Rogers Sports & Media is cutting 230 positions across the division as it announces it\u2019s shuttering six radio stations.<\/p>\n
The stations, set to go off the air today, include 1130 NewsRadio (CKWX-AM) Vancouver; Sportsnet 650 (CISL-AM), Vancouver\u2019s last remaining sports radio station; 660 NewsRadio (CFFR-AM) Calgary; 960 AM (CFAC-AM) Calgary; NewsRadio 95.7 (CJNI-FM) Halifax; and 570 NewsRadio (CKGL-AM) Kitchener.<\/p>\n
A Rogers Sports & Media spokesperson said those licenses will be returned to the CRTC.<\/p>\n
Employees across the country were notified this morning, with 80 connected to the radio station closures. Overall, about half of the positions impacted\u00a0are corporate and support roles across sales, marketing, and programming, in addition to primarily production and some on-air roles on the television side. Some unionized TV newsroom positions in Toronto and Vancouver are also affected and will begin with a voluntary departure program, set to take effect in August.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe media business continues to face headwinds\u00a0driven by\u00a0declining advertising revenue\u00a0and\u00a0changing\u00a0audience\u00a0habits,\u201d a Rogers Sports & Media spokesperson shared in a statement provided to Broadcast Dialogue. \u201cThese\u00a0changes are part of our plan\u00a0to\u00a0focus\u00a0our\u00a0investment in areas\u00a0that will\u00a0drive growth long-term.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter a thorough review of our radio stations, we have made the difficult but necessary decision to close six radio stations in four markets due to declining audience and revenue trends \u2014 we continue to own and operate 44 radio stations in nearly 30 communities across the country and to invest in local news in the impacted markets,\u201d the statement continued.<\/p>\n
Radio production of Vancouver Canucks games will move to another Rogers Sports & Media-owned station in the market, while Sportsnet will step away from producing Calgary Flames radio broadcasts, the company said.<\/p>\n
It added that the impacted markets will continue to be served by local news content through CityNews on web and social, in addition to television newscasts in Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver, and the CityNews 24\/7 news channels in Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver. Local news, traffic and weather will also continue across Rogers\u2019 music radio stations.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson told Broadcast Dialogue that some adjustments are additionally being made on the non-media side of company \u201cto reflect current market realities as part of our multi-year plan to drive growth long-term \u2013 changes reflect a small percentage of workforce, including corporate and frontline roles.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rogers Sports & Media is cutting 230 positions across the division as it announces it\u2019s shuttering six radio…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120896,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[40931,40932,40933,40934,13490,40935,1242,32032,40936,3391,95],"class_list":["post-120895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-1130-newsradio","tag-660-newsradio","tag-960-am","tag-cisl-am","tag-closures","tag-newsradio-95-7","tag-radio","tag-rogers-sports-media","tag-sportsnet-650","tag-station","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}