By Steve Faguy
MONTREAL — Citing “changes to our business,” Pelmorex Corp. eliminated 14 jobs last week.
The company, which owns The Weather Network/MétéoMédia and manages the National Alert Aggregation and Dissemination System, said in a statement to Cartt.ca that the cuts were “across various business units within the entire Pelmorex organization.”
No additional details were provided.
According to financial summaries published by the CRTC, TWN/MétéoMédia has been seeing a steady decline in revenue in its regulated businesses, averaging 4% a year, as both advertising revenue and number of subscribers has fallen continuously over the past five years, in line with trends in the rest of the industry. In the broadcasting year ending Aug. 31, 2019, the bilingual service had $3 million in pre-tax profit off revenue of $36 million.
Pelmorex, which also has operations outside its CRTC licence including digital services in Europe and South America, has about 400 employees.
“Decisions to eliminate roles are always difficult and are not taken lightly,” Pelmorex’s statement continued. “Last week’s announcement does not change our TWN/MM team’s purpose to tell the most compelling weather stories. Pelmorex is and continues to be focused on delivering engaging, multi-platform weather news and information to consumers and businesses across Canada.”
