Canadian media giant Quebecor announced Thursday it will slash the workforce at its broadcaster TVA by nearly one-third and wholly restructure its news division as losses deepened.
The company’s broadcasting segment reported in the third quarter a year-to-date loss of nearly Can$13 million (US$9 million), compared with Can$1.6 million for the same period last year.
“The deficit TVA Group is currently running is simply no longer sustainable,” said Pierre Karl Peladeau, president of both TVA and its parent Quebecor.
The restructuring of its operations in Quebec province will see 547 job cuts, a consolidation of newsrooms for its various broadcast, newspaper and digital publications, and the end of in-house production of entertainment content.
This follows TVA’s elimination of 140 jobs earlier this year.
Quebecor said in a statement it was “a time of crisis for the global media industry.”
Broadcasting in particular, the company said, has faced “shrinking audiences, declining subscriptions, falling advertising revenues, fierce competition and aggressive bidding for entertainment content and sports rights.”
The traditional television business model, it specified, has been eroded by the proliferation of streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+.
Meanwhile, it said there has been a “tectonic shift in advertising spending to the web giants.”
Some 80 percent of Canadian advertising dollars now go to Google and Meta, according to government data.
“These are not short-term changes but a long-term trend that is reshaping the broadcasting ecosystem,” Quebecor concluded.
