Winnipeg, with its massive brick warehouses and wide avenues, is a city with deep and heavy roots. Now home to 684,000 people (about 60% of Manitobans), it remains a bastion of stability, with little population flux and a culture all its own. The Conference Board of Canada expects a 3% growth in GDP for the city in 2003, bringing it to a total of $21.3 billion.

Newspaper

Minor changes continue to unroll at the Winnipeg Free Press, Canada’s largest independent daily. Publishers Rob Stern and Bob Silver formed the Canadian Newspapers Company to buy the Free Press from Thomson Newspapers in December of 2001 after a $150 million offer from CanWest was rejected.

Kathryne Grisim is president of the Winnipeg Media Directors Council and media director at Winnipeg’s Traffic Advertising (formerly Glennie Stamnes Winnipeg). She says the Free Press ‘is deeply entrenched in the lives of Winnipeggers.’ The new owners plan to continue supporting local business and community organizations and sports teams like the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

Already, the paper has increased its sports content and made steps towards attracting younger readers with a new weekly section, The Tab, which offers arts and entertainment news and listings in a convenient pull-out section.

Future changes may include a revamping of the weekly ‘Community Review’ section. Right now this section looks at local news, sports and events. There is talk of making the section more grassroots, with more feature articles and a broader community focus.

The paper has also undergone some reformatting to accommodate an increase in colour positions; proof that the publishers are listening to media buyers’ requests.

Grisim says that the Free Press remains strong because it ‘acknowledges that because news now disseminates so quickly, they have to go deeper into a story to make it newsworthy.’

Television

The biggest news in television is the dismantling of the Television Marketing Group, a joint operation that handled media sales for rivals CTV and Global. Originally created to handle sales for CKY Winnipeg (then a CTV affiliate) and Global, the partnership ended last fall after CTV purchased CKY outright.

Grisim says that the parting was ‘amicable,’ but notes that the competitive pricing one would expect as a result has not materialized.

‘In the past few years, television in Winnipeg has remained largely consistent, without any of the wild rate increases that Vancouver, Toronto and Calgary have seen,’ Grisim says. Now, however, she’s seeing average annual increases of 7 to 8% edge up to 10 or 12%.

‘I think there were some efficiencies to the TV Marketing Group. Now both stations have to support the salaries of two separate schedules being produced. My hunch is that it’s a manpower issue.’

Luke Moore, VP/media director at Calgary’s M2 Universal, also says ‘the merger hasn’t translated into what one would expect,’ but he believes that an increase in inventory demand is likely responsible for rate hikes.

Radio

‘Radio, from my perspective, has been sort of messy,’ says Magda Zachara, media director with Winnipeg’s Taylor George Design. ‘There’s been a lot of changes.’

CHUM recently purchased Winnipeg’s number-two station, in the process changing Magic 99.9 from a light adult contemporary station to a new station called simply ‘BOB-FM.’ The new station plays music from the ”80s, ’90s & whatever,’ concentrating on fun ’80s hits.

Since its August 2002 launch, BOB has maintained a high market share among all age groups, while dispersing Magic 99.9 listeners amongst a host of other stations.

Grisim calls BOB an ‘amazing success story.’

‘I wouldn’t have guessed that BOB would come on as strong as it did, but with one exception, it’s number one in all my categories. It has an older skew, but not with the really light touch that most of those stations have. It skews more towards Springsteen and Mellencamp and Tina Turner and Dire Straits.’

Rogers has since launched a similar station, ‘JACK,’ in Vancouver (see Media Monitor on page 3).

Other news is that CanWest recently obtained approval from the CRTC to launch an FM jazz station in Winnipeg come March (see ‘A new radio player emerges,’ on page 3).