Tag Archives: 24 Hours

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Postmedia/Torstar deal results in almost 300 jobs lost as dozens of newspapers shut down

It’s been a while since we had news about triple-digit job cuts. Today’s news is that Postmedia (my employer) and Torstar have come to an agreement where they swap dozens of newspapers and shut most of them down.

No cash is being exchanged in the transaction.

Most of the newspapers going either way are Ontario-based community publications, but there are four major-market free dailies affected: Metro Ottawa, Metro Winnipeg, 24 Hours Toronto and 24 Hours Vancouver. All will close.

J-Source reports that Postmedia’s closing of ex-Torstar papers will result in 244 job losses. Torstar’s closing of ex-Postmedia papers will lay off another 46, for a total of 290.

Competition Bureau approval is not required for the transaction, the companies say, so there’s no government regulatory step required for the deal. The bureau did nothing to stop the deal between Postmedia and Quebecor that saw major-market dailies come under the same roof. Nevertheless, the bureau says it will review the deal after the fact.

Unifor has unsurprisingly condemned the shutdown.

As bad as the news is, and as many communities are losing local coverage, the deal won’t be cutting the last local paper out of most communities. Many are community papers covering parts of cities that have a daily, or competed directly with another newspaper being kept. Exceptions are the tiny town of St. Marys, near London, and Meaford, near Owen Sound.

There’s also Barrie and Northumberland, which lose dailies but are still covered by weeklies.

More coverage and reaction from:

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Postmedia to buy Sun Media’s English papers/websites for $316 million (if the Competition Bureau agrees)

I just woke up, and I’m still not sure I’m entirely conscious because I’m seeing that Postmedia (my employer) is buying Sun Media’s English newspapers — a total of 175 of them — and digital assets like Canoe.ca for $316 million. (Postmedia press release, Quebecor press release)

The transaction would have to go through the Competition Bureau, which quickly issued a statement saying it will examine the transaction (as it would for any transaction of this type).

The transaction includes the big Sun papers in Toronto, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Calgary and Edmonton, plus the 24 Hours papers in Toronto and Vancouver, the London Free Press, and a lot of community newspapers.

The transaction does not include the Journal de Montréal or any other French-language papers. It also does not appear to include the Sun News Network, which will make for an interesting situation there because of how that network and the Sun are tied together.

This deal follows another in which Quebecor sold its Quebec community newspapers to Transcontinental for $75 million. Both appear to be a way to shed legacy assets and build up cash to strengthen Quebecor’s position as a telecom company and potential national wireless player.

The Competition Bureau also reviewed the Transcontinental transaction and concluded that, where competing papers were acquired, an offer to sell one had to be made. That eventually led to the sale of 14 of them.

If I had to guess, I’d say this situation would be similar. The Bureau probably won’t allow the two major paid dailies in cities like Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton to be owned by the same company, and would force Postmedia to sell them (or their existing broadsheets). Similarly for areas where both have community papers. And in Vancouver, where it would own three of four papers, and Toronto, where it would own three of six, it might be forced to make sales there too.

And breaking up the Sun chain sounds like it would be a disaster. Those newspapers share a lot of resources, not to mention branding. So it’s hard to see the Ottawa/Toronto/Winnipeg/Calgary/Edmonton Sun not ending up with the same owner.

We’ll see how it works out. The Transcontinental/Quebecor deal took almost a year to work through the system, and I suspect it will probably be next summer before we know who owns what as a result of this.

The $316-million value is about 1/5 of what Quebecor paid for Sun Media ($989 million in 1999) and Osprey Media ($576 million in 2007) to acquire those newspapers, though subsequent moves means there are some adjustments to that comparison.

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Quebecor cuts 360 jobs, shuts down 24 Hours in Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton

Triple-digit job cuts in major media companies seem to have become so commonplace these days. It’s not even the first time it’s happened at Quebecor Media (500 job cuts last fall, 90 cuts at TVA last month, 600 jobs in 2008).

On Tuesday, the company announced it is reducing its workforce by 360 jobs through “restructuring initiatives”, and killing half its 24 Hours free daily network of papers. Ottawa, Edmonton and Calgary, where Quebecor’s Sun Media also produces paid dailies, will no longer have 24 Hours newspapers. The last editions of those papers will be Aug. 2.

That leaves three: Montreal and Toronto, where Quebecor says the large mass transit systems warrant the continued publication of a free daily, and Vancouver, where there isn’t a Sun Media paid daily.

Quebecor is also pulling the plug on eight community newspapers:

  • L’Action Régionale Montérégie (Québec)
  • The Lindsay Daily Post (Ontario)
  • The Midland Free Press (Ontario)
  • The Meadow Lake Progress (Saskatchewan)
  • The Lac du Bonnet Leader (Manitoba)
  • The Beausejour Review (Manitoba)
  • Le Magazine Saint-Lambert (Québec)
  • Le Progrès de Bellechasse (Québec)

There’s some blah-blah-blah about investing in new technologies where the young people are at these days, but the job cuts make it clear that those investments won’t involve many people.

The news comes just after the editor of the Toronto Sun was left jobless.