TORONTO – It will be a new era at Citytv when parent Rogers Media shortly completes a revamp of the network's creative brain trust. Malcolm Dunlop, executive vice-president of TV programming and operations, is leaving the house on August 30, a month before Claire Freeland, director of programming at Rogers Media Television, does the same.
Cartt.ca has learned the new era at Rogers Media to be unveiled in mid-September will, according to sources, see Dunlop's over-arching programming, scheduling and operations duties more evenly split between the next generation of leadership. Rogers TV division is expected to be built around Dunlop's long-time wingman, Hayden Mindell, Rogers' director of programming. The company is also near to naming a replacement for Freeland, who is moving to indie production.
Dunlop covered the waterfront at Rogers Media, including a stable of conventional and specialty TV channels, including City, OMNI Television, FX Canada, OLN, and the now shuttered CityNews Channel. He brought close to 30 years of TV knowledge to the table, having started in 1985 at OMNI Television, before being promoted to vice president of sales and programming in 2004. His exit, announced closely after Freeland’s, has been greeted with apprehension at Rogers Media, given the division is reportedly under the microscope of Boston Consulting as part of continuing cost-cutting measures.
There's also puzzlement in Los Angeles, however, from City's suppliers over why Rogers Media is messing with success. Dunlop is a well-liked fixture at the L.A. Screenings and is credited with taking a modest Citytv from simply airing movies in primetime to a schedule filled with popular American series like 30 Rock, Modern Family, How I Met Your Mother, New Girl and 2 Broke Girls.
That ratings success came thanks to supply deals forged with Fox and Warner Bros., and more recently packaging buying with Disney. It also put City alongside CTV and Global Television as players at the L.A. Screenings, after years in which the smaller network waited for the crumbs to fall from the table after market leaders finished gorging on rookie and returning U.S. shows.
The Dunlop era at City also saw the channel step up investment in Canadian programming, with mixed success. Canada's Got Talent was an early disappointment (but the company’s ad sales experience with the show caused an alteration in corporate strategy on the OTA side, as Cartt.ca noted here), followed by a commitment to comedies like Seed and Package Deal to complement the performing U.S. comedies on the City schedule.
Despite disappointing ratings for Seed, the homegrown comedy produced by Force Four Entertainment, has a second season in production on the strength of a U.S. sale. City is also doubling down on reality series, with a second season of Bachelor Canada (also from Force Four), and Storage Wars Canada next to debut.
Also in production is The Project: Guatemala, Meet the Family, and the mid-season animated series Mother Up!, starring and executive produced by Eva Longoria.
Dunlop’s departure comes amid a period of fast-pasted change at Rogers, with CEO Nadir Mohammed leaving in January and the media group needing to justify a big bet on bolstering the Toronto Blue Jays roster and its Sportsnet brand so it can contend with market-leading sports channel TSN. The Blue Jays did not morph into a World Series contender this year and Rogers is hoping it will see strong returns for the $172 million paid for The Score, now rebranded as Sportsnet 360.
All of which underlines how, whatever the gains from new comedies and dramas at City, live sports are the future of Rogers Media.
