Though I have issues with Quebecor's way of dealing with news about itself (particularly its apparently systematic refusal to speak to journalists from Gesca and Radio-Canada, and to a lesser extent all other media as well), I thought this was a good step forward, that maybe the company would start interacting more with people and present its side of disputes more often.

Then, a few days later came the news that Quebecor was laying off 400 people across the country. This is a cull on the level of triple-digit job cuts two to three years ago by the CBC, CTV, Canwest and Rogers. And it's about three years since an even larger cut at Sun Media decimated its workforce.

It's hard to think of a way Quebecor could spin this positively, but they could probably talk about how this will affect their business, where the cuts will be concentrated, and what will happen to the workers.

Instead, the official response from Quebecor spokesperson Serge Sasseville was "no comment". The "Quebecor vous informe" website is silent on the issue.

Canadian Press finally got he union to confirm the job cuts, half of which is through voluntary buyouts and another 100 through other forms of attrition, leaving only 100 people laid off. It's still a significant cut, but at least some will be leaving on their own terms.

Had Sasseville decided he did want to comment and answer journalists' questions, we might get an answer to why a company that just started up a 24-hour all-news network that depends heavily on the work produced by Quebecor's existing print journalists is now making significant cuts to them. We might know why a company that seems to have no trouble making money feels the need to make such significant cuts in its workforce. We might know why the previous cut of 600 jobs only three years ago wasn't good enough to bring efficiency to its operations.

But instead, we'll just have to guess what those answers are, and it's entirely possible those guesses will be wrong.

24 Heures cuts photo department

It's unclear if these cuts are part of the 400, but news came out earlier this month that Quebecor's free Montreal daily 24 Heures had fired its three photographers, eliminating its photo department, as well as a number of copy editors.

Quebecor wouldn't confirm the news initially, but news came via social media, resulting in a blog post by former 24 Heures photographer Rogerio Barbosa, who quit his job there because the paper refused to pay his expenses. He then went to the Journal de Montréal, where he was locked out along with 252 others in January 2009. The newspaper he left, meanwhile, hired three people to replace them, apparently at a higher pay.

Barbosa's blog post got picked up by Le Devoir's Stéphane Baillargeon, who put this into context: Three photographers hired to replace one months before a lockout at the Journal de Montréal. During the lockout, many photos originally taken for 24 Heures got republished in the Journal. And then months after the lockout ends, suddenly all three photographers are fired.

It makes for a pretty strong circumstantial case that the three photographers were hired for the sole purpose of replacing locked-out Journal de Montréal photographers.

Nowadays, much of the photography appearing in Quebecor papers is done by Agence QMI, wire services, provided publicity photos or writers taking photos for their own stories.

(Baillargeon's piece resulted in a reply from Quebecor's Serge Sasseville, pointing out that 24 Heures still has eight journalists, two "journalistes-pupitreurs", two editors and a designer. Sasseville said six people lost their jobs - three photographers and three editors (of whom four were permanent employees and two freelance).

Related Posts

• Le Réveil lockout ends with 80% losing jobs
• So Metro goes to the STM, 24 Heures goes to the AMT
• Quebecor shuts down ICI (UPDATED)
• Who needs press releases when you own the newspaper?
• Quebecor starts PR counterattack

Those of us around the country who work in the copy editing field breathed a slight sigh of relief, knowing that somewhere jobs were being saved and would still be done locally. The issue appeared settled: The Toronto Star would still be produced by the Toronto Star.

Less than two years later, we seem to be back to Square One. The Star is offering another round of buyouts to cut staff even further (they won't say by how much they want to reduce the workforce) and Reuters is reporting a rumour that the Star again wants to outsource layout and editing work.

I hope that's just a rumour. Layout and editing is an important job in print media, and I'd hate to think that the industry is coming to a consensus that this work can be done by some kid in a third-world country with 20 minutes of training.

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The last of the Hour staff at their final meeting. From left: Meg Hewings, Robyn Fadden, Jamie O'Meara, Melora Koepke, Richard Burnett (photo totally stolen from Facebook)

If you haven't already, go ahead and pick up a copy of Hour that's on the newsstands. It should be a collector's item. Unfortunately.

