Hamilton TV station cuts Saturday news programs in cost-cutting move

CHCH-TV in Hamilton, Ont., part of Channel Zero (2190015 Ontario Inc.), has ceased broadcasts of news on Saturdays, effective immediately. Going forward, the station will broadcast podcasts at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. The channel will still carry news Sundays to Fridays. News director Greg O’Brien tells The Wire Report that ratings for the Saturday broadcast were far below the levels for the rest of the week. The station needed to make cuts when the Independent Local News Fund (ILNF) expanded to include stations from Corus Entertainment Inc.’s Global TV without a corresponding increase in the total amount available. “We used to get over $2 million out of that fund and this year it was cut by 45 per cent,” he reports. “There isn’t a final number on that because there’s still calculations being done but that’s what happened to us when Global joined the fund.” CHCH, which is Canada’s oldest independent television station, gets about $460,000 from the $100 million allocated by Alphabet Inc.’s Google search engine service under the terms of the Online News Act. That does not make up for the shortfall from the ILNF, O’Brien states. No one is being laid off but some workers will find their hours cut back. A smaller crew will still undertake newsgathering on Saturdays for the Sunday shows. The station has been proactive in explaining its move. It published an op-ed on its website that also appeared in the Hamilton Spectator and the Toronto Star. A broadcast on last Saturday’s 6 and 11 time slots told the audience what was happening and why. “Meanwhile, Meta, Google, and Amazon capture more than 75 per cent of digital ad dollars in Canada while stealing our content to train their AI models,” the news director wrote in his column. “CRTC data shows that since 2018, ad revenues for private Canadian TV broadcasters like CHCH have fallen 25 per cent, a loss of nearly $400 million across the industry.” He wants the foreign behemoths to pay their fair share. “We do not seek ongoing taxpayer subsidies,” the op-ed continued. “Foreign platforms extracting hundreds of millions of dollars from the Canadian market should contribute to funding Canadian news and culture, just as local broadcasters do. O’Brien, the founding publisher and editor of Cartt.ca, says community reaction has generally been positive. “People were happy to be given the reasons why,” he tells The Wire Report. “I’ve been gratified by the level of support shown over the weekend.” ppark@thewirereport.ca

Hamilton TV station cuts Saturday news programs in cost-cutting move

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By Paul Park
|August 31, 2026

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Hamilton TV station cuts Saturday news programs in cost-cutting move

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