Update 5/30: Rogers announced today that CityNews will debut as a local cable network serving the Toronto area in October.
“We’re taking the number one news radio format in Canada, 680 News, and bringing it to television under the brand of CityNews Channel,” said Scott Moore, President, Rogers Broadcasting Ltd.
“By incorporating our trailblazing and trusted news brands from CityNews, 680 News, and publishing – including Canada’s most trusted news magazine, Maclean’s – CityNews Channel is poised to be the destination local news channel,†Moore said.
Toronto will presumably be the first of a network of CityNews outlets covering Canada. Rogers has come up with an integration program to merge its radio, television, and publishing divisions on a local basis. Should it succeed in Toronto, this will be a trend worth watching as it spreads to other markets.
Since our original report, a few more domains were registered for local outlets for the brand: CityNewsCalgary.com, CityNewsEdmonton.com, CityNewsMontreal.com, CityNewsOttawa.com, CityNewsQuebecCity.com, CityNewsSaskatoon.com, CityNewsVancouver.com, and CityNewsWinnipeg.com.
Original Report 5/24: Following the rebranding of its FAN Sports stations in Calgary and Toronto under the Sportsnet brand, Rogers is planning on bringing the CityNews brand to its All-News stations across Canada.
Rogers registered over 100 domains with different variations of names including CityNews and CN appended to the frequency for the following stations: 570News CKGL Kitchener, 660News CFFR Calgary, 680News CFTR Toronto, News1130 CKWX Vancouver, 1310News CIWW Ottawa, News 88.9 CHNI Saint John, News 91.9 CKNI Moncton, and News 95.7 CJNI Halifax. There are also CityNews domains for the two SportsNet Radio stations and Macleans Magazine.
To give an example of the domains registered for 660 in Calgary, Rogers has: 660CityNews.com, 660CN.com, 660NewsCityNews.com, CityNews660.com, CN660.com, News660CityNews.com, and .ca equivalents.
Since we’re not complete experts on the Canadian media landscape from our perch in New Jersey, we consulted our friend @airchecker who tells us that Rogers uses the CityNews branding for all its newscasts on its CityTV stations in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and Winnipeg.
Although all the five “City TV” stations have local morning news/infotainment shows (known on each station as “Breakfast Television”), isn’t Toronto’s CITY-57 the only “City TV” station that still has a news department of any substantial size??
Outside of that area, the branding might not have much synergy, unless there is going to be a joint radio/TV news operation in each city where there is both a “City TV” and “City News” radio outlet, and each combined radio/TV newsroom will have enough manpower to restore local evening and weekend TV newscasts.
Rogers owns a lot. Sports, for example, can come from Rogers Sportsnet television.