A little more than two months after word came out that the editorial staff of Hour was being canned, it's happened. This week's issue is the last for what's left of them (and many of the freelancers who have supported the paper's editorial content). Included are goodbye columns from Jamie O'Meara and Richard Burnett, who will be looking for other jobs once they sober up. (Burnett has started up a blog to keep the public informed of his opinions.)

Because the paper's owners don't think they need to answer to the media, official information about the changes isn't easy to come by. (The Gazette is waiting to hear from them.) But here's what we know from the information those departing staff have:

• The editorial staff has been canned. All the people in the picture above, as well as "nearly all" of the paper's freelancers, have been told their services are no longer required
• Some freelancers have remained and others are being added at reduced rates
• Among the new people being brought in is Black Sheep Reviews film reviewer Joseph Belanger
• The arts section is history
• The paper will be renamed "Hour Community" (UPDATE: A Facebook page has been setup)
• Voir's Kevin Laforest takes over as the man in charge of Hour

It all adds up to a giant effort to cut costs for editorial content far beyond what anyone would consider reasonable. Hour's owners are gambling that people are so desperate for bylines they'll accept being paid next to nothing, and that there are advertisers so clueless they'll buy space in a paper nobody wants to read anymore.

It's a gamble that I'm going to go ahead and predict won't work. It might take six months, or a year, or longer, but either the slow descent into oblivion will continue as more and more costs are cut or Voir will finally throw in the towel and give up on Hour altogether.

They might as well just put it out of its misery. Despite the best efforts of its tiny staff, Hour has been on death's door for years.

Hour of commiseration

Former and now-former Hour staff are talking about their beloved newspaper like people talk about departed friends at a funeral. Through a private Facebook support group, they're sharing stories and photos from their days at the paper, many from more than a decade ago. They've even planned a wake for Saturday night.

Congratulations, Mirror

The race for anglo alt-weeklies was long ago won by Mirror. The tipping point for me was when Hour dropped sex columnist Josey Vogels (who's nationally syndicated now, but got her start at Hour), and though they briefly tried a replacement columnist, the sex content disappeared when she left too.

As Hour started shedding regular features, Mirror added them. Readers and advertisers chose sides, and the difference between the two started to become more apparent.

It's not the fault of those people in the photo above. They tried their best to keep the ship afloat. But they had no time and no budget to experiment or do anything beyond going through the motions.

How much management is to blame is also up to interpretation. If the market couldn't support two francophone alt-weeklies, it's hard to argue it could support to anglo ones. On the French side, it was Voir that won the war with Quebecor's Ici. On the English side, Quebecor's Mirror beat Voir's Hour. In both cases it was the older paper that came out alive in the end.

Jan. 20 editions of Mirror (left, 48 pages) and Hour (right, 12 pages) sitting side by side

Hour vs. Mirror: A quantitative comparison

When I first heard about the problems at Hour in January, I picked up a copy of the paper. I admit it had been a while since I stopped to pick up either of Montreal's alt-weeklies. I was stunned by how thin it was. I knew Hour was thinner than Mirror, but it hadn't hit me how much.

I looked inside to find very little. I started counting what was inside so I could get a sense of scale.

The numbers below are taken by comparing the Jan. 20, 2011 issues of Hour and Mirror, which came out just before Hour staff were informed they were losing their jobs.

Here's how the numbers add up:

*1 Does not include house ads, filler ads and contest ads.

*2 About 2/3 of The Mirror's classified ads are for "adult services", which all but disappeared from Hour.

*3 The definition of "article" is up for some debate. I've included columnists but excluded some items too small for a byline.

*4 Does not include a handful of "mini reviews"

*5 Jamie O'Meara and Richard Burnett were columnists up until the end, but their columns did not appear in the issue studied here.

*6 Mirror has a Sudoku puzzle and a horoscope.

*7 This is based on the number credited, not the number employed. Hour, for example, had only two full-time staff.

Thank you ... Richard Martineau?

UPDATE: The following was posted by former Hour editor Martin Siberok. It's reposted here with permission:

How it all started

I remember getting a call in October 1992 from Richard Martineau, the editor-in-chief of Voir, asking me if I wanted to have lunch with him and his boss, Voir publisher Pierre Paquet.

At the time, I was at The Mirror, which was being helmed by my former “editorial board” colleagues, Eyal Kattan and Catherine Salisbury.

