Wednesday was another bad day at Bell Media, as the company made another round of cuts across the country for vague reasons that probably amount to wanting to cut expenses to increase profits.
The company refused to provide “specific numbers” or names but confirmed there were “departures” at “some Bell Media stations.”
“Our industry is changing fast, with growing international competition and new viewing and listening options impacting audiences and advertising across the Canadian media sector. We’re feeling the effects of rapid industry change in many parts of our business, including local radio. To ensure we remain competitive, we’re managing the impact on our bottom line while also investing in content and platforms,” the statement reads.
In Montreal, CJAD’s Eramelinda Boquer and TSN 690’s Rick Moffat were among the cuts, sources at Bell Media told me. There was also a job lost in the CTV Montreal mailroom.
Elsewhere, the biggest loss is CTV Winnipeg news anchor Gord Leclerc. Traces of him were quickly removed from CTV Winnipeg’s website and he wrote a message of thanks to his viewers.
Also gone are:
- Mark Brennae, afternoon host on Victoria’s CFAX 1070
- Julie Corlett and Dave Illman, morning hosts on 91.9 Bob FM in Lindsay, Ont.
- Larry Fedoruk, afternoon host on CKTB 610 in St. Catharines, Ont.
- Mark Morris, who co-hosted the morning show on Winnipeg’s 99.9 Bob FM
- Manny Paiva, news director at CTV Windsor and AM800 CKLW
- Rob Snow, midday host on Ottawa’s CFRA
- Traffic schedulers in Ontario
In possibly unrelated news, Énergie 98.9 in Quebec City, a Bell Media station, fired morning host Stéphan Dupont, and co-hosts Raynald Cloutier and Pierre Blais, on Friday. The firing comes after a controversial interview with RDS analyst Marc Denis, but people at the station say the two events are unrelated. Dupont’s contract was set to end Jan. 1.
Thanks to those who provided tips on the losses. I’ll update this post as I hear about more.
Boquer addressed her dismissal Thursday morning on Facebook:
Snow also confirmed his departure on social media:
https://twitter.com/RobSnow15/status/1194694363667783680
https://twitter.com/RobSnow15/status/1194694549379043328
With Moffat gone, the Balcan era has come to an end. Small blessing, both he and Boquer won’t have to deal with the insufferable Carter who couldn’t be bothered to be a little jovial towards Ermalinda.
Safe and prorperous journeys to both these great broadcasters.
Yes, agreed. Mr. Carter’s coldness towards Ms. Bloquer was awkward and uncomfortable at times.
Yes, I absolutely agree. I thought it was my imagination but it was true. I thought the coldness towards Era made it very uncomfortable for listeners.
Totally agree. Carter should not have ignored Era they way he each morning.
Bell Canada is all about PROFIT,PROFIT,PROFIT. The advice that I have for Bell is Remember that your Success in Broadcasting comes from your ON-AIR TALENT and support staff , reaching out to the audience, NOT THE BEAN COUNTERS in your administration. Your ON-AIR TALENT are NOT DISPOSABLE COMMODITIES.
Jeez… Bell just keeps cutting and cutting and cutting and cutting…brutal
LOL! I bet they’re having another meeting soon to discuss how to continue to do things even cheaper yet! More cuts to come, no doubt! They’ll just keep doing things cheaper and cheaper and cheaper…
Cutting the best! So sad. All about $$$? Eramalinda B. Is one of the best and most loved on cjad. Losing her will lose listeners. Ric will also lose you supporters.
You have made a BIG mistake here!
Remind me again how Bell buying out V is a good idea…
It’s both a good and a bad idea depending on your perspective. Bell has a lot of money and can invest significant resources when it wants to. It also has a lot of market power and filling one of the few remaining gaps in its empire would only strengthen Canada’s largest media company and make it harder for others to compete.
The thing is Bell rarely invests significant resources without requiring a pound of flesh from their staff. Most of the time Bell’s investments are either (a) forced by the CRTC or technology change (HD TV, example), or (b) done to reduce personnel costs and build up the bottom line (centralized TV switching, example).
The thing that is the hardest to deal with his is that with Bell being one of a handful of companies in radio at this point, the employees they let go have few options If you want to be on English radio in Montreal, you have two and half choices (Ted Bird found the half choice). Otherwise, they are off to other markets, where Bell is most likely a dominant player.
