Bell Media changes frequencies on a trio of radio stations

Company transitions from sports to business, comedy in Hamilton, Vancouver and Winnipeg

The cuts keep coming at Bell Media.

A week after gutting the newsrooms at Toronto’s Newstalk 1010 and Montreal’s CJAD radio, the company pulled the plug on Hamilton’s TSN 1150, Vancouver’s TSN 1040 and Winnipeg’s TSN 1290.

The Hamilton station will now air business news from the Bell Media-owned BNN Bloomberg radio network. According to an email from Bell Media president Wade Oosterman to network staff, the Vancouver and Winnipeg stations will be transitioned to an allcomedy format. “There’s never a right time to make these kinds of changes, other than when they’re required for the stability and growth of the business and the benefit of our broader team nationwide,” wrote Oosterman, who said the changes are “a great example of our strategy in action.”

A senior official at the Unifor union blasted the company for cutting the jobs after taking money from the federal government’s Covid-related Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy program. “This is happening at a time when Bell’s earnings are rising, it has just increased its dividend, and has collected millions of dollars in subsidies meant to protect jobs. This was all about eliminating jobs,” said Katha Fortier, media and health care assistant to Unifor president Jerry Dias.

Last week, Bell Media’s parent company Bell Canada Enterprises reported fourth quarter profit rose to $889 million, up from $672 million the previous year.

The company also boosted its quarterly dividend to quarterly dividend of 87.5 cents per share, up from 83.25 cents per share. BCE collected $122 million from CEWS. Oosterman’s note said the company took the payments because of a collapse in revenue partly due to COVID. “Considering the extraordinary losses in revenue across all of our media platforms and in many other parts of Bell’s business, we did apply for federal wage support … as a supplement to our cross-country programs to redeploy affected team members into service and support roles, which successfully minimized the impact on jobs last year.”

The Star’s parent company, Torstar, has received payments from the CEWS program.

Staff members at two of the affected stations said they received little advance notice of the cuts, and had been preparing to go into work as usual.

Unifor’s Fortier said letting on-air staff go with almost no notice was unfair to them as well as the communities they served. “These are people who’ve worked at these stations for years, and suddenly they’re being let go without even being able to say goodbye to their listeners,” said Fortier.

After an on-air announcement about the change in format, the station in Winnipeg played Green Day’s song “Good Riddance.” Former CFL kicker Troy Westwood, who had been a co-host of the Winnipeg station’s afternoon show, tweeted out thanks to his now-former colleagues. “Much love and respect to the entire TSN1290 team and all involved with the Bell Winnipeg team. We had a lot of fun. Doors close, doors open. Thank you to all of our listeners. It has been a pleasure to debate and discuss the teams and sports we so dearly love,” Westwood wrote.

The Hamilton station had also been the official radio home of the CFL’S Hamilton Tiger-cats. The Ticat radio contract was scheduled to expire at the end of the 2020 season, which wasn’t played because of the COVID pandemic.

In his email, Oosterman said the Vancouver and Winnipeg stations would be featuring a lineup of all standup comedy.

Bell Media owns other stations in all three of the affected markets, including Funny 820 in Hamilton and BNN Bloomberg 1410 in Vancouver.