The Canadian Broadcasting Company/Radio-Canada announced today that it plans to cut between 1,000 and 1,500 jobs by 2020 as it transitions to a digitally focused news strategy.
The cuts, which the company says will “transform the corporation from the traditional to the modern,” will be paired with emphasis on distributing their content digitally in order to “be even more local, at a reduced cost.”
About 500 production jobs will be eliminated, said France Belisle, a spokesperson for the corporation. About 1,000 employees are eligible for retirement in the next two years and about 300 employees retire from the company every year.
CBC News reported that the reductions would come from staff involved in producing “dinner-hour newscasts,” which will shrink in length from one hour to 30 minutes.
The strategy comes after a long period of retrenchment and cutbacks for the CBC, according to the release. The past seven years have been characterized by “painful and frustrating” rounds of staffing cuts in the disruptive media environment, said Hubert T. Lacroix, the company’s president and CEO, in the press release.
By 2020, the company hopes to double its digital reach to 18 million Canadians, according to the release.
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