RIP (almost) CH

Growing up in the shadow of Hamilton, CHCH TV was our big-city television station. It was like SCTV before there was an SCTV. In the Hamilton era of my broadcasting career, I was fortunate enough to appear on CH and do voice-overs for promos and commercials. 

Over the years, its various owners launched several misguided attempts to rebrand the grand ol’ gal. It began as a CBC affiliate but disassociated itself from the mother corp in 1961, and was the first TV station in Canada to fly completely solo. Every other station disaffiliated from the CBC became part of the CTV network. Not CH. It wanted to go its own way with its own programming. It was the CH superstation, then ON-TV, then E! Ontario and finally, back to its roots, CHCH again. This Franken-marketing eroded the station’s audience, as it shifted away from local programming.

When we were kids, CHCH had Tiny Talent Time, local wrestling and a bunch of other shows, including the only newscast in the world that ever mentioned our hometown of Smithville. (Thanks to a PCB dump, unfortunately, but still…) It was the birthplace of The Hilarious House of Frightenstein, Smith & Smith, The Red Green Show. When I was dropping in weekly to record voice-overs, the only production left in one giant studio was Red Green, so they never had to tear down the set to make room for something else. More recently, the station got lost in the shuffle of the thousand-channel universe as it failed to maintain an identity.

Last week, owner Channel Zero declared bankruptcy and cleared out dozens of staff including longtime employees Matt Hayes, Donna Skelly and Ken Welch. I’m told by one of the victims that they were not given any severance – the reason for the bankruptcy, one supposes. Their news programming falls from 80 hours a week to just 17.5. Channel Zero owns several other television properties, including Bloomberg TV Canada, but the bankruptcy apparently only pertains to CH.

In the 1960s Canadian broadcasting’s governing body, the CRTC, declared that corporate ownership of media outlets would be a disaster, and therefore wouldn’t be allowed. Times change, money rules, and look where we are now. Mom and Pop stations are all but gone and the ones that are left don’t have very good reputations. One such radio station with no local competition recently paid its morning host $15,000 a year and when he said he couldn’t possibly live on that the reply was, “get a second job”. I fear for the next generation of journalists and broadcasters even as I coach and teach them at the college level. It’s always been a competitive industry but now some of its brightest young stars are bailing for more certain futures in PR and consulting. Who could blame them? Not a hundred-or-so journalists and broadcast professionals in Hamilton, who find themselves looking for a job two weeks before Christmas.