Bell Media cuts CTV, BNN Bloomberg, 45 radio stations sold after BCE layoffs.

Bell Media is suspending several television news shows and cutting other programming after its parent company announced mass layoffs and the sale of 45 of its 103 regional radio stations.

News stations such as CTV and BNN Bloomberg will be affected immediately, according to an internal memo sent to Bell Media employees on Thursday.

The memo, signed by Dave Daigle, vice president of local television, radio and Bell Media Studios, and Bell Media vice president of news, Richard Gray, says weekday newscasts will end on all CTV stations except Toronto.

It will also drop the 6pm and 11pm weekend newscasts on all CTV and CTV2 stations except Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa.

Daigle and Gray said “multi-skilled journalists” will replace the news reporter and technical teams covering CTV National News in Alberta, Manitoba, Quebec and Atlantic Canada, while other correspondent changes will be made in Ottawa.

A day earlier, Bell Media's parent company BCE Inc. announced that it will cut nine percent of the workforce.

The company said in an open letter signed by CEO Mirko Bibic on Thursday that 4,800 jobs would be cut “at all levels of the company.” Less than 10 percent of the total cuts are at Bell Media.

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This round of job cuts is the biggest in 30 years, Bibik added on Thursday's conference call.

Some employees were notified or were to be notified of the layoffs on Thursday, and the balance will be told in the spring. Bibich said the company uses vacancies and natural attrition to keep layoffs to a minimum.

Bell also completes evening programs Discussion, This hour and Top 3 tonight on CTV News, which will be replaced by a four-hour weekday newscast beginning at 6 p.m.

BNN Bloomberg is “optimizing” daytime programming on weekdays to reduce the number of separate broadcasts.

So did Daigle and Gray W5 is moving from a stand-alone documentary series to “multi-platform investigative reporting” airing on CTV National News, CTVNews.ca and other news platforms.

The heritage minister was “extremely disappointed” by the decision.

“I am very disappointed by Bell Canada's decision for many reasons,” Canadian Heritage Minister Pascal St-Onge said at a news conference.

“In the last decade, when those big companies were allowed to buy TV or radio stations, it came with the promise that they would deliver news content. And today they are refusing this promise.”

It's the second major layoff at the media and telecommunications giant since last spring, when six percent of Bell Media's jobs were eliminated and nine radio stations were closed or sold.

The company is selling 45 radio stations to seven buyers: Vista Radio, Whiteoaks, Durham Radio, My Broadcasting Corp., ZoomerMedia, Arsenal Media and Maritime Broadcasting. The sales are subject to CRTC approval and other closing conditions.

Stations sold are in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada.

“We have effectively sold half of our radio portfolio. This is a significant divestment and it is no longer a viable business,” said Robert Malcolmson, Bell's chief legal and regulatory officer.

“We continue to run a viable business, but it's a business headed in the wrong direction.”

BCE will increase its quarterly dividend

While some financial analysts predicted BCE would make changes and lay off employees, “I think it's a lot bigger than people expected,” Agilith Capital portfolio manager Patrick Horan told CBC News.

“The source of this is a really broken dividend policy,” Horan added.

BCE will now pay a quarterly dividend of 99.75 cents per common share, up from 96.75 cents per share, the company said Thursday. Dividends are part of the income that companies pay out to their shareholders, usually on a quarterly basis.

“Typically, companies pay out about 50 percent of their earnings in dividends, and they're about 130 percent of their earnings right now. So I think that's going to force the company to generate more free cash flow.”

“Digital Transformation”

Bell Media is in the midst of a “digital transformation” for both entertainment and news, said Malcolmson, the general counsel. But whether prioritizing digital growth will be a viable way to profit remains to be seen.

He accused the federal government of taking too long to help media companies and the CRTC of being too slow to respond to an “immediate crisis.”

That extends to two pieces of legislation designed to help Canada's struggling media sector: Bill C-18, also known as the Online News Act, which aims to force tech giants to compensate Canadian news outlets for their content, and Bill C-11, which renews The Broadcasting Act requires digital platforms such as Netflix, YouTube and TikTok to contribute and promote Canadian content.

Thursday's job losses at Bell Media are directly related to the regulator's direction on Bill C-11, Malcolmson said.

Ottawa remains at loggerheads with Facebook's parent company Meta over C-18, as the company continues to block news links on its platforms. In addition, the federal government has capped the amount of money media outlets receive from Google's $100 million annual payments to $30 million, with the rest going to print and digital news outlets.

“We've been advocating for reform for years. It's not coming fast enough and it's not going to provide significant help when it comes,” Malcolmson said.

News loses $40 million a year

Bell has battled other regulatory rulings over the past year.

In November, the CRTC ordered telecom giants, including Bell, to give independent competitors access to their high-speed fiber-optic networks at regulated rates.

Bell plans to appeal the decision, saying the rules will undermine the millions the company has spent building the network. On Tuesday, the company asked the federal government to overturn the CRTC's decision.

There was also an application to the Federal Court of Appeal in October to overturn a CRTC decision that extended its broadcasting licenses for another three years.

He said the decision was made without a public hearing and could lead to the regulator's earlier assessment of requests to waive requirements for local news and Canadian television stations last June.

Bell Media's ad revenue is down $140 million in 2023 from last year, and the company's news division is losing more than $40 million in annual operating costs, Bibich said in his letter.

He added during Thursday's call that the company is “shifting our focus away from the highly regulated parts of our business.”

“We want to deliver news, but we want to find a way to make it work,” he said, adding that media companies are facing competition from tech giants as they navigate the decline of advertising and the decline of traditional broadcast media.

On Thursday, Bell said it may further cut network investments on its telecom side because it is at odds with the CRTC over what it calls a “predetermined” regulatory direction.

Asked about the company's image amid ongoing layoffs, Malcolmson noted that Bell's executive team has shrunk in recent years and executive pay has stagnated.