Layoffs CHEK in

As of last week, close to 20 employees in CHEK-TV’s newsroom are out of work.

MondayMag.com
September 4th, 2008

The planned layoffs, which came to light late January, saw the employees, most of whom were technical staff, let go in order to shift the operation of the news broadcast to Vancouver. CanWest Broadcasting’s vice president of news and information, Steve Wyatt, said in previous interviews that the layoffs were an attempt to ensure CanWest stations were utilizing current technology and upgrading all of the television stations just wasn’t an economically viable option.

Richard Konwick, president of Local 815 of the Communications, Energy and Paperworks union—which represents CanWest employees on Vancouver Island—says the layoffs won’t effect CHEK’s news coverage.

“I don’t think it will have any effect on local content,” he says “It’s going to make the show look somewhat different, but I think unless you’re really into the minutia of television news, you’re not going to notice the difference.”

Konwick says all the employees received appropriate severance packages and, as far as he knows, none of them are currently working at another CanWest station.

“I think most of them are anxious to get on with their lives after 10 months of knowing they were going to lose their job,s” he says.

When asked if his opinion on the layoffs has softened since they were first announced, Konwick says the situation has panned out as best it can.

“It’s never good to lose jobs, but at least people got what they were entitled to,” he says. “I don’t think you can stop it from happening. Technology is changing so dramatically. What we are doing now, even a couple of years ago people would have said it was impossible. Whether it’s going to be good or bad for the viewer down the road remains to be seen. I think the main thing people have to remember is they will see the local content generated here. That’s not going to change.”

http://mondaymag.com/articles/entry/the-week45/news/

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Their new look is so exciting the audio is having a hard time catching up.  (ie they're haveing lip sync problems)

I guess it has to go to Vancouver then through Calgary and back to Victoria. That's the technology that has cost all those talented people their jobs.

I wonder if the other stations across the country whose news casts are also being run out of Vancouver are having the same problems?  Is it a simple ProcAmp problem - frame synchronizing or a fibre problem?

Video from robotic camera to Chek racks (procamp) to Burnaby's racks, re processed to integrate with control room, and I think from there fibred to Calgary - or it's being shot back to Chek's racks, processed again and fibred to Calgary from there?  (it's been a while) Lots of processing.

I've gotten so frustrated while trying to watch the broadcasts I turned them off on more than one occasion these past two weeks.

I wonder how many people have sampled the competition because of the sync issues?