Fewer local owners, less local news - Keith Roulston editorial

I didn’t get to my normal routine this past weekend when I sat down to watch the local news (either on CTV-2, London or CTV-1 on Kitchener) because there was none. Boy, did Bell Canada act quickly after announcing just Thursday that it was planning 4,800 job cuts, including to the TV stations it owns in the CTV network.

 

The cessation of local news broadcasts on weekends, along with the sale of 45 of its 103 regional radio stations, were among many cuts  Bell promised.

 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau didn’t hold back, calling it a “garbage decision by a corporation that should know better.”
“We’ve been advocating for reform for years,” he claimed. “It’s not coming fast enough and when it does come, it doesn’t provide meaningful help”

 

The company shot back, blaming regulators and policymakers in governments for its decision to announce the layoffs after federal and provincial politicians accused the company of unnecessarily killing off local journalism. Facing $40 million in annual operating losses, Bell Media’s parent company, BCE Inc., has an operating revenue totalling $6.7 billion, up from $6.44 billion a year earlier.

 

“Executives and shareholders are doing just fine while our members are being thrown out of work, including once again in the media,”   said Lana Payne, president of Unifor national, the union which represents some 800 of those laid off. “Our union does not accept the use of government policy changes as a smokescreen to justify the company’s actions,” she said.

 

The company is also sharing in $100 million paid by the federal government. Broadcasters are expected to receive $30 million through a side deal the government struck with Google to cover the vast amount of content the international giant picks up from Canadian media.

 

If it all boggles your mind, welcome to the club. The media world has changed in my time, thanks to the fact young people now turn first to giants like Google and Facebook for their news, not local newspapers, radio and television stations.

 

Changes came quickly to the newspaper business after I had my first job as a summer student with A. Y. Maclean at The Huron Expositor in Seaforth in the summer of 1967. He still printed his own newspaper on his own press in his own printing shop. By the time I graduated in 1969, the community newspaper business had changed. 

 

Bob Shrier had bought the Goderich Signal-Star in Goderich and, seeing the future, had bought a new web offset printing press.

That press was so much faster than the old flat-bed hot-metal presses used by other newspapers (they printed two pages at a time, the Signal-Star’s press printed the entire newspaper in less than an hour) that he needed more volume. One by one, Shrier bought the newspapers that had been printed on those old flat-bed presses. 

 

My first job in the weekly newspaper business was as editor of the Clinton News-Record which had been sold, separate of the printing business, to Bob Shrier who eventually bought newspapers from Owen Sound to Grand Bend and as far east as Mitchell, and built a bustling new building in Goderich’s industrial park.

 

But Shrier needed to sell out and sold to someone bigger. They, in turn, sold to someone bigger, who sold to someone even bigger. A decade or so ago, that owner closed the printing plant and the shrinking began. Today there is no office (and no staff) in Goderich or Clinton or any of the other towns of the newspapers Shrier once bought. And the local printing operations have also closed. The one in Clinton is now the office of an insurance company.

 

In television, Doc Cruikshank started a station in Wingham in 1956 to go with his radio station. He offered all sorts of local programming from shows featuring cooking and fashion, to country music live broadcasts to farm shows. But, by the late 1970s, he was getting old and had no kids who wanted to take over. He sold to CFPL in London, who, in turn, sold to someone bigger, who sold to someone even bigger and eventually, Bell Canada became owner.

 

All the big guys wanted to get into the radio, television and newspaper business, but not because they loved their local community and wanted to provide a valuable service, but because they wanted to make money. People like A.Y. MacLean and Doc Cruikshank loved their communities. They wanted to provide service.

 

But we can’t forget the other side. Younger residents get news from Facebook or Google and never think about where that comes from – like local media. What happens if there’s no local media left to collect local news?