OMNI satellite farm on Lakeshore Rd roof
A stunning collapse in revenue in just a year or two at Rogers Media has put OMNI-TV in a financial crisis The foreign language-newscasts once watched so faithfully by diaspora populations in Toronto are being knocked out by the digital invasion of broadcasts from “back home.” About a 100 positions from conventional TV operations, many at CITY TV, will be cut. CITY has gone from being the darling of local news addicts to something of a forgotten man among Toronto television stations. The proud cry of Everywhere! has been silenced by the CTV takeover of an all-news license now known as CP24. Things are apparently no better in the west. The multilingual stations air news in Cantonese, Mandarin, Punjabi, and Italian. They have faced increasing pressure from newscasts originating abroad. The Rogers Media unit of Toronto-based Rogers Communications Inc. lost $85.8-million before interest and taxes in its conventional TV operations last year, according to documents filed with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. That was more than half of the $138-million in total losses suffered by Canada’s privately owned conventional TV stations last year, up sharply from $2-million in losses in 2013.
