Media News Digest: CTV Vancouver anchors fired, La Gatineau paper shuts down, Monique Lacombe leaves CBC

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  • The CRTC has dismissed two complaints against Rogers about the way it produces daily Mandarin and Cantonese newscasts on OMNI. The Unifor union and Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic and the Urban Alliance on Race Relations complained after learning that Rogers was outsourcing the production to Fairchild TV, which owns Chinese-Canadian TV channels, despite promising to “produce” the newscasts itself. The complaint came down to what “produce” actually means, and the CRTC found that, read in context, it did not mean Rogers had to produce them in-house and could make use of an outside partner. Unifor was not happy with the decision, accusing the CRTC of failing to protect local news.
  • The commission has revoked the licence of CKRT-DT Rouyn-Noranda, and its retransmitters, by request of RNC Media, which has shut down the Radio-Canada affiliate TV station. In its request, RNC Media says the drop in advertising revenue and the increased cost of maintaining its transmitters (especially with the coming 600 MHz reallocation forcing them to change frequency) means it can no longer afford to keep it running. It says journalists are being reassigned to its other stations and only one person will lose their job.

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4 thoughts on “Media News Digest: CTV Vancouver anchors fired, La Gatineau paper shuts down, Monique Lacombe leaves CBC

  1. Anonymous

    The CKRN-DT reasons for shutting the station down makes no sense. And the CRTC should have challenged it.

    – They indicated the new repack was one reason. According to Rabbitears.info, no stations in that market would have been affected. They all stay on their same frequency.

    https://www.rabbitears.info/repackchannels.php?country=CA&city=&state=&mktid=483&owner=&sort=&ph=&lss=&status=

    – Maintaining the transmitter reason, and re-transmitters. Okay, that is a good reason. Shut them down. Now, the same company also owns all the other stations in that market. So, why didn’t they propose to place a sub channel on their TVA station CHEM-DT 13, and have SRC appear as 13.2? No extra cost related to transmitters then.

    – Something more is going on here than they are not telling us. Especially when we can see from the Vermont stations doing multi-casting with one transmitter. WPTZ (5.1 – NBC, 5.2 CW, 5.3 MeTV), WCAX (3.1 – CBS, 3.2 – Movies!, 3.3 – ION).

    Reply
    1. Fagstein Post author

      The CKRN-DT reasons for shutting the station down makes no sense. And the CRTC should have challenged it.

      The CRTC cannot force a licensee to keep a licence it does not want (except by threatening other licences).

      They indicated the new repack was one reason. According to Rabbitears.info, no stations in that market would have been affected.

      CKRN’s retransmitter in St-Édouard-de-Fabre was slated for reassignment from channel 3 to channel 7.

      So, why didn’t they propose to place a sub channel on their TVA station CHEM-DT 13, and have SRC appear as 13.2? No extra cost related to transmitters then.

      That would have worked for the main transmitter, though not the analog retransmitters. But there are expenses involved in running a television station beyond just the transmitters.

      Something more is going on here than they are not telling us. Especially when we can see from the Vermont stations doing multi-casting with one transmitter.

      U.S. over-the-air television has a different business model, relying in part on revenue from distributors that isn’t available in Canada.

      Reply
  2. DS

    Wonder if the same will happen to CTV Montreal? Seems as if the Mitsumis of the CTVs cross the country are receiving their pink slips.

    Reply

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