More Canwest, Different Mood

Speaking of Canwest...

The company filed for, and received, creditor protection last week. The business unit in charge of the Global TV stations and the National Post was part of this, but not the division that encompasses Canwest's daily newspapers. It's "business as usual" for now, while the company goes through a restructuring process and negotiates debt repayment, but for the employees, it would sure be hard to maintain that "usual"-ness.

It's hard to say what Canwest will look like after this process. With $4 billion in debt, what business units will it keep? What may get sold off? The division in charge of the papers has until Oct. 31 to work out debt repayment, so it's possible that we'll see it file for creditor protection as well.

I spoke to Carmi Levy, an indepedent technology analyst in London, Ont. and he really opened my eyes to the reality of the situation. He said the day of debt-funded media conglomerates in Canada is over -- that it's a business model that isn't just sick, but dead. The big companies were supposed to be able to leverage economies of scale to do things better and faster than regionally-owned operations. However, what happened was that these companies essentially gutted their local operations, giving the consumers of news less.

Even though CBC is a government-funded broadcaster, and is a little off topic, this is where I can personally relate to what Levy was saying. As a child, I remember the CBC news hour at 6 p.m. was what my family watched every night. It Regina-based and gave all the Regina news. In addition, there were local programs produced here in Regina, such as Switchback (my personal favourite). Then came budget cuts and layoffs. CBC now has a Saskatchewan-wide newscast and local programming such as Switchback is essentially a thing of the past. Needless to say, my family doesn't watch the CBC dinner-time news anymore. While it's important to know what's going on throughout the world, people want their fair share of what's happening in their communities.

Going forward, Levy said media companies in Canada will develop new "hybridized" business models -- where conventional and new media will no longer be separate concepts. And this is all thanks to the Internet. He said that in the future, there may no longer be separate definitions between TV stations, newspapers, radio and web publishers. Media organizations will have to incorporate all of these components in order to connect with audiences.

It's unfortunate that Canwest had to be the first media conglomerate to face this magnitude of hardship. Looking back at my previous post, Canwest seems to have realized that it needed more of a presence when it comes to the tech-savvy people that want their information on the go -- it was a step in the right direction, at least in terms of its newspapers. The papers are still profitable, so my hope is that if they do get sold, the people who take them over can run them in a way that delivers even more local content, but still offers a web and mobile presence. If they aren't sold, Canwest needs to keep trucking in the direction it has started to move towards, and get more of the TV side of things on track as well.

Canwest's restructing process could take months, but the outcome will definitely give a clear indication as to the future of the Canadian media landscape.

For now, I wait...