Mandarin Punjabi and Local News

Colette Watson: The changes take effect Monday when the local news shows in Cantonese, Italian, Mandarin and Punjabi, are replaced with shows that spend more time discussing subjects in the news, but don't generate actual news reports, according to Winnipeg Free Press. Omni newscasts had production costs of about $9 million last year and brought in $3.9 million of advertising revenue, said Colette Watson, vice-president of television and operations at Rogers. "The math didn't work," she said. "It the magic of every television executive. The Toronto-based subsidiary of Rogers Communications said Thursday that 110 people will lose their jobs, mostly production staff and news reporters, as it pares Omni operations and merges some of the responsibilities with City stations. You need to find the show that will resonate with audiences, so this is what we're doing." Last year, former Rogers Media head Keith Pelley highlighted the financial problems of the Omni stations in an application to renew their licences with the CRTC. He told the regulator that Rogers faced "a very serious financial situation" over certain content requirements, including that a specific percentage of prime time content fits within multicultural guidelines. Viewership has dramatically evolved since Rogers acquired the first Omni multicultural channel in 1986. "For a lot of older immigrants, that was one of the channels we were watching when we first came to Canada years ago," said Peter Chiu, program director at The Cross-Cultural Community Services Association, a service in Toronto that helps newcomers settle in Canada. "But a lot of immigrants are also getting their content online now." Under the new programming, Omni will launch interactive current affairs shows that broadcast in Cantonese, Mandarin and Punjabi. He argued the stipulations were "not essential to upholding the ethnic nature and orientation of the stations." At the time, Rogers also blamed the financial state of Omni on competition from Cantonese-language channel Fairchild Television, based in Richmond, B.C., and Richmond Hill, Ont., and the Asian Television Network, based in Markham, Ont. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.