news and events.
“The changes that happened today have not affected that bureau,” said Koreen Ott, a Rogers spokeswoman.
Rumours of the broader cuts were widely reported on Twitter postings and blogs early in the day, but the company remained tight lipped until it released a sparse statement Tuesday afternoon.
Rogers said the restructuring is due to “shifting viewer patterns coupled with the overall state of the economy,” in a statement Tuesday.
“Citytv continues to face financial challenges, and we are confident that this situation will be reversed in the upcoming business cycle,” Jamie Haggarty, Rogers’ executive vice-president of television operations wrote to employees in an email.
“We believe in local television . . . We will focus on quality over quantity and build on the strengths of our top performing local programs. ”
But Peter Murdoch, national vice-president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers union, which represents many of the laid off Citytv employees, says the massive cuts to local news is out of line with Rogers’ assurances to the CRTC that it would defend local programming.
“It’s always an easy decision for big companies just to axe people, the tough decision is to find ways to keep them going and producing programming that people want.”
The cuts reflect continued restructuring in Canada’s conventional television broadcast industry, which has been squeezed by a slump in advertising and viewership shifts to specialty channels that have made it more difficult to make money.
Canwest Global Communications has been cutting jobs at its TV stations and put its conventional TV business under bankruptcy protection from creditors. Meanwhile CTV has cut jobs and streamlined its conventional broadcasting business to improve its finances.
Both broadcasters have also been pressing for new sources of revenue — a so-called fee for carriage charge that would be applied to cable TV operators -- to help make conventional TV profitable.