I agreed and we arranged to meet at L’Express on St-Denis for lunch. Our conversation was light and entertaining as Richard and I caught up, while Pierre and I spoke about our degree of separation, namely his Stanislas school buddy Ivan Doroschuk (Man Without Hat). Pierre had been part of the early Hats along with Dave Hill and Jeremie Arrobas.

Towards the end of our two-hour luncheon, Pierre asked me whether I knew why I had been invited to this meeting. I answered that I thought Richard had phoned to discuss a possible Voir-Mirror bowling night. Then Pierre popped the question, what did I think about starting a new English-language weekly and would I be interested in working for if?

I told him it was an exciting proposition and played coy, but I knew it was an offer I wouldn’t be able to refuse. Starting up a new English-language publication in Montreal was a dream. I had already been involved in setting up the Mirror and now this.

Pierre explained he had approached the Mirror’s publishers about selling, but their price was too high. So he had decided to start his own publication and take on the Mirror.

Over the next two months, Pierre and I had a few more clandestine meetings until I finally jumped on board. On December 31, I went to the Mirror offices and cleared out my desk. I told Catherine I was leaving the paper and would be heading up a new publication to be launched in the new year.

Luckily I wasn’t alone. My friend Lubin Bisson, the Mirror’s former distribution manager, was also on board. And then after several phone calls I persuaded Peter Wheeland to quit his job as editor of the Nuns’ Island paper and join us on a journey into the unknown.

Five weeks later, on February 4, 1993, the first issue of Hour hit the streets.

I would to thank everyone who contributed to Hour - over the years - because of you the paper had a run of 18 illustrious years.

UPDATE (April 16): The new Hour is out, with its new website, new Facebook page and new columnists Anne Lagacé Dowson and Kevin Laforest. The announcement is here.

Also, you might be interested in this Ryerson Review of Journalism piece from 1998 describing Montreal's alt-weekly newspaper war and Hour's beginnings.

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Quebecor put a final offer on the table on Thursday, adding that if the workers refused, the paper would be shut down at the end of the month. (Coverage from Radio-Canada, Rue Frontenac, Projet J.) The final offer would result in the layoff of 20 of the paper's 25 unionized employees, leaving only three journalists and two office workers. The rest would get severance of two weeks' salary for every year of service, up to a maximum 42 weeks (14 of the 20 will max out, the rest will receive less).

The union voted 68% in favour of the offer.

UPDATE: After-the-fact coverage from Journal de Québec, Argent, Le Quotidien

A similar deal was reached last week at Le Plein Jour in Baie-Comeau.

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Affected are (with links to local stories and lists of fired local personalities):

• CJRC 104.7FM, Outaouais
  • Job losses: 2/15 (Louis-Philippe Brulé, Clinton Archibald)
  • Local coverage: Le Droit (with reaction), Radio-Canada
• CHLT 107.7FM, Estrie
  • Job losses: None/15; Susan Léger moves to afternoons
  • Local coverage: La Tribune, Journal de Sherbrooke
• CHLN 106.9FM, Mauricie
  • Job losses: 1/17 (host Mathieu Beaumont); morning contributors move to the afternoon show
  • Local coverage: None Le Nouvelliste, L'Hebdo Journal
• CKRS 98.3FM, Saguenay
  • Job losses: None/15 (but some employees lose hours); Myriam Ségal moves to afternoons
  • Local coverage: Radio-Canada, Journal de Québec

Once upon a time, it took a lot of people to run a radio station. Now apparently it takes about a dozen, and even then there's some room for more cuts. Corus managers defend the cuts by saying Arcand's show isn't a "Montreal" show but a "provincial" one. Even if we accept that as true, it still means the local voices are cut.

And this isn't Saturday nights they're talking about - they're cutting the weekday morning shows, the most important timeslot of any radio station.

Corus's press release says Arcand and Mario Cecchini will be visiting these regions this week to meet the media. Hopefully they'll get some tough questions about why people in those regions should continue to tune in after their local voices have been cut. (UPDATE Feb. 19: See below)

Local voices are important, and that's evidenced most by how little coverage there is here so far. Only Radio-Canada stations and Gesca papers mention the cuts, and the change in Mauricie has no local coverage whatsoever that I can find online UPDATE: Le Nouvelliste had the story the next day, and other papers have added coverage.

