CBC and Radio-Canada to cut 800 jobs and some programming

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TORONTO — The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Radio-Canada will cut about 600 jobs and leave 200 more vacancies unfilled as they address a $125 million budget shortfall.

The public broadcaster announced Monday that the CBC and Radio-Canada will each cut about 250 jobs, with the remainder of the layoffs coming from corporate sectors such as technology and infrastructure.

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The company also announced that approximately 200 currently vacant positions will be eliminated.

Some of the job cuts, equivalent to 10 per cent of the organization’s workforce, will take effect immediately, while others will be implemented over the next 12 months.

CBC/Radio-Canada president and chief executive officer Catherine Tate said most layoffs won’t take effect until April 1, and jobs could be saved if the station receives more revenue. As such, the specific staff, departments and programs that will be affected remain in flux. Or funds increase.

“The reason we are taking this phased approach is so that we have the flexibility to react if our fortunes change for the better, and so that we can protect as many jobs as possible.” Tate said Monday. In an interview.

But she acknowledged that the phased approach could put a strain on staff morale, leading them to work for months with uncertainty about whether they would have a job.

“The more transparent you are, the better your relationship with your employees will be, but the flip side of that transparency, in this case, is uncertainty. So that’s the difficult part we have to manage. “It will be,” Tate said.

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The CBC said the cuts were due to “the same structural factors that affect all media companies,” including higher production costs, lower TV advertising revenue, and increased demand from tech giants and This includes fierce competition.

The Crown corporation will also face parliamentary budget cuts starting next financial year, including the end of $21 million in special funding it has received annually since 2021 to help broadcasters deal with the coronavirus pandemic. I predict that.

Tite said CBC was “very fortunate” not to have to make any layoffs during the health crisis.

“During the pandemic, we made it our top priority to best protect our employees because we knew how much people were suffering during that period,” she said.

“Unfortunately, this is part of what we’re living through today, coming out of a pandemic where we believed the economy would recover quickly and be better off than it is now. (But) the media sector You can see that the whole thing (private and public) is all under the same financial stress.”

CBC has already begun taking action to resolve budget challenges earlier this year, reducing spending on travel, sponsorship and marketing by more than $25 million and reducing some technology initiatives. It has been postponed and the filling of vacant seats has been restricted.

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The layoffs announced Monday go deeper and will affect a wide range of employees, including 6,500 full-time employees, about 2,000 temporary workers and about 760 contract workers as of the end of March.

Along with the layoffs, the CBC will cut its English and French programming budgets, including about $40 million in independent production commissions and programming acquisitions. The move will result in fewer renewals and acquisitions, new TV series, episodes of existing shows and digital original series, the company said.

“Will it be a dramatic profit in prime time for the public? No, it’s not,” Tate said.

“But that’s going to hurt over time because it means more repeats, fewer new shows to celebrate, fewer new series to participate in all the awards we win. Because it means that.”

Some series were not renewed as part of the cuts, with Tate saying that CBC “simply didn’t have the budget to make miniseries like ‘Blackberry,’ ‘Bones of the Crows,’ ‘Swan Song,’ etc.” “We may not be able to produce any more,” he warned. ”

News media companies in Canada and elsewhere have been laying off staff over the past decade to cope with shrinking advertising revenues amid a broader digital shift.

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This year alone, Postmedia Network Inc., which publishes the National Post, laid off 11 per cent of its editorial staff in January, Bell Media laid off 6 per cent of its employees, and the publisher behind the Toronto Star laid off 11 per cent of its editorial staff in January. Local newspaper chain Metroland Media Group has cut 605 jobs. Filed for creditor protection.

The CBC’s job cuts come as the government reviews the broadcaster’s mission and reshapes its approach to technology companies, which are swallowing up much of the country’s advertising revenue and hurting news organizations.

In May, then-Heritage Minister Pablo Rodríguez said the federal government was increasing funding to the CBC and exploring ways the broadcaster could reduce its reliance on advertising.

The prime minister’s mandate letter states that the purpose of providing more funding to the CBC and Radio-Canada is to eliminate advertising during news and other public affairs programming.

In 2022-23, CBC’s TV advertising revenue amounted to $288.6 million, of which $215.5 million came from TV advertising and $73.1 million from digital marketing.

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CBC reported fiscal year 2023 revenue of $515.5 million, nearly 21% compared to the previous year, due to increased revenue from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and 2022 Beijing Olympics being held in a single fiscal year. Diminished.

Total government funding for fiscal year 2023 will be $1.27 billion, a slight increase from $1.24 billion the previous year.

But in the latest federal budget, the Liberal government asked all departments to propose ways to cut spending by 3 per cent.

Speaking to reporters in Ottawa ahead of Monday’s CBC announcement, current Minister of Culture and Heritage Pascal St-Onge said a final decision on the station cuts “has not yet been made.” Tait said the 3% cut was incorporated into Monday’s announcement.

Mr St-Onge also blamed the online news law, which requires tech giants Google and Meta to pay for news they link to or reuse on their platforms, to have triggered the cuts. I used it to push back.

The law, which recently signed a $100 million deal with Google to compensate journalism companies, brings “new revenue” to the system, she said.

However, the Liberal government has indicated it will cap the amount of money that the CBC and Radio-Canada can earn under their contracts with Google.

CBC has also been affected by Facebook and Instagram owner Meta blocking Canadian users from accessing news content in recent months.

— With additional reporting from Mickey Jurik in Ottawa

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