And so it begins. CTV announced today it is not applying for license renewals for two small-market ‘A’ network stations: CKNX-TV in Wingham, Ont., and CHWI-TV in Wheatley, Ont. (which serves Windsor).
A whackload of broadcast stations from CTV and Global have licenses up for renewal this year. Not only is the media meltdown hurting their bottom lines (or, more accurately, their creditors) and the world economic crisis making it worse, but with a forced switchover to digital broadcasting in 2011, this is the ideal time to decide to throw in the towel for small-market stations rather than start investing in new transmitters.
In its press release, CTV implicitly blames the CRTC’s decision to turn down their money-grab for their decision to shut down the station. It also sounds like the network hopes this will prompt the CRTC to change its mind.
CTV-owned stations in southern Ontario: CTV (blue), A (green) and the two stations being shut down (red)
Local news is expected to be taken up by London’s A station and Kitchener’s CTV station. It’s unclear if the transmitters themselves would be shut down or converted into rebroadcasters.
I got a letter in the mail today from Videotron saying that they’re upping the basic digital cable price by $1 a month (plus taxes) as of March 15. I wouldn’t have minded it so much (hey, times are tough, right?) if my bill hadn’t already gone up by $1 a month (plus taxes) when Videotron decided to cancel one of my channels and then charged me a new, higher rate when I changed my lineup (because it was a “new” service).
So why are they charging more now? Well, all the investments they’re making in infrastructure (that won’t affect me), including all those jobs they’re creating in Quebec.
And those investments have made a difference, after all (emphasis mine):
Customer surveys indicate that our customers’ satisfaction level remains high; indeeed we are in the top league of suppliers of cable TV products in Québec.
Well, if Videotron is one of Quebec’s top cable TV providers, then it must be good, right? And if customer surveys reveal high satisfaction, I’d be stupid if I wasn’t satisfied too. I mean, it’s not like Videotron has an absolute monopoly over digital cable TV in this area and is abusing that to suck as much money out of customers as possible, knowing full well that their only other option is another customer service nightmare with Bell’s satellite TV.
Taking a look at parent company Quebecor’s latest quarterly financial report (PDF), I see that Videotron made $579 million in profit in the first nine months of 2008. Mind you, most of that money was taken up by amortization and capital costs, which left a paltry $150 million of actual profit from Videotron’s 1.7 million customers (which works out to about $100 profit per subscriber over nine months).
So I can really see how that extra $1 a month is vital to the future operation of Videotron’s services.
One of these days, newspapers (especially crappy ones like Metro) will lose that prestige that allows them to abuse students who are so desperate to get into their dream career they’ll work for free.
The newspaper dates back to 1926, though its downfall began in 1996 when it was acquired by Transcontinental. In an effort to save costs, the community newspaper chain (which owns just about all of the community weeklies in the Montreal area, except The Suburban) cut staff and increased “efficiencies” by having the newspapers share content and design. It even went so far as to rename the Monitor the West End Chronicle, essentially making it a zoned edition of another newspaper (and confusing plenty of readers).
Transcon brought the name Monitor back last year, but by then it was too late. The paper had lost all its personality, and people stopped reading it.
I’d wish it luck online, but the website is so crappy (Transcon cookie-cutter messiness that’s more interested in pushing other Transcon products than featuring local content) that without a significant redesign I’m pretty sure it’s on its way to failure as well.
The Monitor’s final print issue will be Thursday, Feb. 5.
Early Saturday morning, management at the Journal de Montréal locked out 253 of its employees, mere minutes after an agreement with the union not to launch a labour dispute had ended. The lockout apparently came during the night, late enough that workers would still contribute work to the paper, but early enough that management could sneak in a note to readers about the labour disruption.
Both sides, naturally, blame the other for failing to negotiate. In reality, both sides have held firm on their demands since the contract expired on Dec. 31, and a lockout has been all but inevitable when both sides left the table this week.
Journal management plan to continue publishing during the lockout. The union is also planning a publication called Rue Frontenac, which right now just has a video of employees who are on the picket lines.
Rue Frontenac
In what has become the norm for journalist labour disruptions ever since the Journal de Québec’s incredibly successful MédiaMatinQuébec, the union launchedRueFrontenac.com, a website which they will use to continue working as journalists. Unlike MMQ, there are no plans for a print version of the paper. Right now the website contains a video with black-and-white pictures of locked-out employees. They’ve also started a Facebook group.
