BCE cuts raise questions about future CTV news strategy, point to technical pressure
TORONTO — The strain faced by traditional TV news organizations is well established, but a series of layoffs that took away several of CTV’s best-known news personalities came as a surprise to many, including national reporter Joyce Napier.
Until last week, Napier was a reporter and bureau chief in Ottawa for “CTV National News,” but suddenly became unemployed when parent company BCE Inc. announced on Wednesday that it would cut 1,300 positions company-wide, consolidate media operations and close foreign bureaus.
The cuts immediately raised questions about how the strategy will affect the quality of news coverage and what lies ahead for CTV’s main evening newscast.
Reached in Toronto after the announcement, a pragmatic Napier said she is “philosophical” about the end of a seven-year run at the media giant, which like many companies is facing a protracted advertising slump, a disintegrating audience for traditional TV news and growing tech rivals.
While staff expected “a restructuring” was in the works, the details were “a big mystery,” she said. Her comments were echoed by another fired journalist and a former colleague who still works at the company, neither of whom would make it to the record.
“The warnings were there, the concerns of the senior officials reflected in the fact that Bell Media’s financial situation was not ideal,” said Napier, who was quick to add that there are still many dedicated, hard-working colleagues to ship to control.
“You don’t even have to read between the lines to know something was coming (but) I never imagined it to be of this magnitude.”
High-profile cuts include senior political correspondent Glen McGregor, chief international correspondent Paul Workman, London News Bureau correspondent Daniele Hamamdjian, and Los Angeles bureau chief Tom Walters.
Foreign bureaus in London and Los Angeles will close, while the Washington, D.C., office will be scaled back “to focus more fully on major U.S. news and its implications for Canada,” vice president of news Richard Gray said in a letter to staff, adding key stories will still be handled “on location around the world when needed.”
Nevertheless, digital news continues to grow and staff will be added elsewhere, Gray added.
He said videographers will immediately be stationed in Regina and St. John’s, NL, and later this year in Fredericton and Charlottetown — moves that will put CTV National News journalists “in every county for the first time.”
A request to CTV News for comment and further details was declined.
While the full scope of Bell Media’s plans has yet to be disclosed, an industry consultant for Pivotal Media said the changes known so far will almost certainly reshape their main news outlet, “CTV National News With Omar Sachedina.”
“Obviously if you eliminate half of the veteran faces that have been there for more than a decade, it will look different. How they fill that vacuum remains to be seen,” said Jennifer Burke, a former anchor for CTV News Channel who expected more news footage from outside sources.
“Instead of Paul Workman reporting from London or Daniele reporting from London, they just take an American feed, an American reporter. And that has been done for years. But what we lose in doing so is the Canadian context, and how every story that unfolds around the world affects Canada.
Marissa Nelson, a vice president of Minneapolis-based media consultancy Magid, said TV news networks in North America are under pressure to evolve with their audiences, but Canadian companies are lagging far behind their US counterparts.
While she did not examine Bell Media’s business, she said the survival of traditional outlets depends on embracing newer digital models such as ad-based video-on-demand (AVOD) and free ad-supported TV (FAST) .
“Canadian organizations need to move much faster to streaming, AVOD, FAST and all those platforms,” says Toronto-based Nelson, formerly of CBC and the Toronto Star.
“While we see broadcasters in Canada starting to make those shifts, it’s not in a large-scale way that we need because advertising is declining so quickly. One thing is changing very, very fast and the other side – the industry, the content creation side – is changing at a much slower pace.”
Nelson said much of what networks stream today is content created for traditional broadcast TV and repurposed for digital platforms.
But if legacy stores can only serve one service, she urges them to do the opposite: design streaming content that, if necessary, can also be reused for linear television.
“They need to understand what the public – especially the millennial audience – wants from local and national news, and refocus the organization to meet that need,” Nelson said, adding that there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
“You know, it’s not traditional TV packages. And that varies from place to place.”
Brent Jolly, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, said he feared changes at Bell Media would lead to local news deserts and fewer senior reporters who can navigate complex stories and mentor young journalists.
He also worried that the quality of CTV’s news coverage will suffer if fewer staff are expected to maintain the same output.
“Fewer journalists means working harder to get the same product out every day. And that has a personal cost, and it takes a toll on people after a while,” he said.
From a public relations perspective, Burke said the way the job cuts were announced probably won’t sit well with viewers who are still angry about CTV’s surprise split from former lead anchor Lisa LaFlamme, who announced her own departure on social media last August. announced.
Bell Media endured weeks of backlash, at one point saying it “regrets” the way LaFlamme’s departure was handled. The debacle also prompted an independent third-party assessment of work culture in CTV’s national newsroom.
“You could argue that the way Lisa was released was a tipping point for Bell Media,” Burke said.
“Did that possibly contribute to a loss of ad revenue? And did that in turn contribute to (this) dismissal?”
Jolly was concerned that journalism and news are increasingly being treated as commodities.
“It is something that is being devalued by society as we deepen our relationship with technology platforms and rely on the internet to rescue us from information vacuum,” he said.
“The public is the one who ultimately suffers.”
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on June 17, 2023.
