The short answer is that OMNI has lost half of its advertising revenue (from over 80 million to over 40 million) because of reshaping advertising. Others have suggested Rogers has integrated its advertising sales between its divisions and that has caused its loss of sales for OMNI.
Estonian Life asked the speakers what the impact would be of the lay offs to the ethnic communities here ? “Fortunately for the local Toronto community, very little impact in terms of news gathering because we've centralized the news and information programming in Toronto. Its really from Vancouver and Alberta where we had to reduce the amount of reporters and the people on the street collecting those news stories,” said Susan Wheeler. “We were doing a half hour in Cantonese and Mandarin in Vancouver, producing them separately, doing the same in Alberta, now they're just contributing reporters into the Toronto newscast,” said Keith Pelley.
“Considering Vancouver has such a sizeable population was that a wise move?” asked Estonian Life.
“Every decision we've had to make has been a difficult one, every decision we've made has been one we've not wanted to make,” said Keith Pelley.
A number of years ago Rogers imported eight channels from (Red) China pumping Communist propaganda into the Canadian Chinese community through their cable network. It would be hard to connect the cable channels to the media network because the sections of Rogers are separate.
The evening was an interesting one with Susan Wheeler and Keith Pelley listening, asking questions and taking notes. The NEPMCC membership was just as involved as was the Rogers executives.
Adu Raudkivi
