MONTREAL – In an effort to reduce operating costs, Quebec private TV network TQS has abolished 40 jobs across the province, just as 60% owner Cogeco and its minority partner CTVglobemedia are embarking upon a review of their investment in the broadcaster.
Employees learned of the cuts from TQS president and CEO René Guimond.
“It saddens us to make this decision,” Guimond said. “We chose to act now to reduce our operating costs so that we can protect our programming schedule. If we hadn’t, the company could have been forced to take more drastic action.”
He laid part of the blame for the network’s financial problems on the CRTC’s decision last May to reject the idea of carriage fees to help traditional broadcasters compete with fee-supported speciality channels.
“This inequity aggravates the problems of profitability that confront the private generalist networks in Canada,” he said in a statement.
In an interview with Cartt.ca in May when the Commission announced its new convention television policies, Guimond warned that the CRTC’s rejection of carriage fees would hurt TQS, arguing that the economics of the francophone market are not the same as in English Canada.
“I thought we had made the clear demonstration that there is inequity between conventional broadcasters and the speciality channels. And the reason number one for the inequity is the issue of [subscriber] fees,” he said.
TQS’s decision came a day after Cogeco announced its year-end financial statements and said that it and CTVglobemedia had asked CIBC World Markets to help review their “strategic choices” in relation to their TQS ownership.
Among the options under consideration will be the sale of TQS, the company said. It also pointed to the CRTC ruling on carriage fees as a factor, along with the recent decision of Radio-Canada to end an affiliation agreement with three regional TQS stations.
TQS’s newsrooms are largely spared from the cuts, with a reduction of three-and-a-half positions. In all, 15 jobs will be lost in both the Montreal and Quebec City stations; another 10 will be eliminated in its regional stations in Sherbrooke, Trois Rivières and Saguenay. The reductions leave TQS with about 600 employees.
The news comes just weeks after CanWest Global sliced 50 newsroom jobs in Quebec among 200 job cuts across Canada.
Glenn Wanamaker is Cartt.ca’s Quebec Editor.