Letting them get stronger certainly isn’t a high point.
It’s pretty shameful that a broadcaster spend 35+ years with the same company and not get a proper retirement send off.
No kidding, they did the same with Caro Ann Meehan a news anchor on CTV for many years. No warning, nothing! Rob snow, 20 years at 580 CFRA, gone without a trace.
The Bell Media buyout of CJAD/TSN/Virgin/CHOM is the worst thing to ever happen in Montreal radio history
Plenty of bad things have happened in Montreal radio history. And even from a concentration of ownership perspective, the Astral Media purchase of Standard Radio probably had a bigger impact locally.
Bell needs to stop firing people or laying them off. Bell is the most disgusting, selfish, greedy, heartless, good-for-nothing company on this planet. They are worse than Wal-Mart or Monsanto or Amazon, or any other massive conglomerate. George Cope and Mirko Bibic (and every single BCE shareholder) should be ashamed of themselves for letting these firings/layoffs happen. If Bell wants to boost their profits, maybe get rid of that pathetic excuse for a mental health campaign. That’ll save them a few million bucks a year. Let’s talk, my ass.
I don’t think people will look at the cancellation of millions in mental health funding as a particularly generous move on Bell Media’s part.
Firings and layoffs are part of the business, especially in radio. Just about everyone has been let go at some point.
I’m actually surprised that weekdays 9a-12p, 1p-4p, 7p-overnight, and all day weekends aren’t completely syndicated programming on CJAD. I was sure that would be the case by now. But it’s coming.
No. We need Elias Makos in the morning to start our day. He is very professional and informative. Elias is young and has a great future ahead of him no matter what happens at Bell Media.
Yes a bad day at Bell Media for it’s employees but a good day for the brass and stockholders . I can’t help being cynical about Bell’s mental health PR exercise when their brutal staffing cuts leads to so much suffering .
Well it finally arrived. Bellmedia’s annual celebration of layoffs just about a month or so before the Christmas period. Bell failed to disappoint.
Like why is Bell so heartless with all their billions?
And no suit in Toronto ever comes out publicly and takes responsibility for making people’s Lives miserable every year at this time.
So #bellletstalk
It has been the bell MO for many years. When cope became ceo his first action was to lay-off 3000 employees. Since then many more. This bell let’s talk think is a total joke when I was there if you ever went on medical leave for burn out your first day back was your last. Terrible company
I know of one case the day after the 2017 Let’s Talk nonsense, they fired a woman after 40 years on the job at CHUM-FM,,Again, so heartless.
Bell’s Let’s Talk= Virtue Signalling.
Goodness, all the Traffic Schedulers in local Ontario stations were downsized out – and centralized several years ago. Now THAT central scheduling office is gone??? Where the heck is going to be done?
Rick moffat was a great radio broadcaster. Very knowledgeable,intelligent and informative.
The best broadcaster for impact games and alouettes games. No one comes close.
Big mistake. Whoever made this decision ,
I wouldn’t hire to clean toilets.
I
Eramelinda might be a great person and had some great gigs on local radio but I always thought “Why is she doing weather reports on CJAD?” She’s not a meteorologist, so she is most likely getting her information the same place I am. Ric Moffat is a different story. He is a seasoned sports broadcaster who made Impact games and Alouette games fun to listen to. Who could possibly fill his shoes for the same salary? What was Bell’s reasoning for letting him go?
As for Bell, I just don’t know. The whole company is just a scam. It has gotten to the point when I just say, “Everything to do with Bell is a scam.” They have some very expensive but quite irrelevant people working there that not many people really like. Evan Soloman?? Tom Mulcair?? Jim Meney?? Laurie Pettito?? George Noory?? Why are these people there? My radio goes off when I hear them.
Then there is the scam that Bell is famous for but they never get called out for it. The amount of fake calls and texts on the Evan Solomon show to make the show seem more relevant. Fake calls by staffers and selected plants; fake texts most likely written by staff or producers. How come no one calls out Bell out on this? It is very obvious. It is also very evident on the Jon Poll show. No fake calls but way too many fake texts that Jon Pole has most likely written himself? Caught ya, Jon!
Bell used to be a great company and a model for Canadian business. It’s now just a money making machine that cares about no one except for shareholders.
George Noory doesn’t work for Bell. He’s an American host syndicated out of the U.S. Can you offer proof that Evan Solomon reads “fake texts” over the air, because I can assure you that they are not fake, nor are they plants.