The Journal’s side
In its press release announcing the lockout (conveniently available in English), the Journal says the Syndicat des travailleurs de l’information du Journal de Montréal “has left the company no choice.” It says the lockout is needed because of the “urgency of the situation and the need for far-reaching changes to the Journal de Montréal’s business model”.
The company suggests there were pressure tactics that were disrupting the functioning of the newspaper, which is the first time I’ve ever heard of such a thing. Naturally, they don’t hint at what those tactics might be.
In its analysis of the current economic situation facing newspapers, it stresses the need for the Journal to have more flexibility with online operations (the reason it doesn’t have a real website is because of restrictive clauses in its union contract) and the need for employees to become more efficient. This, of course, means they want to lay off a bunch of them:
“…as it will be impossible to maintain all jobs at the paper, we have already made a commitment to offer employees who will have to leave the Journal generous separation packages accompanied by relocation support.”
The press release closes on the fact that the Journal’s workers enjoy some of the best salaries and working conditions in the Canadian media industry. This is true, and a source for much jealousy among fellow journalists like myself. But as Patrick Lagacé points out, the Journal makes no mention of not being profitable (suggesting that it is still very profitable). Any cost savings from payroll would go straight toward that bottom line.
In a two-page letter to readers in Saturday’s paper, editor Lyne Robitaille says they want to increase, not decrease, the number of journalists working for the Journal. She also says the union’s suggestion that the paper made $50 million in profits in 2008 is false, though she refuses to provide budget figures to corroborate that statement.
The union’s side
The STIJM’s press release focuses on how this lockout will affect families, which probably won’t elicit as much sympathy as they think considering (a) their working conditions are disgustingly generous and (b) they’re getting very generous strike pay (76% for two years) because of the massive fund that’s been built up since the Journal first started 45 years ago.
They declare outright that anyone who does their work (24 Heures employees, Journal de Québec employees, or those of mysterious fly-by-night news agencies) are scabs, and they call on advertisers and readers to boycott the paper.
The union says it wants the Journal de Montréal to start a website, and all their contract demands is that management negotiate it with them (translation: the union has to approve any plan). They say they want a professional site, not a carbon-copy Canoe-branded dumping ground for articles and photos (like what they’ve done with the Journal de Québec).
The issues
Most of the points of dispute are the result of management demands for changes to the existing contract that the union has refused to consider. They include:
Increasing the work week from 30 hours (4 days) to 37.5 hours (5 days), with no extra pay
Laying off 75 employees
25% pay cut for classified employees
20% reduction in benefits for all
Clauses that would give new hires fewer rights than existing employees
Flexibility to reassign workers to do multimedia work for the website
How this will end
This conflict could easily last for years. The Journal has plenty of sources from which it can draw “content”: The Journal de Québec (ironically), 24 Heures (where they just hired a bunch of people), Canoë, the Sun Media chain, and perhaps even TVA and LCN.
Meanwhile, the union has a vast strike fund, as this is the first labour disruption to hit the paper since its launch 45 years ago (part of the reason for that is management concession to union demands, which is why their contracts are so generous).
The Journal de Québec lockout lasted 15 months before an agreement was reached. And the two sides there were closer together than they are in Montreal.
Long labour conflicts tend to end when the union’s finances have run out, employees are demoralized, and exhausted management throw them a bone with a sweetened offer. Both sides make concessions, but the union side will make more.
Expect an end similar to what happened at the Journal de Québec. The union will agree to a longer work week, though at a salary cut much less than what Quebecor is demanding. Multimedia flexibility will be granted and the Journal will finally launch a website (though it will be of poor quality like the JdQ’s). And the Journal will gain the right to make layoffs, but with enhanced severage packages. These are all just gut feelings of mine, so take these predictions with a grain of salt.
Hear ye hear ye
One thing that might shorten this time period is the courts. A huge decision was handed down last month that decreed much of the work used for the Journal de Québec was scab labour. Though Quebecor is appealing that ruling, it severely restricts their options, No mysterious come-from-nowhere press agencies can be used to fill space, and reporters from other Quebecor-owned media can’t be assigned to do work for the primary benefit of the Journal.
There will almost certainly be disputes in court over this. If the STIJM can knock down enough of the Journal’s options, it may force them to stop publication and move fast on a new offer. If the STIJM loses enough cases (which is unlikely in a province with such strong pro-union values), their situation could become hopeless and they’d be made more willing to concede important points.
