A challenging ad market has caught up to Bell Media, which today revealed that it is laying off up to 120 positions this summer from its Toronto TV operations.
The layoffs were revealed through a notice to the Ministry of Labour earlier today; spokesperson for Bell Media confirmed the layoffs to Media in Canada, but declined to elaborate on which jobs would be affected.
The layoffs are being attributed to “financial pressure related to advertising and subscription challenges” across Bell Media’s TV services.
According to the company’s spokesperson, the decision was made now to alleviate pressure as quickly as possible.
The Bell Media layoffs come on the heels of earlier announcements of the elimination of 657 jobs at the CBC and 400 jobs at Shaw Communications, the parentco of Shaw Media.
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Anyone wonder why we call it Hell Media since the telephone company took over?
When Kevin Crull started at BM, he read a note to staff that Ivan Fecan had left him extolling the virtues of CTV’s fabulous run & dominance of the past decade. It said, “don’t F___ it up!”. Guess what? (It didn’t take long)
Yeah welcome to Bell Hell. People running it are beyond F___ing it up. The profits at the telephone company are very favourable – someone said to me – and yet he is doing this just cuz..? How the hell did he get this job I wonder. He will mess it up and then leave – do any of these guys even CARE anymore, no one does it with the passion and the diligence as their predecessors – yes times have “changed” we GET that but that does not mean one takes rash decisions. Passion, respect and diligence should not “change” with the times – what one needs is a SMART cookie who can see the big picture and get the right balance not this “cutting this and cutting that” just to keep the ink black – ANY high school kid can do that. One does not need the likes of these handsomely paid guys to be a drain on the revenue….if all they CAN do is cut away! If they want to cut the “fat” perhaps they need to look at the man in the mirror as Michael Jackson says…
He “got” the job because he was/is on George Cope’s Exec team at Bell (running another division). Told to go in and clean out the fat, and cut costs by a huge amount. “Why” he got the job is what I’d like to know; he’s an American who knows little about Canadian television.