TQS, the least-favourite of Quebec’s three french-language TV networks, is cutting 40 jobs across the province to get costs under control. With about 600 employees, that represents about 7% of their workforce.
It’s the same old story: Mainstream media, stocked up on vice-presidents and lots of overhead for journalistic operations, respond to their escalating costs by cutting journalists. The quality drops significantly, people tune out, and the spiral continues.
In TQS’s case, the network was losing quite a bit of money (CP says $1.5 million loss on media operations, which also include Rhythme FM radio stations), and now its owner Cogeco (which is swimming in profits from cable operations, by the way) is trying to figure out what to do with the network by getting CIBC to do a “strategic review”
CTV News (CTVglobemedia owns 40% of TQS, Cogeco owns the other 60%) has speculated that “a decision could be made to sell TQS”.
Anyone want to buy?
It couldn’t get crappier if you buried it under 50 tons of cow dung. Aren’t they building a brand spanking new building in old Montreal for their studio and operations?
I would watch the station for the hockey games, but strangely enough I can’t get it with my Bell satellite service. I’m not too sad about that, but it means that I don’t get to watch the Habs.
And, I always thought that Bell owned TQS, after Quebecor bought TVA?
Err… Habs games are on RDS, not TQS.
Bell never owned TQS. It was sold to Videotron, who at the time owned TVA and quickly sold it to Quebecor. When Quebecor bought Videotron, it in turn sold TQS to the Cogeco/CTV partnership.
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