Peter Black

Feb. 21, 2024

Local Journalism Initiative reporter

peterblack@qctonline.com

Quiz time: Which notable Canadian coined the phrase “a licence to print money?” A) Pierre Poilievre referring to Trudeau government spending, B) Pierre Poilievre referring to the golden opportunity of cryptocurrency or C) Lord Thomson of Fleet referring to his chain of radio stations in Canada?

The answer, of course (of course!) is Roy Thomson, once the most powerful media baron on the planet. That quote is often mistaken to suggest the “licence to print” pertains to “printed” newspapers, some several hundred of which Thomson once owned around the world. The QCT itself was part of the Thomson empire until the 1970s.

I know a bit about Roy Thomson, having had his portrait staring at me in the office of the newspaper editor who gave me my first job as a reporter. The newsroom, where we pounded away at electric typewriters with the ticker-tape clattering away and drinking bad coffee, was on the second floor in a magnificent Art Deco building in the town centre (now tragically demolished). 

The printing presses thundered away on the ground floor. 

The radio station was on the third floor (closer to heaven) and had all the wondrous sound recording technology of the era, and a studio where the local rock bands would cut their longshot demos.

It was in recording advertisements for radio broadcast where the printing of money was done. Low overhead, no physical product, meager wages for the on-air talent and a mostly captive audience. Thomson, who got his start in the media business selling radios, astutely figured the better way to make a buck was selling what we would now call “content” for those radios.   

That radio station in my hometown, which began broadcasting in 1933, is still on the air, although under new call letters and beaming out “hot adult contemporary” music, whatever the heck that is. It’s now one of the 52 stations Rogers Radio operates in five Canadian provinces.

Although it closed an AM station in the highly saturated Ottawa market in the fall, we’re not hearing much about Rogers retreating from the radio business on the scale of the bombshell Bell Media just dropped.

If you missed the news, Bell Media, a subsidiary of communications colossus BCE,  is cutting some 4,800 jobs from its workforce (about nine per cent of the total) by eliminating many television productions and selling off 45 of its 103 regional radio stations, the largest radio grouping in the country (Halifax-based Stingray Radio is second largest with 71 stations).

What is surprising about BCE’s big “restructuring,” besides the magnitude and suddenness of the cuts, is how quickly stations the media giant put on the block found takers.

In British Columbia, for example, Vista Radio, which already owns 51 stations in the country, snapped up 21 BCE stations in the province, excluding still lucrative stations in Vancouver and Victoria.

The new owner of the stations has vowed to protect jobs and even beef up the staff of some outlets. 

Here in Quebec, there’s a similar situation, albeit on a smaller scale. Arsenal Media, based in Saint-Lambert on Montreal’s South Shore, is a feisty and ambitious company, at least according to its website promotion. 

Arsenal owner Sylvain Chamberland, whose CV includes stints at Radio-Canada and TVA, pounced on the opportunity to acquire a batch of Bell Media cast-offs in the type of regional markets that are Arsenal’s forte.

Adding stations in Rimouski, Amqui, Drummondville, Saint-Hyacinthe and Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu brings the total Arsenal radio … um, arsenal to 25 stations, making it the largest broadcaster in the province. 

It also validates the company’s stated commitment to regional and community journalism.

Chamberland said in an interview in Le Soleil: “Our business model is not to cut jobs, but rather to continue with what already exists and do it better. We launched local information platforms in each of our regions a long time ago. We believe in it. It’s written by journalists and not by ChatGPT!”

Radio may no longer be a “licence to print money” in this era where an ocean of social media, podcasts, digital channels and streaming services compete for the ears and eyeballs of readers and listeners with diminishing attention spans – now less than a goldfish, according to some studies. 

But clearly there is still money to be printed by companies attuned to the everlasting need for local news and information. 

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