This idea came to me yesterday from a former Pacific Press reporter. He pointed to Canwest's current woes, and wondered if the company might decide to eliminate one of its daily Vancouver newspapers to cope with its credit crunch.
Yesterday, Canwest shares fell to 31 cents after the Globe and Mail reported that the company might seek bankruptcy protection by the end of February.
One obvious cost-cutting measure, according to this former scribe, would be to shut down either the Vancouver Sun or the Province.
In the past, Canwest and the companies that owned the papers before, Hollinger and Southam, maintained both Vancouver daily papers through hard times in part to keep competitors like Torstar and the Sun newspaper chain out of the market.
But with the economy in the tank, it would be foolhardy for anyone to start another daily paper in Vancouver, which eliminates the disincentive to shut down one of the two daily papers.
Canwest could eliminate a huge number of staff, reduce distribution costs, and possibly jack up the price of advertising in its remaining daily paper. That would help the company's share price.
Of course, all of this might be dependent on Canwest requiring a major restructuring. It hasn't happened...yet. It's still early in the game. But if this occurs, you heard it here first.
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Comments
Reading about Canwest's financial woes in the Strait provides a delicious irony for those of us around 40 years ago when shoes were on different feet. The people at Pacific Press smugly reported on difficulties at the Georgia Strait. Troubles caused by a Mayor who directed police harassment aimed at closing down a progressive voice. Mayor Tom preferred the city to be run for the benefit of landlords and developers and the Strait didn't serve aims of the business establishment.
Gee, look who survives.
Hopefully some of the redundant typists working for the McPapers will find more celebrity gossip gigs. Or, perhaps, they might try being real journalists, but I doubt it.
Lest we become too smug about these delightful developments it is essential that independence is restored to the CBC and that Harper isn't able to change our laws to allow Newscorp to swallow up Canwest.
I was making progress when told to put the job on hold. It seemed that the older gents in the partnership didn't want the firm's name associated with a bunch of revolutionaries. A fine argument ensued. Eventually, a compromise emerged. I should return to complete the necessary work and prepare various documents for filing. But, I was to do as much as possible away from the office and any correspondence or reports were to be issued on plain white paper - no company letterhead allowed.
Eventually, the job was complete but my boss worried that, if the client was too happy, they might want more work done. So, in the time honored method of professionals, he hiked the fee, charging about double the amount of our work-in-progress value. That led to one of the boys at G.S. phoning the partner to complain, a call that lasted about 5 minutes. Afterward, I sneaked a look at the billing ledger to see if the poor guys earned a break. Nope, the partner had added another $200 bucks for "client consultation."