MONTREAL — Quebecor Media’s TVA Sports is “transforming” its newscasts to a digital-only offering, a move that has resulted in the elimination of 17 jobs.
“Over the past few years, we have seen sports fans’ consumption habits changing, and the pace of this change has accelerated during the pandemic,” a TVA statement read, quoting executive producer Louis-Philippe Neveu. “That’s why, from now on, we will deliver sports news where the fans are, while adding more live sports events to our programming,” the statement continued.
In what it described as a “sad day,” the union representing TVA workers said 17 jobs had been cut in Montreal, including those occupied by permanent employees, temporary workers and some on probation.
The cuts include four reporting jobs, three web editing jobs, a researcher and the remaining jobs in various editing roles.
According to CRTC data, TVA Sports employs 70 people, meaning this would be a 24 per cent cut to staff.
The union said it was too early to determine which employees would be cut, as it is looking to find ways with the employer to “minimize as much as possible the impact of the abolition of these jobs.” TVA’s statement said there would be “some reassignments” of affected employees.
But some TVA Sports personalities are already out the door: Daniel Melançon, who does sports news for TVA morning show Salut Bonjour, and Geneviève Tardif, a columnist for talk show JiC, announced on social media that they have been let go.
Among the shows cut are Les Partants, TVA Sports’s morning news show, co-host Charles-Antoine Sinotte said on Twitter. Sinotte will replace Melançon on Salut Bonjour next week.
TVA said it planned to create news and other podcasts as part of an expanded digital offering.
TVA Sports has struggled to make money since it launched in 2011 as a direct competitor to Bell Media’s RDS. The high cost of acquiring French-language National Hockey League rights in 2014 made that even more challenging. In 2018-19, the service lost more than $17 million, according to data submitted to the CRTC. That was half its loss three years earlier, a change achieved mainly through cost-cutting.
TVA has repeatedly argued that the main thing keeping it from being profitable is unfair treatment from competitors, especially Bell, in its carriage agreements.
In July, Groupe TVA announced it had seen a $42-million drop in its year-over-year quarterly operating income due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which suspended every major sports league for months.
