Media

Death Knell for Local Mainstream Media

By Trey Shaughnessy
Published July 11, 2005

The Osprey Media Income Fund just bought Town Media, wich publishes Hamilton Magazine.

This is the final blow to the last locally owned and operated media outlet in Hamilton. Although it moved to Burlington from Main and Longwood, Hamilton Magazine still served Hamilton with a somewhat local coverage (albeit tending more Halton oriented). It is now owned by Osprey Media, based in north Toronto, which will only hasten the distancing from Hamilton that has been happening since the move to Cooke Blvd.

CHCH TV was purchased by Toronto/Winnipeg based Canwest Global. The Hamilton Spectator (daily newspaper) and Brabant (weekly) Newspapers are owned by Toronto based Torstar. The local radio stations (Y108, K-Lite, CHAM, WAVE, CHML, and CKOC) are owned by conglomerates too, none of which are based in Hamilton. However, they tend to provide good local news coverage, particularly CHML.

CBC continues to ignore Hamilton. I never did receive a reply to the letter I sent asking CBC to establish a local presence. They must have thought I was refering to Hamilton Ohio.

CTV has a prescense in Kitchener-Waterloo, CHUM group has a London TV station, and Hamilton – Canada's seventh largest city – remains overwhelmingly underserved. Until Hamilton can be recognized as the socially, economically, demograhically, and geographically unique market that it is, it will continue to be ignored by the mainstream media.

This is where Raise the Hammer, H-Mag, Urbanicity, CATCH, 93.3 CFMU-FM, and Cable 14 come in. Local news, issues and commentary from true Hamilton sources.

Trey lives in Williamsville NY via Hamilton. He is a Marketing Manager for Tourism and Destination Marketing in the Buffalo-Niagara Metro.

His essays have appeared in The Energy Bulletin, Post Carbon Institute, Peak Oil Survival, and Tree Hugger.

And can't wait for the day he stops hearing "on facebook".

0 Comments

View Comments: Nested | Flat

Post a Comment

You must be logged in to comment.

Events Calendar

There are no upcoming events right now.
Why not post one?

Recent Articles

Article Archives

Blog Archives

Site Tools

Feeds