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Toronto Media Landscape and Personalities

That's an surprisingly low dollar amount. There were reports that Don Cherry already had a $1M annual salary many years before he was fired, even all the way back when CBC had the national hockey rights and he transferred to Rogers there were scattered reports he was by far the highest paid employee ever at CBC and was about to cross the $1M mark on payroll. All that and he was on only on TV one single day each week for a grand total of about 30 minutes of total time between the early and late games.

That Lisa Laflamme is earning less than that now, several years later, while working on screen five days, and probably working behind the scenes every single day each week is shocking.
An article in today's Star siad she made $350K. It seems one is obviously a typo - I just don't know which one. I don't run in those circles so couldn't even hazard a guess.
 
An article in today's Star siad she made $350K. It seems one is obviously a typo - I just don't know which one. I don't run in those circles so couldn't even hazard a guess.
Lester Holt, who is the head anchor for NBC Nightly News, is reported to earn something like $5M/year on his contract (some sources say it is now several million higher, but those ranges are all on those junky celebrity info websites). I know the size and market are different and everything, but as a comparison point the salary here seems paltry. It's kind of embarrassing that our top news people may earn less than 5% of the salary of their comparables only a few hundred km away in New York. Can you imagine how microscopic the US people must think the Canadians are?

There's probably a few local news anchors in New York, LA, Miami, and Chicago that clear $1M per year too reporting on nothing but car accidents, crime blotters, celebrity wardrobe malfunctions, etc...
 
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Lester Holt, who is the head anchor for NBC Nightly News, is reported to earn something like $5M/year on his contract (some sources say it is now several million higher, but those ranges are all on those junky celebrity info websites). I know the size and market are different and everything, but as a comparison point the salary here seems paltry. It's kind of embarrassing that our top news people may earn less than 5% of the salary of their comparables only a few hundred km away in New York. Can you imagine how microscopic the US people must think the Canadians are?

There's probably a few local news anchors in New York, LA, Miami, and Chicago that clear $1M per year too reporting on nothing but car accidents, crime blotters, celebrity wardrobe malfunctions, etc...

I don't find that at all embarrassing. The U.S. anchors are grossly overpaid; that's embarrassing.

The U.S. is the most unequal society in the developed world and richly over compensates its most affluent, while being equally outlandish in under paying its poorest both in wages and social benefits.

I don't want to compare high-end wages with the U.S. because that 400M CEO means $12 an hour wage-slaves and no paid vacation minimums and 8% of Americans with no health insurance at all, and many more still facing
painful healthcare costs due to deductibles and co-pays.
 
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The pile-on on Bell Media is gaining steam.

BlogTO chipped in; I won't bother w/the the link in this case........but I will mention them to credit this quote: (From Anwar Knight)

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There is apparently an 'open letter' signed by a whole whack of people condemning Bell Media. I can only find on G&M which is paywalled.

If Melling has a wife and daughters at home, he might find his 'time with family' a little chilly.

I love corporate-speak; "shared desire . . to move past the current situation" = 'dear God, distract everyone until they stop caring'.
 
There is apparently an 'open letter' signed by a whole whack of people condemning Bell Media. I can only find on G&M which is paywalled.

If Melling has a wife and daughters at home, he might find his 'time with family' a little chilly.

I love corporate-speak; "shared desire . . to move past the current situation" = 'dear God, distract everyone until they stop caring'.

As the letter appears to have been a paid ad; and is an 'open letter' I will assume no form of copyright is being asserted.

As such I will put it here, in its entirely and the Mods may feel free to remove it if there's an issue:

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Added observation on the above.............so far as I can discern, and I've looked into this.............Lisa's 'going grey' wasn't the issue.
The issues had to do with the budget for the news division and with high handed editorial interventions and staff re-assignments at which she balked.

Melling sounds like a piece of work..........who should probably find another line of work...........but oddly I suspect he'll be pushed out for something that never happened.

Again, I'm not an employee of Bell etc. So info is through the media, reddit and otherwise third-hand, so I can't vouch for its accuracy.
But certainly Melling has denied the grey hair angle. Given what I've heard, I'm inclined to believe him on that one. Though I don't wonder if that is the basis on which he sold the contract termination to his bosses.............as it would probably be a tougher sell to say 'I don't get along with our award-winning, ratings champ anchor who had the temerity to resist my directives' ........ LOL
 
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Long time sports radio and TV personality Stephen Brunt just announced his is retiring. He has covered everything from baseball to the Olympics and published many books. A big loss for Sportsnet whose ranks of talent have already been thinning,

 
There is apparently an 'open letter' signed by a whole whack of people condemning Bell Media.
Diversity in media is important, but this has to be one of the worst recent examples of #brownwashing. You fire an established, award-winning and ratings-leading anchor who happens to be white, so that you can save money by replacing her with a brown guy, presumably paid significantly less.

Racial diversity is good for business but CTV, Bell Media got it horribly wrong

Is the message to all HR and biz leaders that you can save $$ and virtue signal on diversity by hiring cheaper POC Canadians?
 
Another item: CityNews Toronto has scored a huge special guest reporter to cover the Queen's death starting today.
After Bell gave Rogers the gears during their network crash the latter likely jumped at the opportunity to give back something in kind via their CityTV unit.

 
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I missed this earlier this week: Zoomer Media has acquired Daily Hive for $16M. If you haven't heard of that website, it is similar BlogTo but with more general news and sports coverage, and with verticals for several Canadian cities, the Vancouver one seeming to be the most successful, and also their origin point.

This is significant as Zoomer Media already bought BlogTo itself earlier this year, so there may be a brand consolidation push here and an attempt to increase the presence of these brands. Either way, there is now some serious money behind all these sites. They have basically become the new alt-weeklys for cities in Canada.

Zoomer Media was founded by Moses Znaimer of CityTV fame. I assumes he still owns a majority of the business after this, but I'm not sure.
 
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I missed this earlier this week: Zoomer Media has acquired Daily Hive for $16M. If you haven't heard of that website, it is similar BlogTo but with more general news and sports coverage, and with verticals for several Canadian cities, the Vancouver one seeming to be the most successful, and also their origin point.

This is significant as Zoomer Media already bought BlogTo itself earlier this year, so there may be a brand consolidation push here and an attempt to increase the presence of these brands. Either way, there is now some serious money behind all these sites. They have basically become the new alt-weeklys for cities in Canada.

Zoomer Media was founded by Moses Znaimer of CityTV fame. I assumes he still owns a majority of the business after this, but I'm not sure.

Daily Hive itself purchased what was left of Torontoist.
 

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