One thing is for sure, this won’t be solved over the weekend. So go ahead and cancel your subscriptions.
How this affects The Gazette
My coworkers are obviously paying a lot of attention to this development, both out of general curiosity and because we are set to vote on a management proposal for a new contract on Sunday. Hints of an impending lockout are spreading via rumour, but there’s no way to tell if this is a serious threat or not until after the vote.
The union executive is strongly encouraging employees to vote against the contract offer, as it affords little protection against the outsourcing of jobs to nonunionized Canwest employees.
The folks from Rogers Wireless have been calling me incessantly for the past week or two. They always call twice, from an unlisted Toronto number, and never leave a voice mail.
To get them to stop, I finally answered today. As I expected, they were trying to get me to sign on to a fixed-term contract by “offering” me a brand new phone.
Except my phone works fine. Sure, the plug for the charger needs to be jiggled a bit before it works, and the exterior buttons turn the ringer off when it’s in my pocket. But I can still make and receive calls and text messages.
So I told the guy I wasn’t interested. Then he decides he wants to sell me on cool new features, but I’m happy with what I have.
I ask him if there’s anything he can offer me that would reduce my bill and keep the same features. Then he pulls out this “exclusive offer” where I get 100 daytime and 1000 evening/weekend minutes for $15 a month, $10 cheaper than my current plan (which also includes unlimited incoming calls). Knowing that I only use about 100 minutes a month anyway, I figure it’s worth it (evenings also start earlier, 6pm instead of 8pm). I tell him to go ahead.
He also gets me to change my features package for another one at the same price which gives me more text messages and has caller name ID.
But when he told me I’d have to sign on for 36 months, I hestitated. I don’t know where I’ll be in 36 months, and I don’t know if I’m ready to commit that much. No problem, he says, he can do it for 24 months instead (that’s apparently the minimum).
So in exchange for a 24-month commitment, my already cheap cellphone bill is now $10 cheaper per month, and I have more features.
So if Rogers is calling you to get you to sign a new contract, consider the following:
If you’re happy with your phone, tell them that and see what kind of plan features you can get instead
Ask them what they can offer you to reduce your bill instead of adding new features
Don’t readily accept a 36-month contract. See if they’ll reduce the commitment to 24 months. (After those 24 months, you can bet they’ll be calling again to repeat the process.)
Do a quick calculation in your head to see if it’s worth it. If they’re not offering a significant discount, don’t accept a new contract. Either get a new phone or tell them you’re thinking of switching to a new, cheaper provider.
The deal means four of the STM’s six unions have contracts. The two remaining ones are smaller professional unions representing about 400 employees in total. Presumably a disruption in either of those won’t affect regular service as severely.
Le Devoir this morning reports that concilitation talks at the Journal de Montréal (fun fact: next door to conciliation talks for The Gazette) have broken down and a lockout is now imminent. An agreement to keep labour peace expires on Friday, so employees could be out the door as early as this weekend.
The report breaks a media blackout imposed on both parties by the conciliator, so neither side can confirm whether this is true.
The gulf between both sides is huge. Quebecor is demanding just about every point in the contract be changed in its favour, a total of 233 points of dispute. The union is fighting this, arguing that even in this economic climate the newspaper is raking in millions of dollars in profit.
(UPDATE: News hit Twitter today that the lockout had already begun at the Journal, which would have totally showed how Twitter has scooped the mainstream media, if only it was true. Steve Proulx sets the record straight, and adds that the Journal has not changed its bargaining position at all)
As expected, various media outlets used the insane hype of the Obama inauguration to take out the trash and announce layoffs, hopeful that the news will be buried in a corner at the back of the business section with all the Obamamania coverage going on.
Astral Media is “reorganizing” across Canada, eliminating 23 jobs. The company issued a news release saying it wants to “sincerely thank these employees for their contribution and wishes them the best of luck for the future.” The cuts include Rob Braide, former head honcho of CJAD/Mix/CHOM. Braide is now acting as a consultant.
What’s so extreme about it, sadly, isn’t that it demands complete exclusive rights, including copyright, over all work submitted, or that it demands writers waive all moral rights, or that it demands retroactive rights to all past submitted work, or that half of these demands are so over-the-top that they probably wouldn’t stand up in court.
What’s horrible is that this is for magazine freelancers, who once upon a time were treated with more respect and professionalism than newspaper freelancers.
