CHAT Fades to Black

I was doing media training in Montreal last week when I heard the news. CHAT TV in Medicine Hat, which had operated since 1957, was closing its operations.

However, losing a television station in a city the size of Medicine Hat has to send shock waves through the broadcasting community. It left me wondering who's next.

My First Radio Gig

It was June 1977 and I had just graduated from the Radio and TV Arts program at NAIT. I nailed down my first radio job at CKSA Radio in Lloydminister, working as an announcer doing the noon to 4pm shift.

Let me be more specific. I did noon-4pm Monday through Thursday, got Fridays and Saturdays off and then worked from midnight until 6am on Sunday. Weird shift, but I had a job and was working towards something bigger – not that I knew what that was at the time.

I’ve often told the story about my pay. I made $500 a month. A month. Not a week. A month.

I knew I wanted my next job to be doing news, so I took every fill-in shift I could, even though I didn’t get any additional pay. I saw it as an investment in myself. I was learning on the job. I filled in doing radio news and sports and even did TV newscasts when the station got really desperate. I still remember working from the anchor desk in that old television studio all those years ago, wondering what in the hell I was doing.

The company had two television stations – CKSA and CITL, CBC and CTV affiliates respectively.

I left there five months after I started, for a radio news job in Saskatoon. Onward and upward.

I didn’t return to Lloydminister to see the old building until last summer when I was there for media training for a client. The building was still there. The only difference was logos for the radio and TV stations were now prominently displayed on the outside of the building. Branding is a lot bigger now than it was in the 70’s apparently.

It felt strange to be back where it all started, but I was happy to see the old building again.

A couple of weeks ago, the owners announced CKSA and CITL television would be shutting down for good.

Last week, Pattison Media, the owner of CHAT TV in Medicine Hat announced it would be doing the same.

If you don’t think there are major problems ahead for mainstream media, you haven’t been paying attention.

It's the Revenue Stupid

There was a time when you owned a TV station you had a licence to print money. You got a piece of national advertising and got all of the local advertising you could sell.

Certainly a station had lots of expenses. Some local programming was produced, but the biggest single expense was the newsroom. Reporters, camera operators, and all kinds of production people weren’t cheap. Those labour costs added up to one big number. However, the advertising revenue was always a lot more than expenses.

Until recently.

I’ve said for years the biggest single problem mainstream media has are the billions of advertising dollars now leaving Canada going to California to internet giants like Google, Meta and others. There was a day when national advertisers only spent money on TV, radio and newspapers. That was then and this is now and the internet monster isn’t going back into his cage until he tries to suck up every advertising dollar out there.

Sure there are fewer people consuming news in print and on radio and TV, but that’s not the biggest problem. To slightly change the political phase “It’s the revenue stupid.”

Who's Next?

When a community loses a TV station it no longer loses the national programming. That’s not the problem.

These days on cable you can watch CTV stations from over a half a dozen cities in the country. TV shows can be found at different times, not to mention being available online through streaming. If you want to watch the Amazing Race Canada on CTV, you can find it all over the place without having a local TV station.

What is lost though is local news programing because it’s getting harder and harder to find. That’s a big blow to a community, even one the size of Medicine Hat. A major connection to the community is suddenly gone.

People can no longer watch TV to get the latest from City Hall, or find out what’s happening at the Legislature, or even how the local sports teams are doing. The people of Red Deer know what it's like because CKRD TV closed some 15 years ago.

There are other sources of news. You can sometimes get the same information on radio, or perhaps a day later in the newspaper, that is, if your community still has one. 

My fear is what will happen in the future. Like a giant wall made of bricks, mainstream media as we knew it is being taken apart brick by brick.

Medicine Hat is a city of about 70,000 people. That’s not small. People living in Lethbridge and even Edmonton and Calgary must be wondering if they’re next.

Are we far away from the elimination of local news from TV stations across Canada? I don’t think we are. We’ve already seen CTV eliminate most local news across the country, other than at 6pm. When stations close down, everything's gone.

When TV stations start to shut down, especially in a market the size of Medicine Hat, it sends shock waves through the system. You can only do more with less for so long before the grim reaper comes calling.

Who’s next? Unfortunately, we know somebody will be.

Image credit: CBC