Citytv is cutting shows, production staff and on-air talent including veteran CityNews at Six anchor Anne Mroczkowski.

In a statement, Leslie Sole, chief executive of Citytv parent company Rogers Media Television, said the changes “are necessary to align our operations with the economic and regulatory realities of our industry.”

According to Koreen Ott, director of marketing and public relations for Rogers Media Television, in Toronto, the noon news program, CityNews at 5 and weekend newscasts have all been cancelled.

“This is about restructuring our television operations to retrench and rebuild,” says Ott. “It affects our Citytv stations in Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver... and [the cuts amount to] six per cent of our workforce across the country.”

The layoffs are effective immediately and she says “there are no additional proposed layoffs at this time.”

In the statement, Citytv said shows Breakfast Television and CityLine, and CityNews at Six and CityNews at Night will continue to air in Toronto.

A story posted on Citytv’s website says Mroczkowski was laid off after Monday evening’s broadcast and the rest of the staff were told Tuesday morning. One version of the story posted in the late afternoon said many staff were “crying” but that sentence was later deleted.

Ott wouldn't comment on other staff cuts but the story on Citytv's website lists the "remaining on-air staff" and they don't include: Lara Di Battista, Pam Seatle, Farah Nasser, Marianne Dimain, Merella Fernandez, and Michael Serapio.

On Tuesday afternoon, the online biographies for those eight broadcasters were all removed from the website.

Mroczkowski had worked there for 23 years. Di Battista and Seatle are both also veterans.

An unknown number of production staff were also laid off.

According to the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, representing many Citytv staff, laid off were 6 on-air people plus 29 full-time and 7 part-time employees, including directors, production assistants, graphic people, editors, camera people, and one Live-Eye worker.

Rogers Media purchased five Citytv stations across Canada for $375 million in 2007 from CTV, which acquired the ChumCity empire and had to divest itself of the stations due to media ownership regulations not allowing the same company to own two stations in the same market.

“This is the death of local news,” said one former Citytv employee. “If Rogers, which has money is doing this, then what do you think we can expect from the other networks?”

The mood inside the Rogers building was grim, as most employees were fearful for their jobs.

“It’s just awful,” said one employee who was not part of the cuts. “Basically, ever since Ted Rogers died, so did the vision of Citytv as a national network player. Nobody has any vision. The bean counters have taken over and they want to turn us into Omni 3.”

The purchase of Citytv was a signal change for Rogers, which is much better known for providing the cable signal than actually running TV stations.

Its previous experience with broadcasting was with community programming stations, and it’s Omni brand of multicultural stations, which are both much cheaper to run than full fledge TV stations, that buy content from U.S. networks. As well, with only five stations in big cities across Canada, the Citytv brand was much smaller compared to the national coverage of its competitors, CTV and Global.

This is at least the second round of cuts in the media division, with 100 jobs lost in December 2008. In November, the cable giant also laid off about 900 employees, mainly in its cable and wireless divisions, in November.

Citytv Toronto has lost a number of on-air personalities over the past year including former anchors Peter Silverman and JoJo Chintoh.

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The other interesting dynamic is that Rogers is in a protracted fight with broadcasters over fee-for-carriage. The broadcasters have been petitioning the CRTC to allow charging for local television cable, resulting in “Local TV matters” and “Save local TV” campaigns.

“We believe in local television,” said Jamie Haggarty, EVP Television Operations, Rogers Media Television in a press release. “We remain committed to innovation and development of our stations to increase our impact on our local markets. We will focus on quality over quantity.”

As well, in December, Rogers received a license to run 24-hours all news channel from the CRTC. It is unaware how these cuts will affect that as yet created station.