(WIKIMEDIA/Steve999444)
By Ryan Poirier
Shaw Media, the parent company of Global News, announced Thursday that it will be consolidating its production across Canada and restructuring the way they put out news.
“There’s two main changes that we’re going to be doing,” said Rishma Govani, the National Communications manager at Global News.
“In trying to innovate how we’re going to deliver the news there’s going to be two initiatives. So we’re going to move to a different production model that we’re calling a story-centric production model.”
The fast-paced changing journalism industry pushed Global to take a hard look at the structure of their production and how they disperse information.
“It’s no secret that the industry itself, and the business itself is challenging for us and our competitors,” Govani said. “This is the sort of model that keep us in the game, keeps us sustainable.”
The production of late-night and weekend newscasts east of Alberta, including Kelowna, will be moved to Toronto, where local newscasts will be produced by a single-anchor team, Global reported.
“This is the sort of model that keep us in the game, keeps us sustainable”- Govani
“We’ll actually increase reporting assets at the front-line through this in many locations and we’ll be able to increase the number of hours of news that we produce every week, though it is going to be a big change in the way that people traditionally think of television,” Troy Reeb, Shaw Media’s senior vice president of news and station operations, said in an interview with Global Thursday.
Reeb said the total number of layoffs in Canada would be fewer than 30.
The Canadian Journalism Foundation (CJF) reported that the new jobs that have been created include senior vice-president and chief revenue officer, though none of those jobs have been filled yet.
Global’s announcement came just two weeks after CBC announced its “digital-first strategy,” which focuses on evolving to become a multi-channel network, similar to YouTube.