"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. 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. "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."
Citytv has cut major amounts of local programming from CITY-TV in Toronto. The Noon newscast and CityOnline at 12:30pm was immediately cancelled with co-anchor Laura DiBattista laid off. The 5:00pm and 5:30pm newscasts were also cancelled with co-anchor Merella Fernandez laid off. CP24 immediately responded to the cancellation of the 5pm newscasts with its own 5:00pm and 5:30pm newscasts, saying that Toronto deserves a newscast at 5:00pm. The program CityNews International, which was produced in Toronto studios but aired in all of the 5 Citytv stations across Canada was also cancelled. Shockingly, the weekend newscasts were also cancelled, having the 6:00pm and 11:00pm newscasts all gone. Weekend co-anchor Farah Nasser was laid off, amongst many general assignment reporters including consumer reporter Jee-Yun Lee, Michael Serapio, Pam Seatle, Marianne Dimain, 2 LiveEye crews, cameramen and editors and many more inside-the-scenes. Citytv now has a skeleton crew covering Toronto, with Breakfast Television at 6:00am, Gord Martineau with CityNews at Six and Mark Dailey at 11:00pm with CityNews Tonight.
In Winnipeg, Citytv execs said, 'we had nothing to cut from Winnipeg', as there was no layoffs. The Winnipeg operation runs a 3-hour morning show every weekday morning.
In Calgary, the Noon News anchor, Aisling Slattery, and Your City hosts Sandra Jansen and Jebb Fink were laid off following the cancellation of the noon newscast and the local lifestyles newscast at 6:00pm and 11:00pm. Breakfast Television was scaled back an hour to 3 hours from 6:00am-9:00am. Former BT co-host Bob Kelly left Citytv just weeks before the announced restructuring.
In Edmonton, Your City host Rob Hislop was laid off following the cancellation of the Noon News and Your City. The Noon News anchor, Asha Tomlinson retains her post as BT Morning News anchor. Breakfast Television was scaled back an hour as well and now ends at 9:00am. Former BT co-host Wendy Sandwith left Citytv weeks before the announced restructuring.
In Vancouver, Lunch Television and The CityNews List was cancelled as a result from the structuring. Six people were laid off including the four main personalities that worked on The CityNews List. Breakfast Television was also scaled back an hour and ends at 9:00am.
The Cartt.ca Interview: Rogers Media Television CEO Leslie Sole, on Citytv's present and future
ALMOST 60 PEOPLE working for Citytv across Canada lost their jobs last week as two news shows were cancelled.
It’s not something Leslie Sole, president of Rogers Media Television, had envisioned doing when Rogers Communications bought the five Citytv stations in 2007.
He and the company had envisioned taking Citytv back to its “fiercely local” roots, he told Cartt.ca on Monday in an exclusive interview. The company’s leadership was hopeful back then that the CRTC would reduce or eliminate its priority drama obligations so that the broadcaster could concentrate on local news in the cities it operates. Sole launched Citytv’s five o’clock news show when Rogers took over the stations – and was forced to cancel it last week, along with other cuts.
Instead, the CRTC told City in 2008 it had to maintain its priority Canadian content and then in another 2008 decision, let all broadcasters cut their local content to 14 hours a week in large markets and 7 in smaller markets. In a number of markets, Citytv’s competitors have made those cuts. Last week’s cancellations bring Citytv Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver to those levels of local content.
Winnipeg, a beneficiary of the Local Programming Improvement Fund as a smaller market, was not touched.
While Citytv execs are adamant it doesn’t want any new money in the form of fee for carriage or value for signal, it is anxious to hear about the group licensing framework portion of the policy stemming from 2009-411 due in March.
Then, hopes Sole, when it applies for its new broadcast license, Citytv might be granted more programming flexibility and allow it to do more local news and fewer Canadian drama and documentaries. But that likely couldn’t happen until fall of 2011 and with Citytv losing $64 million in the 2009 broadcast year (ended August 31, 2009), 73% worse than 2008, Sole had to act.
What follows is an edited transcript of a phone interview between Sole and Cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien.
Leslie Sole: Oh yes sir it was.
GOB: I’ve seen the press release of course, but I was hoping to get a deeper explanation of why the cuts had to be made and why now.
LS: This thing was losing money when we bought it – in substantial amounts. And we were quite patient with it because we want to own it and we want to fix it. But because there was a regulatory process going on and there were going to be changes, we sort of shelved what City was doing since we felt that once we got to the group-based licensing process that there would be an opportunity to take our financial resources and focus on local programming.
Because that’s been delayed and because it’s still being contemplated what the regulations might be, I just couldn’t justify going on losing the money. I had nowhere to go.
You’re not allowed to cut your costs on priority Cancon.
GOB: So you couldn’t wait until March, when the fee-for-carriage and group licensing policies are supposed to be announced?
LS: In March, there won’t be anything definitive. There will be the guidelines or – and I don’t want to make this all about the Commission – a circular or another announcement discussing the framework of how stations may renew their licenses.
So before this can affect any business or before this can effect any real change, it will probably be fall of 2011. And that’s a long way out.
GOB: And looking at your CRTC filing, your losses went up quite a bit from ’08 to ’09.
LS: I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to. But, the losses were substantive when you isolated City from the other CHUM properties. The losses (continue) when you try to rebuild a station in this recession. And the only place under the current regime where the Commission allows for financial relief was to reduce local programming to 14 hours.
