Bell Globemedia’s purchase of CHUM Ltd. will radically reshape broadcasting in Canada, critics say, leaving only two major private media conglomerates, CanWest Global and Bell Globemedia.

The friendly takeover bid of the Toronto-based radio and TV broadcaster, was announced on Wednesday afternoon. Also announced were cuts at CHUM affiliates.

CHUM owns and operates 33 radio stations, 12 local television stations and 21 specialty channels. It holds Citytv and bought the former Craig Media holdings.

The merger folds it into Bell Globemedia, which already holds the 21-station CTV television network, 17 specialty television channels, the Globe and Mail newspaper, and several digital TV channels and internet websites.

It puts CTV, the Globe and Mail and specialty channels across the country in the hands of a single conglomerate, raising fresh concern about media concentration, critics say.

"Concentration is not good, because it does tend to weaken the diversity, the range of opinion and fact being offered," said Suanne Kelman, associate chair of journalism at Ryerson University, in an interview with CBC Radio.

"But this is happening in mainstream media all over the world. It's why a lot people are turning to bloggers and other people who offer ideas you're not going to see in mainstream media," she said. 

Seriously concerned

Stephen Waddell, the executive director of ACTRA, said the actors union is "seriously concerned about the impact this excessive media concentration will have on diversity, competition and choice."

 "Canadians' viewing choices are already limited by the swath of duplicated U.S. product carried by private TV broadcasters. This merger will leave us with even fewer voices and less options for seeing our own distinctive stories," he said in a statement.

Only two weeks ago, a Senate report recommended Ottawa create new mechanisms to review media deals that concentrate print and broadcasting interests in a few hands.

The questions raised by that report should be foremost in Canadian minds, said Paul Schneidereit, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists.

"It really underscores the fact that there's concern about mergers that are taking away independent voices," he said in an interview with CBC Television.

CHUM cuts 281 jobs, reduces locally made programming

CHUM Television started changing its television operations across Canada early Wednesday, before the deal had been officially announced.

It has cancelled and restructured news and current-affairs programming in Ottawa, Calgary, Barrie, Ont., Winnipeg, Edmonton, Vancouver and Victoria.

About 281 full and part-time employees will be laid off across the country, according to a memo to employees obtained by CBC News.

Under the changes:

• Citytv stations in Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg will move from one-hour evening newscasts to a new daily half-hour local news magazine show called In Your City.
• A new daily half-hour national and international news package is to be produced centrally.
• At A-Channel in Victoria, the breakfast program has been axed but it will produce a two-hour A-Channel News program and continue its Vancouver Island report.
• The daily noon news show has been cancelled in Ottawa, while 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts at the Barrie affiliate will be reduced to local stories only.
• There were also cuts in other news and local programming in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Brandon, Man.

Billing the changes as an "enhancement" of local coverage, CHUM claims more resources will go to the Breakfast Television programs in cities such as Calgary and Edmonton, where it will be stretched to four hours.

Most changes were to take place Wednesday, although CHUM said some changes would be made over the next five months.

Citytv Toronto retains 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts.

Heritage minister refuses comment

Heritage Minister Bev Oda refused to comment on the merger and the layoffs, but her office issued at statement saying that "we are not saying we won't ever comment, but we are not commenting at this time."

NDP heritage critic Charlie Angus called the plan for Bell Globemedia to buy CHUM a cause for great alarm.

"It's time for the Conservative government to get serious about the negative effects media concentration is having on Canadian culture and industry competition," he said.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission will have to review the deal.

Separate entity

However, analysts say Bell Globemedia may evade criticism that it dominates many Canadian markets by proposing to operate CTV as a separate entity from the CHUM stations.

In its conference call explaining the deal to analysts, Bell Globemedia said it has had no advance approvals from the federal regulator.

Kelman pointed out that the impact of the deal on diversity of opinion will depend on how close Bell wants to come to news operations.

"This could be worse because it will have to be said of the Bell product that they do not seem to push a particular set of political lines in the same way that, for instance, CanWest quite clearly does," she said.