And what’s worse is that so many aspiring writers are so desperate for a byline and so naive about what it will mean for them that they’re willing to work for peanuts and will sign this agreement without giving it a second look.
Not many of you read the print version of my newspaper. Probably even fewer of you look at the classified section anymore. Craigslist and others like it have gutted what was once the most reliable of revenue sources for newspapers. What used to be the thickest section of the paper only a few years ago (recent enough that even I remember it) has now become the smallest, even when you include the comics and puzzle pages.
But while inexpensive listings like furniture and electronics have almost completely disappeared, high-ticket items like cars and homes are still around. The few bucks it costs to put a listing in the paper is still such a tiny fraction of the total cost that it still makes sense. And so the classified section, though skewed toward those two categories (plus employment ads), lives on.
Last week The Gazette redesigned its classified section. At least on days when the classified section is its own section. Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays it’s in the Driving section. Saturdays it’s in the Homefront section (which now also includes the Working section), and Sundays it’s an insert in the Sunday Sports tabloid.
The Gazette's old classified layout
The Gazette's new classified layout
The new layout is a standard one which also appears in the Vancouver Sun and Ottawa Citizen:
Ottawa Citizen classified section
It’s not just a new layout, though. The point of the redesign is to emphasize Canwest’s new classified websites, powered through a deal with California-based Oodle. The new classified websites combine paper listings (through Canwest’s niche classified websites like househunting.ca and driving.ca) and online listings, some of which are free. The Gazette-branded page is here.
Gazette classified website, powered by Oodle
The biggest change that’s being hyped is that the paper will finally begin accepting classified ads online for the newspaper and the website. Some are free online (garage sales and community events, which people wouldn’t pay to post anyway), and others are still very expensive (like employment ads), which will serve to weed out the cheap stuff and hopefully bring in some of that desperately-needed revenue.
The flip side to accepting classifieds online is that there will be less work done on the phone. Opening hours have been reduced from 68 hours a week to 38 as weekday evening hours and Sundays are cut. The union worries that effeciencies will eventually lead to redundancies and layoffs of classified staff.
But it’s a long overdue move considering the staggering decline in classified advertising and the labour saved in having people type in their own ads online.
A standards body that Bell Canada doesn’t belong to has reached a decision in a case that Bell refused to participate in, where the only evidence was heard by Bell’s chief rival (Rogers), and has ruled against Bell, only to have Bell outright reject the ruling and do nothing about it.
Doesn’t that make you feel better?
Now Bell can continue to claim to be Canada’s fastest network, even though a ridiculously one-sided decision has said that’s not true.
Some Canadian media companies reported earnings this week, but everyone’s eyes were on my parent company Canwest. And by “everyone” I mean “The Globe and Mail, the CBC and the Toronto Star”, and by “eyes” I mean “daggers of hate”.
Canwest’s earnings report showed some bad numbers, made worse by both the current economic situation (which doesn’t look highly upon companies with a lot of debt) and the newspaper crisis. There are suggestions that the company might have problems making its debt payments and may be forced to sell assets, though upper management is forever optimistic (at least in its intracorporate literature). A bright spot apparently is that the National Post showed a profit for the first time, making the free-market economists they have as columnists seem slightly less hypocritical.
Unsurprisingly, the Globe had fun at Canwest’s expense, with a coupleof pieces lamenting the company’s impending doom.
I’m on a mailing list for job postings related to editing, you know, for when that six-figure executive position comes up with the corporate jet. I just haven’t bothered unsubscribing.
Even though I’m not looking for a job, I read the emails out of curiosity.
One I’ve seen a few times is from a trade magazine publisher. Trade magazines are usually high-budget affairs because they’re sent to highly-paid professionals and a lot of money is spent on advertising and otherwise communicating things between people in this industry.
The position is a “junior editor”, who is responsible for editing and proofreading, assigning material to freelancers, deciding on editorial coverage, “managing multiple projects simultaneously” and working on the design.
Doesn’t sound particularly “junior” to me, but maybe some of those things are exaggerated.
The position requires a B.A. in communications (or equivalent) and professional editing skills. Knowledge of Quark Xpress and bilingualism are listed as “assets”
It’s entry-level, but professional.
The starting salary? $13/hour
And yet for some reason I keep seeing this position posted every month or two. It’s almost as if the salary is so insultingly low that the people who apply are all horrendously unqualified.
Sadder still, I’m sure you can come up with even worse examples.
