Facing serious financial difficulties, the Canadian media giant Quebecor is continuing its layoff policy. “The deficit situation in which TVA Group finds itself is simply no longer viable,” declared Thursday, November 2, Pierre Karl Péladeau, president of the group and its parent company Quebecor, in a press release.
The company accumulated a deficit of nearly 13 million Canadian dollars (8.9 million euros) for its television broadcasting sector, compared to a deficit of 1.6 million during the previous financial year. The restructuring of its activities in Quebec will result in the elimination of 547 jobs and the cessation of internal production of entertainment content. The group had already announced the loss of 140 jobs at the start of the year.
TVA Group also announced the optimization of its real estate portfolio: the company says it is “considering the next use of its head office building.”
“Fierce competition” and “one-upmanship”
To explain its situation, the group cites a decrease in “audience, subscriptions, advertising revenue”, but also “fierce competition and bidding wars” in the field of entertainment and sports rights. “Foreign platforms also affect the media on an information level by profiting from their journalistic content without paying them a fair share,” explains the company.
Since August 1, Meta – owner of Facebook and Instagram – has blocked access to news media content on its platforms, in response to a law relating to online information passed in June by the Canadian government. Inspired by what Australia did in 2021, the new Canadian law targets Google and Meta for the moment, and should allow press companies to receive up to 230 million Canadian dollars (158 million euros). , according to Ottawa.
The federal government thus wishes to slow the erosion of the press in Canada for the benefit of digital giants, to which advertising revenues have migrated in recent years.
