Bell Media President Sean Cohan says recent layoffs and programming cuts aren’t things he takes lightly, but were necessary to accelerate the company’s goals across the landscape digital media.
On Tuesday, Mr. Cohan made his first public appearance since ascending to the top job by speaking at the first Black Screen Bureau symposium in Toronto, where he used a keynote address to highlight Bell Media’s ongoing commitment to diversity.
In an interview after the speech, Mr. Cohan said he took issue with the way layoffs across the country by the parent company were characterized as “killing journalism.”
In February, Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE) announced 4,800 job cuts at all levels of the company, less than 10% of which specifically affected Bell Media. Bell Media also announced the end of several local newscasts across the country and indicated that CTV’s flagship investigative series, “W5,” would no longer be a standalone show.
Mr. Cohan argued that Bell Media now has “more dedicated journalists in more territories” in Canada than ever thanks to the restructuring. The company says “CTV National News” will soon have staff dedicated to newsgathering in all 10 Canadian provinces, a first for the television news show.
While BCE announced it was selling 45 of Bell’s 103 radio stations as part of the restructuring, Cohan said he believed radio remained “a viable business for the future.”
He claimed the company had sold these stations to “committed local players” who it considered “better homes”.
In his opening remarks at the symposium, Mr. Cohan said an important part of his mandate is creating greater diversity within Bell Media, adding that diversity breeds “good business.”
He said the company wants half of the English and French programs it commissions this year to be generated by creatives from Black, Indigenous, visible minority and under-represented groups. A Bell Media spokesperson later indicated, however, that this objective only applied to English-language programming, “although we always strive to ensure representation in our content on the French-speaking side as well.”
Mr Cohan, who took up the role in November, said he was committed to ensuring the company delivered “differentiated storytelling” by having a “diverse and inclusive workforce”.