The FPJQ, the association representing Quebec journalists, condemns Corus's cuts, as does the NDP. Agence QMI, meanwhile, didn't see fit to mention that there would be any.

Pierre Jury of Le Droit rightly calls this part of the Montrealization of commercial radio.

UPDATE (Feb. 19): Le Nouvelliste has a report on what Paul Arcand is telling the regions he's visiting this week:

• There will still be local journalists who will produce local news reports during the morning, and if something important happens, they will have the ability to stay on air (somehow I doubt that's going to be practical in the long term).
• Nobody's going to be hearing Montreal traffic reports on regional stations.
• He finds the term "Montrealization of the airwaves" insulting for some reason. He says that's not what happening, even though it's regional programming being replaced with Montreal-based programming.
• Afternoon shows are being extended, so the amount of local content is the same (only, instead of needing a morning host and an afternoon one, you just have one host on a longer shift).
• This is good for the regions because he'll be dealing with more regional issues and they will get a larger audience.
• This has been done before, badly, and that's why people don't like this idea. But Corus has a magical ability to do a good job, and if they don't then people will complain.

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The presentation is usually the same: The specialists are well-trained, local reporters and editors remain in control and have the final say, this will create "efficiencies" and allow journalists more time to focus on their core function - writing copy.

The hidden reality is that these copy editors tend to be non-unionized and have lower salaries, they have little connection to and may not even be familiar with the communities they serve, and the local journalists don't have the time to correct all of the things a lazy, overworked copy editor hundreds of kilometres away might have done that they don't agree with.

And, of course, with efficiencies come layoffs.

Transcontinental Media, which has already done this for its community papers in Quebec, is setting up a pagination shop in Charlottetown to handle layout for its Maritime papers. The number of layoffs isn't known yet, but there will be some.

It could be worse: They could be outsourcing pagination to Bangalore.

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Anne Mroczkowski

The axe fell Tuesday at CityTV. Everyone found out yesterday that long-time Toronto anchor Anne Mroczkowski and about 60 others have lost their jobs in a new round of cutbacks at Canada's fourth-largest English broadcast network, which will also result in a lot of local programming being cancelled.

Coverage at the National Post, Toronto Sun, Toronto Star, Financial Post, Canadian Press, Globe and Mail, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and all the usual Toronto blogs. Eye has a timeline of City cuts. Breakfast Television's Kevin Frankish has a video of remaining employees talking about how much it sucks.

The irony in this is that CityTV is owned by Rogers, which is part of that Stop the TV Tax campaign by the cable and satellite companies against fee for carriage. Rogers has argued through it and appearances in front of the CRTC that local television doesn't need the extra funding and that it is committed to local television without government funding.

With the cuts at City, and more importantly the cuts to programming at all City stations, we can formally call bullshit on that claim. Rogers doesn't oppose fee for carriage because it believes that's what's best for City, it opposes fee for carriage because its cable business is more important to it than its TV business.

And so Rogers continues to sabotage its TV stations for its own benefit, and people like Anne Mroczkowski pay the price.

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Most of the on-island community papers are pathetic - many don't even have a full-time journalist - but others have been giving it the ol' college try despite their tiny budgets.

Those budgets, though, are about to get smaller.

On the Friday before Christmas, just days after the latest earnings report showed good news for the parent company, journalists at Transcontinental-owned weeklies across town got the news that their services would no longer be required starting Jan. 8. Among them are two on the West Island: Raffy Boudjikanian of the West Island Chronicle and Olivier Laniel of Cités Nouvelles. It's unclear at the moment (even to them) if these are temporary or permanent layoffs.

Normally, the downsizing of two journalists wouldn't be a big deal, but these newspapers are running on a skeleton staff as it is. What was once a newsroom of three now becomes a newsroom of two.

One of those is the editor, who will now become a reporter. Albert Kramberger at the Chronicle, Marie-Claude Simard at Cités Nouvelles and Wayne Larsen at the Westmount Examiner. This appears to also be the case chain-wide. Their salaries will remain essentially the same or have slight reductions, depending.

Montreal regional manager Stéphane Vinet

The exact nature of the measures taken by Transcontinental is not absolutely clear. According to Benoit Leblanc, president of the Syndicat de l'information de Transcontinental, they affect a dozen employees, three of whom have definitely lost their jobs. Another vacant position is being eliminated.

