For Whom the Bell Tolls: CHUM Marches On

I might sound like an idiot for bringing this up, but Citytv's broadcast of the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) special, "Saturday Night's Main Event," has a strange parallel to a major news story.  

Five years ago, WWE purchased Extreme Championship Wrestling's (ECW) assets en route to becoming North America's only major professional wrestling promotion.  

ECW lives on these days as a WWE brand, but no one is confusing this revival with the original ECW.  It'd be hard to do that. ECW prided itself on being different than what was out there in the world of pro wrestling and there hasn't been a promotion that has replaced ECW in the hearts of fans since 2001.  ECW wasn't perfect, but its legacy is like that of few wrestling promotions in history.  When it died, a part of wrestling history went with it.

CHUM Limited has a similar legacy.  Channels like MuchMusic, SexTV, Citytv, FashionTelevisionChannel and BookTelevision have cemented CHUM as one of the few iconic companies in Canadian narrowcasting. CHUM foisted Ed the Sock, Speakers Corner and Sook-Yin Lee on an unsuspecting world, to be sure, but it also gave Canada the cult film channel Drive-In Classics.  

CHUM established a reputation for innovative concepts, like the CHUMCity Building at 299 Queen Street West in Toronto with its giant windows and open office/studio concept.  MuchMusic USA competed against MTV, managing a successful run against the lifestyle/music behemoth before the channel changed ownership and became Fuse. Will CHUM's legacy be as strong as part of Bell Globemedia (BGM)? That remains to be seen.

No matter Bell Globemedia's success in passing its C$1.7 billion purchase of CHUM through the scrutiny of the Canadian Radio, Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).  Canadian broadcasting has already changed.  

Citytv viewers in Edmonton, Vancouver, Calgary, and Winnipeg might now see Gord Martineau's face on their television screens from this point on—local news on those stations has, for all intents and purposes, ceased to exist.  Two-hundred and eighty-one jobs have been lost, and local news for Citytv stations has been and/or will be scaled back.  

Whether Citytv stays independent or is made a separate brand of Bell Globemedia, the big media companies have at least threatened to grow bigger, focused primarily on maximizing profit per brand.  Media mergers have come of age in Canada.

Article Author: Cameron Archer

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