Usually in this space, we talk about the trials and the triumphs of working in animal welfare. Today, in the face of a huge loss to this community I want to talk about the media.
On Thursday, July 18^th if you went looking for the 6pm news in Kingston, you found only the Global Regional broadcast from Toronto. Earlier that day, Corus Entertainment, the company that owns Global Kingston (formerly CKWS TV) as well as radio stations Big FM, 96.3 and Fresh 104.3, announced massive layoffs in the face of overwhelming financial losses. On-air staff like veteran news anchor Bill Hutchins, radio broadcasters Bill Welychka, Sideshow, Monica, and Derek Bolduc were all let go, along with dozens of other employees.
The crushing loss as a result of this action is devastating. The livelihood of so many local media personalities has been ripped out from under them and we send our love and heartfelt compassion to each person affected by the layoff. It’s also a devastating loss to the community. As a local charitable organization that depends on donations to operate, we have counted on the support of local media to get our message out to the public. In October of 2022 when we hit a single-day record of 324 animals in care, Global TV reporter Darryn Davis was the first to respond to our plea for help. He arrived at our doorstep early in the morning to interview an exhausted staff and to capture images that truly and genuinely communicated our situation to the public. That night, Bill Hutchins introduced Darryn's story at the start of the 6pm news. Bill Welychka took to the air the next morning to talk about it too. As a result, the public became keenly aware of our struggles, and donations began pouring in. The effect of this story and in fact any story that Global TV aired was similar. After Bill Hutchins introduced a story on the evening news, or after an appearance with Bill and Maegan on Global News Morning, I could count on returning to the office to answer a slew of supportive emails, voicemails, and donations from people who had seen the story and wanted to help. This kind of immediate and comprehensive coverage offered by local television was unlike anything else. It gave us a chance to look into the eyes of tens of thousands of viewers, tell our story and make a connection. While I can’t speak for other Kingston area not-for-profits, I suspect they all felt the same wave of sadness when they heard news of the layoffs.
As someone who’s worked in the charitable domain for more than 20 years and in media before that, this sort of sweeping change is not unfamiliar but it is distressing. The once thriving media community in Kingston is fast becoming a ghost town. The radio stations that remain have fewer and fewer resources for news. The newspaper no longer has a brick-and-mortar presence, and TV is now gone. The owners of these outlets would be quick to tell you that they’re adapting to a changing market and maintaining local content but to be brutally honest, that’s lip service. For those of us who depend on journalists, reporters and announcers to communicate our messages, the options have dwindled to a mere handful.
We still have the amazing team of Reid and Ben in The Morning on MOVE 98.3. Their community involvement is a throw-back to another era when media personalities had the resources and the support to get involved in everything from high school road races to city-wide events. We still have reporters like Jan Murphy, Peter Hendra and Steph Crosier at the Whig Standard who will take a call day or night and do their best to tell the story fairly and honestly. Sadly though, their reach and impact is dwindling. Meta’s refusal to share Canadian news through Facebook and Instagram has taken a significant toll. So too has the centralization and corporatization of media in general. Independent ownership of any media outlet has virtually vanished. The two local outliers in this extinction-level event for media are The Kingstonist and MY FM. Chris Vilela, Tori Stafford and their crew at the Kingstonist continue to tell local stories and they’ve done it successfully. Jon Pole's MY FM radio station has done the same in Napanee and soon will enter the Kingston market. They both are locally owned, locally staffed and provide local content every single day. These companies are the benchmark and the template for local ownership in media and I hope that future media providers will look to them for inspiration. While we wait for a transformation or a rebirth of local news and information, we’ll be here doing our best to communicate with you about the successes and the struggles of saving abused, neglected and abandoned animals. Communities need storytellers like Bill, Leanne, Sideshow and Derek. They made Kingston a better, more informed, more compassionate city. We’ll miss them tremendously.