As for Transcontinental, it's not talking to the media. Stéphane Vinet, the Montreal regional manager for Transcontinental Media who is responsible for weekly papers on the island, did not respond to a request for information.

His name, meanwhile, is being spoken along with unkind words by some of the journalists involved.

Those who spoke to me asked me to not to name them for fear of reprisals. So I offer them anonymity even though the entire pool of editorial staff at the three newspapers mentioned above is less than a dozen. One journalist was angry, saying Transcon "declares journalists are obsolete for their ad rags" and that this was a retaliation for union grievances. Two others shrugged and accepted the cost-cutting as a fact of life, and that they'll just find other sources of income.

It's easy to say (as I did above) that these newspapers are garbage and this is just the continuation of their suicidal death spirals. Looking back just a decade, many of these newspapers looked a lot different, they were well connected with their communities, they didn't just copy-paste press releases or use the same stories as their neighbours.

But there's still just a little bit of journalism coming out of these papers, and that's where they're cutting. Laniel last week compiled a list of salaries for West Island mayors. Boudjikanian has been following the case against a snow plow company that hasn't delivered on its promises. Neither of these can be replaced by a press release.

The cuts also mean an end to paid freelance work, what little is left of it anyway. Unpaid contributors, of which there are unfortunately many, will not be affected. Since, you know, they're unpaid.

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They've started up a Facebook group, whose members include Michel C. Auger and anglo CBCers Kristy Snell, Kristy Rich, and even some not named Kristy. They say after 36 years of serving them coffee, McGuire deserves to stick around.

UPDATE (Dec. 24):

A Christmas miracle! A day later, Mary has been un-fired.

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I've written before about the larger issue of the outsourcing of copy editing jobs. Saying I'm against it would be transparently self-serving, but I'd like to think there's some magic in the designing of pages, writing of headlines and editing of copy that will be missed when the job is handed over to a third party that is interested more in volume than quality.

On the other hand, I'm pessimistic that readers will care enough about how their paper is produced to speak with their wallets and tip the economic balance in favour of those workers.

UPDATE: Torstar says it has "no choice" - which of course is not true. It also says it hopes to keep the same level of quality, which is obviously not feasible.

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The final moments of CKX-TV (the complete newscast starts here).

The news came suddenly: Bluepoint Investment Corporation said on Thursday that it would back out of a deal to buy CKX-TV in Brandon, Man., from CTV. CTV, which had threatened the station with closure if it couldn't find a buyer, didn't waste any time, announcing that Friday's newscast would be its last and the station would go off the air at 7 p.m. All 39 employees are now unemployed, and the community of Brandon is left without a local commercial television station (only the cable community channel, and a community station in nearby Neepawa). While the Brandon Sun still provides reporting for the community, television news for the entire province of Manitoba now originates from Winnipeg.

The news is devastating and humiliating for CKX, which had been a pawn in a bad-faith sarcastic deal negotiated by way of newspaper advertisement between CTV and Shaw. The latter said it would buy the station and two others from CTV for $1 to convince the CRTC that local television did indeed have a profitable future. Then, when Shaw took a look at the stations, it decided it wasn't such a good investment after all.

In July, the station's hopes were raised again when Bluepoint came on the scene, with what seemed like a more serious offer (though for the same nominal amount of $1). But Bluepoint has come to the same realization as Shaw: small-market TV stations aren't worth it.

Bluepoint's official excuse is that they couldn't get carriage guarantees from satellite companies, and since most people in the area get their TV that way, they desperately needed that. I'll leave it as an exercise for readers to determine how much of the decision was satellite coverage and how much was Bluepoint realizing the true economics of conventional TV.

So CKX is off the air, its website replaced with a thank you message and a link to CTV's "Local TV Matters" site (as if a message to everyone that more stations will fall unless local TV is saved). CTV had two stories on the closure, both of which mention the larger issue of conventional television and fee-for-carriage.

