TUNING IN
Company transitions from sports to business, comedy in Hamilton, Vancouver, Winnipeg
Bell Media changes frequencies on three stations:
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 cohost 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.
It’s been quite a week for local guys in the National Hockey League.
A few days back, Ancaster’s Cam Talbot was highlighted on the league’s and other websites for a ridiculous glove save that you had to see four or five times to believe. That same day, Waterdown’s Carter Verhaeghe got some highlight-reel love for scoring a winning goal. Which isn’t surprising since he’s been tearing it up this year.
And, as my colleague Steve Milton wrote, former Hamilton Bulldogs star Arthur Kaliyev scored his first NHL goal on his first NHL shot in his first NHL game last Tuesday.
It’s all wonderful, with one small caveat. Few people up here likely saw much of this.
The unique setup of the league this year to deal with COVID-19 has led to unprecedented levels of attention for players who wear the uniforms of teams in the North Division. Media coverage north of the border has focused heavily on the seven Canadian squads. As a result, you’ve likely seen a ton of Edmonton’s Darnell Nurse and Montreal’s Josh Anderson and Ben Chiarot. Zac Rinaldo for the Calgary Flames, too.
But the guys playing in any of the three American divisions? Not so much.
There’s a pretty good chance you haven’t heard Ryan Ellis’s name much this season. No knock against him. He’s still one of the premier offensive defencemen in the league. But there isn’t a lot of coverage of the Nashville Predators here. So he’s been largely invisible.
Same with his teammate Ben Harpur. Same reason.
Pittsburgh’s Mark Jankowski scored the first goal of the season back on opening day. Not just for the Penguins, for the entire NHL. You can catch some Pens games up here. But are you?
Dallas forward Nick Caamano?
Maybe you saw a few seconds of Stars highlights the other night when they wore their garish new glow-in-the-dark uniforms. But actual full games? You’d have better luck finding Danny DeVito browsing in a big-and-tall shop.
Verhaeghe? He plays for the Florida Panthers, which are seen in these parts as often as a Sasquatch. Talbot? Let’s just say his Minnesota Wild don’t get a glut of air time in this country.
Even if you want to expand the search to include former Bulldogs like Kaliyev who aren’t from here but are honorary Hamiltonians, it’s not always easy. Finding a game featuring now-injured St. Louis Blues forward Robert Thomas or Chicago forward Mackenzie Entwistle requires some effort, too.
It’s understandable. The North — Canadian — Division is a genuinely cool concept that has invigorated a lot of fans up here since every game now truly matters and every team but the Ottawa Senators is worth watching. Quite honestly, if the league wanted to stick with this setup once the pandemic passes, you could likely find a fair chunk of the hockey-watching public that would give its thumbs-up.
There are still non-Canadian games being broadcast. But recognizing every North Division game is now servicing two of its markets at a time, highlight shows on TSN and Sportsnet are going superheavy on every one of them. Leaving far less time for the U.S. teams.
And many fans seem to be almost exclusively invested in the all-Canadian schedule.
In this mix, it’s suddenly easy to lose track of the local guys who were previously much more visible.
Sure, you could buy a package to get all the games but most of us don’t have enough time in our lives to watch more than we already are. Besides, a number of the locals have switched teams this season — Talbot, Jankowski, Harpur and Verhaeghe — making it even tougher to keep track of everyone.
That’s too bad. One of the joys of being a hockey fan is seeing kids who came up through the local system make good on the biggest stage in the game. Particularly since there really haven’t been all that many of them.
For a long time, we were in a drought. Then a few years ago things sprung to life and at one point there were 13 players from this area in the league, if only for a brief period in some cases. Now you’ve got to work to find some of them.
So the local guys toil in obscurity for a year.
Not playing worse, just playing under the radar.