The reasons she was doing weather reports is likely a question of economy: Bell only needs ONE weather forecast for all of it’s stations in an area (including TV and radio), and just needs to present it to the audience.
Eramelinda is essentially a presenter, she takes the given from the meteorologists, and presents it to you. No different from a traffic report or a stock market report.
And what can “we” do?! Pull the plug on Bell. There are other options.
I texted Jon and asked him if he writes the texts, and his reply was “the super intelligent ones I write, the other ones are real – LOL – JON POLE”
Seriously – why would you fake a text? It makes zero sense.
The Alouettes and Impact games were good because of Rick Moffat. I suppose Joey Alfeiri can work the Impact games, but you need an experienced football broadcaster to work the Alouettes games with Marc O
Enter Sean Campbell. He has filled in on the Als broadcasts in the past. And probably making less $$
DING! Winner. At the end of the day, the same “services” will be maintained, by performed by lower cost workers. When they stop being lower cost, they will be shown the door and replaced by other lower cost workers.
Bell makes the assumption that short term loss of listenership of people angry with the changes won’t be enough to harm them in the long run, and they will have a better bottom line.
580 CFRA has become crappier and crappier since Bell media started owning the station.
Era and Rick were let go because they have been there many years. They make more money then the other employees. That is the reason. Sharmen Yarnell was let go for the same reason. Bell Media will keep doing that as long as they can make millions. That’s the way it goes. Best of luck in your new endeavours Era and Rick.
Sorry to see eramilinda go….enjoyed her weather reports…do NOT like her replacement..and her fake laugh
Good luck era
That’s Carter,s producer, Sarah Deshaies. Essentially Bell is saving money by using a jack of all trades.
Maybe I missed the announcement, because I listen to CJAD less & less … but there was not a word about both departures from on-air personalities. You’d think that coworkers would at least acknowledge your departure! In the meantime, Tom Mulcair, who probably receives handsome pensions from both the provincial & federal governments, dominates the opinion airwaves, with gigs on CJAD, Question Period, LCN & who knows where else.
CTV Regina’s production department was eliminated; commercial and promo production for Regina will now be from Saskatoon, apparently. Although the staff was whittled down to three people, CTV Regina’s production department had a venerable history in southern Saskatchewan, going back for more than 50 years under a variety of names. From the late ’60s through to the late ’80s, it was basically the one place in the province that regularly handled higher-end 35mm and 16mm commercial production.
I believe I did not see any firings at Bell’s Toronto stations. The suits there won’t play withy the Centre of the Universe. Bell Media will ruin local broadcasting the way Toronto-based Postmedia is doing to newspapers. Since Wilde and Tieman were fired from TV I have switched to watching CBC local news as much as possible.
I miss Eramalinda. She not only advised us on the daily weather report, but she always had a little story to go with it and yes, Andrew Carter was very cold with her and I think its because he was very disappointed when Suzanne Deshotels left.
Maybe I’m wrong but more cuts though this may not be from Bell. Morning traffic reporter Lezlie Robinson and afternoon”s Kyra Yeager haven’t been heard in a while. Jill Fitzgerald from Ken Oconners weekend show is filling one spot. Cute how Ken spun her leaving his weather spot “to take care of life after medical issues.” And stressed she was not let go.
I’ve been a long time listener to CJAD alive at 5, but since the introduction of Mr. Carter at 5am to give Trudie Mason more work to prepare intro’s for her news with his stand offish arrogance I’m finding myself in search of a new early morning platform. Bell should have promoted James Foster when Peplowski retired. James has done his time and worked hard if Bell does not wake up soon they’ll find a major hole to fill when he’s offered a position with the competition. what to save $$$ bell media wave goodbye to Candy Andy Carter.
final note: does anyone know were Lezlie Robinson has gone? Or even why CJAD let her go? If she has landed another morning radio Gig I just may become one of their new listeners.
Leslie and Kira Yeager were purged leaving Catherine Woods, Lorne Glazer, Jill Fitzgerald and trusty Marc Chaloub to pick up the extra hours.
It’s all about the Steak Holders,PROFIT,PROFIT,PROFIT with Bell Media.Al the Great talent is leaving our fair city. What Bell Media wants is to hire who will work for peanuts. Bottom line Baby!!!!