Canwest closes 2 western Canadian TV stations, sells two others

Winnipeg-based Canwest Global  said it will close CHEK-TV in Victoria and CHCA-TV in Red Deer, Alta., by the end of next month. It will also rebrand CHBC-TV of Kelowna, B.C. into an affiliate station of Canwest's Global network. Last month, Canwest agreed to sell two stations in Montreal and Hamilton for an undisclosed sum to specialty TV operator Channel Zero Inc.

This follows a months-long campaign to get the CRTC to force calbe operators to pay a "fee for carriage" for their publicly-available broadcast signals, obstensibly to support local broadcast stations. This network tanturm had ended in a ruling where cable operators and broacasters have a year to find a suitable mechanism to do this.

Let's hope that the cable companies use this to show the CTRC regulators that the networks never meant to save local TV stations, but needed to find another source of cashflow to stem losses from massive amounts of debt incurreed to fund corporate media take-overs in past years. Let's not let the network moguls use this as an opportunity to skewer (te nice word) the Canadian public.

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Is the Broadcast Business Model Broken?

Recently executives from CTV GlobeMedia and Canwest appeared before the CRTC (Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission) to appeal for revenues from cable and satellite operators across Canada or more accurately, their subscribers, like you and me), in order to make their organizations more viable, citing the "Broadcast Business Model is broken".

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What's wrong with traditional media?

A discussion of failings of "traditional" media including newspapers, television and radio.

Mark Ruthenberg, FoundLocally.com General Manager
Opinion, by Mark Ruthenberg G.M.

It’s not that consumer expectations have risen out of reach of these well-established media, but that the executives have found cost-effective shortcuts for creating and publishing / broadcasting content that have short-changed consumers. With the advent of the Internet, consumers have instead chosen to read, listen and watch online what they want, when they want, and where they want. Advertisers follow consumer trends and activity have reacted to this, carefully moving their ad dollars away from their traditional media (which used to be both effective and safe) into online venues, fundamentally threatening the economics of traditional media.

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Review of Advertising Revenues in Canada since 1999

Internet Advertising has outgrown all other ad media since 1999

As consumers have shifted viewing, listening and reading habits, advertisers are closely following their habits.

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Advertising in the Internet Era: Beyond Frequency and Reach

What leading edge ad professionals know: measurable results move beyond Frequency and Reach.

Advertisers are looking for new success-based metrics for evaluating competitive advertising media. See how online media are turning things upside down, especially with the ubiquity of competiing advertising messages in our day-top-day enviironment.

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