LAYOFFS COME AS DEAL IS UNVEILED Grant Robertson – Globe and Mail
Employees at CHUM Ltd.'s television operations across Canada were feeling betrayed last night after 281 people were laid off on the same day the company accepted an offer to sell.
The cuts are part of a restructuring CHUM planned to announce today when it was scheduled to issue its latest financial numbers. However, both announcements were moved up to yesterday when the company's controlling shareholders announced the sale of CHUM to Bell Globemedia, owner of the CTV network and The Globe and Mail, for $1.4-billion.
CHUM is controlled by the family of founder Allan Waters, who started the Toronto-based radio and TV company in 1954. Mr. Waters died in December, and the family sought to sell its stake in the operation during the past few months.
"It's absolutely a sense of betrayal. It's a sense of bewilderment," said Peter Murdoch, media vice-president of the Communications Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, which represents employees in several CHUM newsrooms.
The company owns 12 TV stations across Canada under the CITY-TV, A Channel and Access banners, 33 radio stations and 21 cable specialty channels.
The cuts include 133 full-time jobs and 62 part-time positions in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Barrie, Ont. Another 58 full-time jobs and 28 part-time positions are being cut in several cities because of investments in technology.
The CHUM layoffs come as the media industry is facing deep cuts throughout the sector. Large U.S. newspapers have cut hundreds of staff in recent months, while Montreal-based Quebecor announced it was cutting 120 jobs at its Sun newspapers in Canada. As advertising dollars shift to large Internet players, such as Google and Yahoo, those companies are hiring aggressively in Canada and the U.S.
CHUM chief executive officer Jay Switzer said the restructuring is designed to focus CHUM's news programming on local news and its breakfast show. The cuts had been in the works for several months and will save the company $15-million.
"As we have suggested over many months, perhaps going back as many as nine months . . . this is a challenged sector and we have some work to do," Mr. Switzer said.
Mr. Murdoch accused CHUM of getting the cuts done before the new buyers take control and said the move will hurt the news operations. However, Bell Globemedia chief executive officer Ivan Fecan said the layoffs were not part of the negotiations to buy CHUM. When the buyers were assessing CHUM's books, which factored into the price of the sale, they were not aware of the restructuring, he said.
The purchase must be approved by regulators, and the union plans to ask the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission to halt the sale because of the layoffs and union concerns about media concentration. Mr. Murdoch also plans to ask Bell Globemedia to reconsider the CHUM cuts. |