GOB: Because the Commission wouldn’t allow you to cut back on things like Canadian movies and drama, which you had asked for, correct?
LS: That’s right. We had asked for that, saying that a group of five stations have a very difficult time producing drama and documentaries in any meaningful way. And, we explained that from the day we bought it we wanted to make these things... fiercely local.
And there’s just a timing problem between now and when we can do that.
GOB: So, should you get what you need from group-based licensing or other changes in a year or year and a half - and you’re able to go after being fiercely local, do you foresee then that you would be able to re-ramp up the staff and expand the number of hours?
LS: I’m not going to say anything that could be (competitive information)... Our commitments to local will be and always have been substantive. We promised more local in one of the last hearings, that resulted in an extension (in the procedure by the CRTC), and that’s when they cut to 14.
You know, at City, right now, after the reduction of a very lightly watched newscast - an experiment at five o’clock that I put in - this wasn’t traditional City stuff. I put the five o’clock news in when we first bought it, optimistic that things would be moving along in the natural manner.
GOB: That show had been on air for about 24 months?
LS: 20 to 24 yes. And the five o’clock news was expensive and to win at that time of day... if we decide to go back there it will have to be in a different regulatory environment.
GOB: Do you understand though where some people are coming from where, during the hearing, your bosses said how much they believe in local TV and then a few months later these cuts happen across the board. There’s disappointment and anger out there.
LS: First of all, my bosses and I are all on one page, and I wouldn’t characterize them as cuts across the board. These were reductions as a result of cancelling two shows and that’s how many people it takes to put those two shows on.
The ratings didn’t justify the losses. It wasn’t the kind of staff reduction that was approached from purely a cost basis. It was that we have to get the schedule economically tied to these shows. So when we made the decision to decrease the schedule at 5 o’clock and at noon, this is the ensuing result.
I do understand people making that statement. But if you took us up (to Ottawa) tomorrow, we’d say it again.
GOB: Why was Winnipeg left out of the cuts?
LS: Winnipeg has a seven hour requirement because it’s a market of less than a million people and Winnipeg also falls under the LPIF. And so, because Winnipeg is already at 15 hours, because there’s a morning news show in Winnipeg. We don’t believe in equal pain just because it’s possible.
In Winnipeg, there was nothing significant there to cancel.
GOB: Are you going to be cutting back at all your purchases of U.S. programming, because those jumped between ’08 and ’09 (by 16% to $103 million)?
LS: They jumped substantially and our audiences doubled. We’re in a much better financial position now because of the U.S. programming. This could have been a lot worse if we had been a movie station.
GOB: The one thing I saw that was kind of interesting, when looking at your ’08 versus ’09 numbers is that you local ad dollars went way up year to year while your national ad sales went down.
LS: That always happens. This was before the U.S. schedule kicks in. What happens in a recession is the big advertisers pull back and the retail advertisers fill in the space. And we have no network time so a lot of local time was purchased market by market.
GOB: A lot of spot sales at the last minute.
LS: Yes. Don’t associate the local (ad revenue line item) with local programming. Or national with national programming for that matter... You’ll see real soon the results... as Rogers has normalized City’s prime time schedule, that pendulum has swung right back.
GOB: With your financial results for the final quarter not yet public (RCI will announce its 2009 year-end next month), can you say yet how the last quarter of 2009, October, November, December, was, as far as the City properties?
LS: I can’t say in numbers but I can tell you the prime time audience has improved by over 100% in general terms. That might almost seem in conflict with what we’re doing but the programs that were cancelled... these were good quality Canadian broadcasters. They deserve good quality severances, too.
GOB: Which are already or are being worked out now.
LS: Absolutely. If nothing, we’re fair. We don’t feel good about this. This is a business decision that we think, over a period of time, is the right decision and some of the impressions that were created by what our focus on local is, will be reversed in the consumer’s mind within the next two years.
This is a half a billion dollar investment. We paid $400 million for the stations. We spent $100 million on a purely local broadcast centre in downtown Toronto. I’d like to see the industry look at this as sort of the flow of putting things together for the new owner (meaning Rogers).
GOB: There have also been questions that these cuts are part of the change in the culture of the company since Ted Rogers passed away (in late 2008). That Ted, when he was in charge, might have been more willing to put up with losses on the broadcast side versus the new leadership.
LS: No... Ted insisted on every division standing on their own two feet. He always ran the company as it’s being run today – that every part contribute to the sum... That notion of “if Ted were still alive” is wrong. Ted and Nadir (Mohamed) and Tony Viner all think in very much the same way.
GOB: Are there any more cutbacks that might come?
LS: No one’s immune in this economy. But if this economy holds up – and I have to do a whole bunch of “ifs” here, and if we can continue to make progress on our revenue in prime time, I don’t foresee anything like this happening between now and the renewal hearings. I don’t know how it’s going to turn out but if you ask me is this the end of it? Yes. This is certainly this end of it in this economy and so it will be quite some time, or some disaster, before we’d do a move of this size again. But no one is immune.
GOB: Some of the other broadcasters who have already reported on the fall of 2009, such as Corus, have said they can really see over the past few months the recession ending and revenue coming back in from advertising.
LS: I agree with that. It’s slow, but positive, growth. Indications are the fall of ’09, this cycle was starting to end and the advertising cycle for traditional media in general had hit bottom and is working its way back up.