For those keeping score, here's how the CTV and Canwest stations threatened with closure this year stand:

• CHCH Hamilton and CJNT Montreal: Sold to Channel Zero for a grand total of $12.
• CHBC Kelowna (B.C.): Changed from an E! station to a Global station and renamed Global Okanagan
• CHEK Victoria: Sold to its employees
• CHCA Red Deer (Alta.): Shut down on Aug. 31.
• CHWI Windsor (Ont.): Kept running by CTV until at least Aug. 31, 2010
• CKX Brandon (Man.): Shut down on Oct. 2
• CKNX Wingham (Ont.): Shut down on Aug. 31, converted into a retransmitter for CFPL London

That's three stations sold, two kept running and three shut down.

You may not agree with fee for carriage, or that the conventional television model is even broken, but small-market stations are closing down, and nobody is moving in to even rescue them from the trash heap.

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Those who threatened to switch to a Corus station after the CJAD cuts, and then threatened to switch to an Astral station after the CFQR cuts, can now threaten to switch back to a Corus station, I guess.

Or you could switch to the CBC. Until they make cuts again.

UPDATE (Aug. 29): CFRB Program Director Steve Kowch has also been relieved of his duties. He will be replaced by Mike Bendixen, who leaves the program director job at CJAD.

Angie Coss is also leaving CJAD, it was announced. It's unclear why.

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Paul "Tasso" Zakaib

After 20 years in morning radio in Montreal, Aaron and Tasso is just Aaron.

CFQR a.k.a. 92.5 the Q a.k.a. Q92 Program Director Brian DePoe announced on Wednesday that two thirds of its long-running morning trio would be leaving the station: Paul Zakaib (aka Tasso Patsikakis) and Suzanne Desautels. No reason was given beyond a vague statement of making changes.

The Aaron and Tasso show began on CFQR in 1989, but their collaboration began years before that when they worked at CKGM and CFCF radio. The CFCF partnership ended in 1987 when management decided Tasso was no longer a good fit for the ratings-stalled show hosted by Aaron Rand. Later, when they were teamed up for Q92's morning show and the ratings skyrocketed, the powers that be learned their lesson, and Aaron and Tasso stuck together throughout the 90s and most of this decade.

Considering the revolving doors of morning shows at the competition CHOM, CJFM and even CJAD, it's astonishing that they stuck around for so long, cementing their names into the city's consciousness. (I remember one morning a while back when a woman got a surprise call from the CHOM morning show - the hosts asked if she knew who they were, and she said "Oh, it's Aaron and Tasso!" There was a bit of an awkward silence after that, but it demonstrates how they were the most recognizable of the morning teams.)

Suzanne Desautels

Desautels also hails from the old days of CFCF radio, where she started off as an intern in the early 80s. But she spent most of her career at CFCF television, as a weather presenter and co-host of its Travel Travel program. In 1999, when the budget axe fell there, she moved to CFQR as a news reader and has been there since, eventually moving to morning traffic and then recently as a full partner in the morning team.

So far, the plan is to keep Aaron Rand going solo, with a scaled-back morning show (less talk, more music). I can't help but wonder if that may be an indication that the two-men-one-woman morning crew format we see on Montreal's anglo music stations might be a bit excessive on the talent for these belt-tightening times.

Those who want to express their opinion on the dumpings can do so on the station's Facebook page or by contacting management directly. (UPDATE: The station has shut down the discussion forums on its Facebook group page after being swarmed with comments about the programming change. Listeners are being asked to email PD Brian DePoe directly, presumably so negative comments are kept out of public view)

UPDATE: Coverage from CTV Montreal and The Gazette, both of which have been flooded with comments about the move.

Neither The Gazette nor CTV (nor I) have gotten any comment from the two fired personalities. Instead, Aaron Rand has been stuck in the unenviable position of explaining the decision of someone else to fire a good friend.

UPDATE (Aug. 21): Some insightful comments from radio buff Sheldon Harvey.

UPDATE (Aug. 25): Comments from Aaron Rand, who says he's passing along people's thoughts to Tasso and Suzanne, even while the two of them remain silent.

