A decision to slash production at OMNI TV flies in the face of Rogers Media’s commitment to boost multicultural programming, says the union representing about 35 Toronto-area workers affected by the cuts.

“Instead of investing some of the $12 billion it earned last year, Rogers has reduced news to and for a variety of ethnic communities,” said Communications, Energy and Paperworkers vice-president for media Peter Murdoch.

He said Toronto-based Rogers received regulatory flexibility from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to ensure that it could meet demand for linguistic diversity while maintaining a viable business model.

Murdoch said it also made performance commitments to South Asian and other ethnic communities that will see reduced service due to the production cuts at OMNI.

“Taking news and information from ethnic communities in Vancouver, Toronto, Edmonton and Calgary . . . shows that caving in to never-ending demands from broadcasters like Rogers for less regulation does not increase and improve programming for Canadians, but reduces and weakens it,” Murdoch said.

Rogers in an email said it continues to respect “all the terms of condition of our licence,” remains committed to ethnic programming and will deliver news in four other languages across its OMNI network, as well as continue to air programming in more than 40 languages.

A CRTC spokeswoman said the watchdog would have to investigate further to determine if Rogers’s production moves put it out of compliance with its conditions of licence for OMNI.

In an announcement Thursday, Rogers said the 24-hour CityNews Channel, introduced in October 2011 to compete with all-news channel CP24, which is owned by rival Bell, would cease to operate. A notice was posted on the channel and in the ticker: “CityNews Channel is no longer available. Thank you to our loyal viewers.”

Roger in a statement said it was also making programming changes to eliminate OMNI’s English-language South Asian newscast and cease OMNI operations in Alberta.

“Today, we made changes to the company’s television strategy to reflect evolving viewer habits and the global structural shift in advertising,” said Scott Moore, Rogers Media’s president of broadcast.

Moore said the company’s broadcast news resources in Toronto will focus on 680News radio and CityNews on City.

A spokeswoman said 62 full-time jobs will be eliminated in areas including operations, production, writing and reporting. She said veteran broadcaster Gord Martineau will remain with CityNews on City while Kevin Frankish and the rest of the Breakfast Television on-air team will not be impacted

“While difficult, these changes enable us to continue to focus our efforts where we know the market is growing, while helping us to effectively manage our costs,” Moore said.

Media experts said CityNews Channel failed to gain a distinct profile and market share from strong rivals including CP24, with a CRTC filing showing losses at the channel last year.

Rogers said the channel will show graphics over 680 News audio until the end of June when the station goes off the air.

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The company said a decision has not been made about what will fill the CityNews Channel spot on the digital cable dial, adding that the channel’s licence will be returned to the CRTC.

OMNI Television in Calgary and Edmonton will continue, but original content will no longer be produced out of those two locations.

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