Monthly Archives: March 2023

| Media

Métro Média shuts down Montreal’s Corriere Italiano newspaper

Corriere Italiano, a 71-year-old Italian-language newspaper in Montreal, is shutting down.

The announcement was made Wednesday on its website, attributing the decision to owner Métro Média, which bought Corriere Italiano along with Métro and community newspapers in Montreal and Quebec City from former owner Transcontinental in 2018.

In a message to readers, editor-in-chief Fabrizio Intravaia laments that “this community will have less of a voice to express itself, to publicize its activities, its progress, its achievements.” He also seems to lay part of the blame at the feet of the community, asking if the community has supported the newspaper as much as the newspaper has supported it.

That phrasing might be apt in the sense that the paper has noticeably declined over the years, and its shutdown does not come as much of a shock. Its previous issue dated March 9 had only eight pages, despite dropping from a biweekly schedule to what appears to have been a monthly one.

Compare that with Il Cittadino Canadese, which still publishes weekly and whose latest issue is 24 pages and filled with ads.

It might be simple to suggest the community let Corriere die and rally behind the other paper. But Carole Gagliardi, daughter of Corriere Italiano’s founder, suggests giving the paper a “second life” in some unspecified way, and says she’s gotten support from the community.

Will we see an independent community-led resurgence, or is this truly the end of this media institution? Il tempo lo dirà.

| Media

Here’s what commitments Quebecor and Rogers made to get Shaw merger approved

It’s official: Rogers is finally buying Shaw.

The last approval necessary for the deal to go through was given this morning, with industry minister François-Philippe Champagne signing off on the transfer of wireless spectrum from Shaw to Videotron. The companies say they have given themselves an extra week to close the deal (and once that happens I’ll have a lot of changes to make to the media ownership chart).

Champagne’s approval comes with a lot of conditions, and rather than just have them make promises, he had them sign contracts (Videotron, Rogers) with provisions for fines if they break their commitments.

Here’s what those contracts say:

Rogers

  • Must spend $1 billion building out its network to give more people 50 megabit download/10 megabit upload internet access in rural areas, at the same price as urban areas
  • Must “consult with Indigenous communities to create Indigenous-owned and operated internet service providers” using Rogers networks.
  • Must spend at least $2.5 billion on 5G coverage in western Canada within five years
  • Must spend at least $3 billion more on its network aside from that $2.5 billion above
  • Must offer low-cost internet access to more low-income Canadians, and promote that offering
  • Must establish its “Western Canadian Headquarters” in Calgary (what qualifies as headquarters is not defined) and keep it there for 10 years
  • Must “create 3,000 new jobs in western Canada” and maintain them for 10 years
  • Must keep prices the same (or better) for Shaw Mobile customers for five years (Shaw Mobile customers stay with Rogers as they’re bundled with Shaw cable)
  • Must report annually on its progress on these commitments, and post that report to its website.

If Rogers “materially” breaches these conditions, it can be fined up to $100 million a year, or $1 billion total. These are maximum fines, no matter how many conditions are breached.

Exceptions to the fines include:

  • They can’t apply before the deadlines (so a “within five years” commitment can only be fined after those five years, and only for the remaining five years)
  • They can’t apply after 10 years
  • They can’t apply in case of “force majeure” including labour disruption, natural disaster or supply chain issues

Quebecor/Videotron

  • Must keep Freedom Mobile’s pricing (or better), and offer 10% more data, for five years
  • Must offer Freedom pricing at “similar” rates to Videotron’s offer in Quebec
  • Must extend service to Manitoba (via a virtual network) within three years, at prices similar to Quebec
  • Must “maintain an equivalent number of direct and indirect jobs for skilled workers”
  • Must offer new plans in Freedom Mobile’s markets at least 20% below Big Three plans as they existed on Feb. 10.
  • Must offer 5G in its markets within two years
  • Must confidentially share business plans with the industry department upon request
  • Must publish yearly reports on its progress (excluding confidential info)

Videotron has a similar fine structure as Rogers, but it only applies as of Year 3, and has a limit of $25 million total per year, or up to $200 million total. And for whatever reason (Videotron’s lawyers not as good?) its “force majeure” clause is more restrictive, and doesn’t include things like supply chain problems or employee lockouts.

In both cases, the agreement expires after 10 years, so in April 2033, none of these commitments will apply anymore.

What this means

As a recap, Rogers will acquire all Shaw’s cable assets in western Canada, plus the Shaw Direct satellite TV service, Shaw Mobile (customers but not spectrum) and other Shaw assets. Videotron will acquire Freedom Mobile, which serves B.C., Alberta and southern/eastern Ontario, including all its spectrum holdings.

The broadcasting assets involved are minimal, consisting only of the community channels and video-on-demand licences associated with Shaw Cable. Shaw sold the rest of its broadcasting assets to Corus, which continues to operate as a separate company controlled by the Shaw family.

The government is requiring Videotron also expand to Manitoba within three years, because its last major wireless merger (Bell buying MTS) failed to produce a maintain fourth player in that province. Bell sold some MTS subscribers to Telus and others to Xplornet, which created Xplornet Mobile out of the deal, but Xplornet Mobile shut down last year.

So within three years, Videotron will be the fourth wireless player in B.C., Alberta, Manitoba, southern/eastern Ontario and Quebec. That leaves Saskatchewan (SaskTel), northern Ontario (TBayTel) and Atlantic Canada (Eastlink) covered by smaller regional players.

Videotron won’t have wireline networks outside Quebec, which limits its ability to bundle. It acquired VMedia, a third-party internet and TV access provider who provides services using incumbent telecom companies’ networks, as a way to offer a bundle package in the rest of the country. We’ll see how successful they are.