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Montreal's news/talk station has canned four of its shows:

• Kevin & Trudie (Kevin Holden and Trudie Mason), weekdays 2-4pm
• Holder Tonight (Peter Anthony Holder), weeknights midnight to 3am
• The Laurie & Olga Show (Laurie MacDonald and Olga Gazdovic), Saturdays 1-4pm
• Solid Gold Saturdays with Al Gravelle, Saturdays 4-10pm

In all, The Gazette reports, eight on-air personalities are leaving the station:

• Peter Anthony Holder, overnight host
• Laurie MacDonald, Laurie & Olga host
• Olga Gazdovic, Laurie & Olga host
• Kevin Holden, Kevin & Trudie host
• Al Gravelle, Solid Gold Saturdays host
• Jake Lawrence, Solid Gold Sunday Nights host
• Kathryn Coulombe, news anchor
• Rod Dewar, editorialist

Trudie Mason will remain with the station, expanding her morning news role.

Holder was the latest to get the news... yesterday. He received so little notice that he had to cancel a booked guest. Holder confirmed he's been fired but wouldn't comment further (UPDATE: See below). Laurie MacDonald told The Gazette they were told to give in their pass keys as soon as they were told they were fired.

As for what's taking their places:

• Dan Laxer will be taking the Kevin and Trudie spot from 2-4 weekdays
• Laxer's weekday evening slot is taken over by a syndicated show, The Ryan Doyle Show, from CFRB
• Ray Scott takes over Solid Gold Sundays from Jake Lawrence
• Former CBC host Anne Lagacé-Dowson takes over (on an interim basis) the spot left by Laurie & Olga at 1-4 Saturdays
• Saturday evenings will have "weekend" versions of weekday shows

Bendixen says other announcements will be forthcoming "in the next couple weeks." Operations Manager Bob Harris told The Gazette that negotiations are ongoing.

Sports reporter Rob Martier has also left CJAD to move back to Chicago, though that move was for personal reasons and is unrelated to the shakeup.

More coverage:

• CBC.ca
• Coolopolis mourns the loss of Holder Tonight
• RadioInMontreal has some info from local radio watcher Sheldon Harvey
• The Suburban business columnist David Lisbona argues it's just business

UPDATE (Aug. 11): Holder talks to The Gazette's Kathryn Greenaway, saying "they can only fire you, they can't kill you." Holder's fans are making themselves heard loud and clear, starting up a Facebook group, Facebook cause and commenting en masse on his Facebook wall. The Gazette piece resulted in lots of feedback from readers.

And The Mirror points us to "Why CJAD sucks", published exactly 10 years ago this week.

Meanwhile, Kim Fraser, who survived the cuts, responds to criticism of her on the Radio in Montreal group.

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• Podcast Plan B: The Stuph File with Peter Anthony Holder
• Peter Anthony Holder starts podcast
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After putting the five conventional television stations comprising its secondary E! network (formerly CH) on the block for a "strategic review", the results are in:

• CHCH Hamilton and CJNT Montreal will be sold to a company called Channel Zero for a grand total of $12.
• CHBC Kelowna (B.C.) will be brought into the Global network as a Global station (its local programming minimums being dropped from 13.5 hours a week to 7 will no doubt be taken advantage of here)
• CHEK Victoria and CHCA Red Deer (Alta.) will close on Aug. 31. CHEK couldn't be turned into a Global station because of a CRTC rule that it not duplicate CHAN in Vancouver. CHCA is right between Calgary and Edmonton, both of which have Global stations.

Get the news from your favourite source:

• Canwest press release
• CBC
• Vancouver Sun (focusing on CHEK), plus piece from the archives on CHEK history
• Canadian Press

The decisions mean the end to the E!/CH network.

CTV closes one, sells one, keeps one

Meanwhile, after Shaw backed away from buying three CTV stations for $1, there is similar mixed news at those stations:

• CHWI Windsor will be kept on the air for at least another year, thanks to an infusion of funding
• CKX Brandon (Man.) will be sold for $1 (press release) to Bluepoint Investment Corp. (don't ask me who that is), who may be looking to buy other TV properties
• CKNX Wingham (Ont.) will be shut down on Aug. 31 and converted into a retransmitter for CFPL London

This leaves six A-channel stations left, including CHWI and the cable-only Atlantic A network.

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• Worthless stations sold sarcastically for $1 (UPDATE: NOT!)
• CKX, the TV station nobody wanted

The reason given is the death plunge of classified advertising. The Star says it doesn't make sense to do it "in-house" anymore.

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• Toronto Star wants to outsource 78 editing jobs
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Le Devoir and Argent have stories. Cyberpresse, of course, is entirely silent on the issue.

