Tag Archives: Ron E. MacKinnon

| Radio

TSN 690’s Elliott Price, Abe Hefter laid off as part of Bell Media cuts in Montreal

The wave of job cuts sweeping Canada finally hit Montreal today, with the first big names on the list of those getting the axe: Elliott Price, co-host of the morning show on TSN Radio 690, and Abe Hefter, host of the weekend morning show.

I lay out the news in this story in the Montreal Gazette.

“Unfortunately, I can confirm that Elliott Price departed the company as part of the ongoing restructuring at Bell Media,” was the official comment from Bell Media spokesperson Olivier Racette.

Bell Media isn’t offering much comment on departures, and program director Chris Bury referred all comment to Racette.

Price didn’t respond to a request for comment and hasn’t said anything on Twitter, but he did change his Twitter biography:

price-bio

Price’s departure leaves the morning show in the hands of Shaun Starr and Rick Moffat, along with their contributors.

Price has been a fixture on Montreal radio since 1982, notably as a voice of the Montreal Expos.

Hefter, host of The Locker Room, is also gone, Mitch Melnick announced today on the air.

Other confirmed on-air cuts:

The fact that both Virgin and CHOM have ditched their overnight hosts suggests to me that they might try going announcerless overnight. We’ll see.

There are also several behind-the-scenes jobs at these stations that have been cut. Producers, marketing and promotions people and others.

At CTV Montreal, the cuts have been more modest. No anchors or reporters have lost their jobs yet, though they will be filling the vacant Quebec City reporter position internally instead of hiring someone new, according to union local president Susan Lea.

Five positions are gone, all in operations (i.e. off-air jobs), of which one was a voluntary departure with a severance package to protect the job of a younger employee, Lea said.

“We’re expecting a couple more” jobs to be cut, she said.

Lea said CTV Montreal was probably spared more severe cuts like we’ve seen elsewhere because of more severe cuts that happened a year ago. The station is down to about 100 people.

I haven’t heard about on-air cuts at RDS or other French-language properties in Montreal yet.

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| Montreal, Radio

CFQR announcement a whole lot of nothing

Q92 logo

It was billed as a big announcement. Huge. Multiple full-page ads in the paper, lots of announcements on the radio. Everything was going to change at Montreal’s Q92 at 8:45am this morning.

And nothing did. Which makes me kind of cranky because I’m not used to waking up before noon and I’m low on sleep for nothing.

But with parent company Corus Entertainment seeing a 30% drop in profits from its radio division (pdf), it’s clear some management types decided major changes were in order.

Here’s what is changing:

  • The name and logo. They’ve added the indefinite article “the” before the Q. This gives them a new, edgy and unique name (if you don’t count that station in Victoria)
  • The website. From Q92fm.com to 925theq.com, which seems more complicated to me, but I’m not an online marketing expert.
  • The on-air talent. Despite some rumours, the morning team remains the same, but some of the afternoon and weekend people are leaving. Details below.
  • The programming (maybe).They’re promising “more music” as if it’s somehow possible to cram more songs into an hour and still have advertising, traffic and weather. They also say they’ll have more variety, but having listened for a few hours I haven’t heard a single song that screams variety to me.
  • The jingles. Still in the same style, but with a new annoying catchphrase.

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