Winners and losers

At first glance, this seems like bad news for a lot of people who don’t like concentration in Canada’s telecom space. It definitely makes Rogers a bigger player overall, which further distorts the disparity between the big guys and the smaller and midsize guys.

For wireless customers in the Freedom territory, it’s a bit of a win, because prices will stay the same or even go down. If the alternative was Freedom shutting down like Xplornet did, that would have been much worse. And Videotron has a much more solid foundation.

For TV subscribers, the difference in competition is relatively low since Rogers and Shaw don’t overlap. The exception is Shaw Direct, which means in theory a Rogers cable TV subscriber in southern Ontario won’t have a satellite service competing for their business because it’s also owned by the same company.

For broadcasters not owned by Rogers, they face a much larger opponent at the bargaining table. If Rogers wasn’t a must-have for any cable TV channel wanting carriage in Canada, it is now. Rogers will be able to demand conditions that are more favourable to itself.

One big loser will be Global News. The CRTC policy that effectively killed community TV funding allows TV providers to funnel money to related local TV stations. When Shaw Cable and Shaw Direct become Rogers, that funding of about $13 million a year will stop flowing to Global News and start flowing to Rogers’ CityNews. Global will then become an “independent” TV broadcaster and be eligible for the Independent Local News Fund, but funding for that fund was established based on the number of independent stations at the time, and it doesn’t have $13 million extra to give to Global. This means not only will Global get less money, but all other independent TV stations (NTV, CHEK, CHCH, and stations owned by Pattison, Stingray, RNC Media, Télé Inter-Rives, Thunder Bay and Miracle Channel) will also get less until the CRTC or federal government can sort out what to do about it.

| Media, Opinion

Five years after La Presse, seven more French-language newspapers go online-only

Are we witnessing, finally, the death of the newspaper?

I don’t necessarily mean it in a bad way. Most of the time when you hear about a newspaper or magazine going “online-only” it’s a cost-cutting measure that signals the publication’s impending death (no matter how much they claim otherwise).

But as the business model for print media changes, the balance appears to be tipping to the point where it makes more and more sense to go online-only even if you still employ dozens or even hundreds of professionals doing daily journalism.

La Presse publisher Guy Crevier explained the math to me 10 years ago, before that publication decided to make the big leap. Publishing a print edition comes with a lot of overhead costs. The pages have to be designed, both in terms of news content and advertising. The newspaper needs to be printed, either at your own plant or by a third party. The newspaper then needs to be distributed through a network of delivery people who need to work before sunrise every day the paper publishes. And you need a subscriptions department to manage print subscriptions and deal with all the issues that come up.

What’s more, many of those costs don’t scale linearly. As print subscribers and print ad revenue dwindle, it costs more per subscriber to produce. And subscribers will tolerate price increases only so much.

In January 2016, La Presse took the first step toward weaning itself from its identity as a newspaper by cutting down to one print issue a week. Two years later, it abandoned print entirely.

Other once-daily newspapers have also taken that first step in going weekly, like Métro. Some, like Saltwire and Postmedia publications, have taken a more gradual approach, dropping Monday editions.

More newspapers dropping the paper part

On Wednesday, the Coopérative nationale de l’information indépendante (CN2i) announced its six newspapers — Le Soleil in Quebec City, Le Droit in Ottawa-Gatineau, La Tribune in Sherbrooke, Le Nouvelliste in Trois-Rivières, Le Quotidien in Saguenay and La Voix de l’Est in Granby — would cease producing print editions at the end of the year. The six newspapers had all dropped down to weekly publication at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, mere weeks after they had been sold to employee cooperatives out of the ashes of Groupe Capitales Médias. (This month the group announced its cooperatives would merge into one to cut down on overhead.)

The CN2i sugarcoated the announcement with news about a new website and mobile app, saying this was the plan all along. They expect to drop 100 print-centric jobs but will do what they can to encourage voluntary departures and otherwise minimize layoffs.

A week ago, Quebecor’s 24 Heures, which was born as a free commuter daily in 2001, announced it too would cease publishing in print. A note to readers was not quite as upbeat as the one from CN2i, talking about grieving but still promising to be active online and social media.

How long before more take the plunge? Maybe not that long.

Quebecor’s Journal de Montréal and Journal de Québec took pride in proclaiming that they would remain print newspapers when La Presse transitioned away from print. But even they eventually had to face the music, and announced in December that they would no longer be publishing in print on Sundays.

The Montreal Gazette, my employer, has also stuck to print editions, partly because its print readership skews older, but even then it dropped Monday print editions.

Le Devoir has also stuck to print editions, in part to separate itself from La Presse. But I would not be surprised if they too eventually decide print isn’t worth it anymore (especially because they’re printed by Quebecor and at the whims of the business decisions of Quebecor’s printing plants).

Will it work?

A decade after the launch of La Presse+, which the publication quickly dubbed its flagship product, things seem to be going well. In its latest annual report, it reported a surplus, which it is using to build a reserve fund. And while the nonprofit is accepting donations from readers, it would still have had a surplus even without those donations. It says 80% of its revenue still comes from advertising.

That’s not to say the iPad app is a runaway success. La Presse has put more effort into its website and mobile apps, understanding that it can’t push everyone toward tablets. And the Toronto Star’s StarTouch project, based on La Presse+, was a spectacular and expensive failure.

But this is proof there’s hope out there for what were once daily subscription newspapers. If they are willing to invest and innovate, and stop trying to prop up the old business model by cutting expenses until they whittle themselves into nothing, they might be able to come out of this.

Unfortunately, for a lot of publications, the focus isn’t so much on innovation as it is on finding magical solutions like getting Facebook and Google to give them a bunch of money.