CHUM to save almost $15 million through restructuring; nearly 300 lose jobs

CHUM's day of big announcements ended with a big shock for the nearly 300 employees who were handed pink slips yesterday. Lost in all the news about its takeover by Bell Globemedia and release of its Q3 results was CHUM's intention to restructure its approach to local information programming, a move resulting in the elimination of 281 full- and part-time jobs. CHUM projects the changes will result in net annualized operating cost savings of about $14.7 million.

By Patti Summerfield
July 13, 2006

CHUM’s day of big announcements ended with a big shock for the nearly 300 employees who were handed pink slips yesterday. Lost in all the news about its takeover by Bell Globemedia and release of its Q3 results was CHUM’s intention to restructure its approach to local information programming, a move resulting in the elimination of 281 full- and part-time jobs. CHUM projects the changes will result in net annualized operating cost savings of about $14.7 million.

Programming changes in Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, and Barrie eliminate 133 full-time and 62 part-time positions in the news and local programming areas. Technology and production changes at its stations in Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Ottawa, London and Brandon will result in the loss of 58 full-time and 28 part-time positions in the news, operations, and traffic departments.

CHUM’s programming changes include the replacement of Citytv’s traditional local one-hour evening newscasts in Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg, with a new daily half-hour local newsmagazine called In Your City. The program will cover community stories in depth and will be paired with a new daily half-hour national and international news package.

Local morning show BreakfastTelevision will be enhanced in each market and in the case of Calgary and Edmonton, will be expanded to four hours. At A-Channel Victoria, BreakfastTelevision will be discontinued in order to concentrate on the growing strength of the two-hour block of A-Channel News and Vancouver Island Report.

Traditional newscasts will be cut at Citytv Vancouver and resources added to its BreakfastTelevision morning show to expand coverage of local traffic conditions and include more live coverage of news and events across the city.

News programming will remain unchanged at Citytv Toronto, while A-Channel News in Barrie will return to a more local focus. Programming remains unchanged at A-Channels in London and Ottawa except that the daily noon news show in Ottawa will be discontinued.

Where applicable, the newscasts were discontinued yesterday. New initiatives launch in early September and, in the case of Citytv Winnipeg, a weekly edition of In Your City won’t begin until January ’07.
Correction regarding yesterday’s newsblast: BGM’s cash outlay to acquire CHUM stock will reach a final tally around $1.4 billion, and the deal establishes a 1.7 billion enterprise value for the company.