Le Soleil is apparently looking to eliminate 20-35 positions through buyouts of three weeks' pay per year of service, up to 52 weeks.

La Presse management has called a meeting of employees for Monday, at which point they'll explain what's going on at the flagship paper. Management hasn't quashed a rumour that the paper will cease publishing on Sundays.

Gesca had been one of the few major media companies to avoid large job cuts over the past two years. But it's clear with a plummeting advertising market that nobody is safe.

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Hey, so remember when they said Musique Plus was laying off production people but wasn't going to touch the talent in front of the camera?

Yeah, well they're laying off two VJs.

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I'm horrible at crowd estimates. Guess for yourself how many people turned out.

Tuesday was the day the CBC was supposed to announce which of its employees it was going to lay off. The SCRC, which represents CBC and Radio-Canada employees in Quebec and Moncton, planned for a day of mourning at noon to draw attention to those names.

Unfortunately, the CBC made no such announcement, and the people who turned out still don't know who's being fired and who's being kept on, even though the corporation has already started the process of laying people off.

UPDATE: CBC says 180 people will get the pink slip on May 27 and 28.

Free hot dogs and cheeseburgers!

One would like to think union solidarity was the primary motivation behind the crowd, but there was a really long lineup for the free hot dogs and cheeseburgers. It made me want to work there, until someone reminded me what they pay in union dues.

Soon, after some socializing, it was time for the speeches from union leaders.

Alex Levasseur

This is Alex Levasseur. He gave a strong speech about how the Conservative government is attacking culture, specifically francophone culture in Canada. I found that statement odd for two reasons: first, the cuts were made by the CBC, not the government, and second, the cuts affect English services as much as they do French services.

True, the government did refuse the CBC's request for additional "bridge" financing to make up for plummeting advertising revenue, but it's spin to turn that into a government decree of hundreds of layoffs.

Sadly, not a single word of the speeches was in English. The SCRC union is usually labelled somewhat inaccurately as the "French" CBC union because it represents Quebec and Moncton, but it also represents anglos in those areas. Montreal is also Radio-Canada's headquarters, where most of its network programming originates.

I had a little game of "spot the anglo" going. With help of some insiders, we could name about 10.

Spot the photographer

Despite not really having any news to deliver, the event got quite a bit of media attention...

... even from some of the CBC's competitors.

So far I see articles in Le Devoir, Canadian Press, Rue Frontenac and Metro, in addition of course to Radio-Canada itself.

After the speeches, a fake coffin was carried at the head of a procession a few feet down the street ...

Look at that line.

...and then carried back. I guess it made sense to them.

Nancy Wood gestures with a hot dog

There's an anglo. I get 10 points!

(The hot dog wasn't actually for her, it was for newsreader Joanne Bayly, who like many of the anglos at CBC Radio had to stay inside to deal with a live broadcast.)

Ange-Aimée Woods, being tough

Ange-Aimée Woods, who works on the Daybreak team, doesn't know if she's on that list the CBC doesn't want to share. She was one of the last people hired permanently in the department (even though she's been there for half a decade), which would theoretically mean she'd be one of the first to get a pink slip.

The CBC says those notices will come by the end of next week. At that point we'll have some bodies to put in that casket.

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Maison Radio-Canada

"D-day for some..or maybe me" is how Ange-Aimée Woods describes the Facebook group she setup to spread the word about a "day or mourning" organized by her union. On Tuesday, the real brunt of those 800 job cuts hits as the corporation reveals a list of the positions deemed "redundant", and the employees it has decided it can live without.

The union, which as you can imagine is steadfast against this move, is planning an hour-long demonstration outside Maison Radio-Canada (corner René-Lévesque and Panet, metro Beaudry) at noon, in solidarity with those getting pink slips (who don't yet know who they are):

We are organizing a demonstration to mark this day of mourning.

We will be out on the sidewalk with our “redundant” colleagues, a callous classification of the employees who are the heart and soul of the CBC.

We will gather on René-Lévesque in front of the main entrance to the Maison de Radio-Canada at noon to show our colleagues that we stand with them and management that we don’t agree with sacrificing the next generation of employees for flashy equipment. Senior management likes to say that the CBC’s most valuable asset is its people.

Let’s counter their cynicism with our most valuable asset: our solidarity and our voices.

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