The troubled economy is now hitting television stations from coast-to-coast as CTV announced that it is slashing 118 jobs at its A Channel stations throughout Canada. CTV announced on Tuesday, March 3rd, that the job and programming cuts are a part of the restructuring of Canada's conventional TV sector that has been losing money and experiencing sagging advertising revenues because of the recession.

Locally, A Channel in Barrie (CKVR Television) will cut 24 positions as a part of the national restructuring plan by CTV. A Channel Barrie station manager Peggy Hebden told Canadian Press that the station will be repeating evening and nightly newscasts every morning to fill the time slot previously held by "A Channel Morning" hosted at the Barrie studio on highway 27. The station plans to repeat the 6pm news the following morning at 6am, while having the nightly newscast re-broadcasted at 7am and 7:30am the next morning. Morning viewers will see on-screen updates on the latest news and school bus cancellations.

"We will still be fulfiling all of our conditions of licence and our expectations as far as the CRTC are concerned, we will just have more hours of repeats," Hebden said.

The cuts to A Channel in Barrie come shortly after an announcement by CTV that it will not seek to renew the licences for two other A Channel outlets in Wingham (CKNX Television) and in Wheatley and Windsor in southwestern Ontario (CHWI Television) when they expire at the end of August 2009.

CTV has filed regulatory documents with the CRTC stating that the A Channel properties have continued to be a money-losing enterprise for the company since CTV purchased the outlets from CHUM Ltd. in 2007.

Last year, the CRTC turned down a bid by conventional television station operators who were looking for a fee-for-carriage that would charge cable and satellite distributors for carrying their channels.