A few moves I feel the need to comment on.
- Bell Canada slashing 4,800 jobs, selling 45 radio stations
I didn’t realize there were that many people still working there.I kid, but only a little. In the last few years that company has been gutted until there’s nothing left to gut, and then somehow gutted some more. But in fairness, they only brought in $382 million in earnings this quarter, so what’s a struggling enterprise to do?
At what point do we stop taking Bell seriously as a media organization? Its radio stations are mostly nationalized, automated husks of what they used to be, what’s left of the local news is getting more and more unwatchable all the time as people who work cheap assume positions on air that they clearly aren’t ready for not to mention that like half the stories on our Kitchener newscast come straight out of Toronto and are of little interest to anyone around here, the specialty channels are mostly slapdash garbage (The Comedy Network is nothing but reruns you can find on 100 other stations, Investigation Discovery spends several hours each day running the same three shows on a loop and what in the hell is the original Discovery Channel even supposed to be now? It’s a total mess.), and I’m sure I could go on. the product we’re getting screams “WE GIVE UP!” Why not just make it official, guys?
- Firing a president with a solid mind for and track record in his business, one who has the respect of many of those working under him and who brought the company to levels of creativity and respectability that it hasn’t had since maybe ever is certainly a choice. Replacing that guy with a fella who talks a lot about revenue streams and operational efficiencies? Also a choice. Wouldn’t be my choices, but I’m not in charge of TNA.
Yes, anthem terminated Scott D’Amore, and it sounds like they did it for all of the reasons you would imagine a company doing something like that.
“So you’re saying that the company is gaining momentum and that you believe the best way to keep things on the upswing is for us to invest in the product? Sir, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave. You clearly have no grasp of modern business.”
We have to give the new guy a chance, of course. Maybe everything will turn out great. Anthem does deserve credit for keeping the company afloat when it damn near died a few years back, so I’ll wait and see. But anyone who pays attention to these sorts of things in basically any industry knows how it generally goes.
Good luck to Scott D’Amore, and to TNA. I know which one I think needs it more.
- Vince McMahon. What the hell do you even say about something like this? I’ve wanted him gone for years because he sucked at many parts of his job, but having him go down in history as a horrific sexual predator wasn’t at all how I drew up the exit strategy.
For me, Vince McMahon is the ultimate example of having to separate the artist from the art. Wrestling is, no joke, one of my favourite things in life, and Vince McMahon is a huge part of that. You can’t just ignore him and hope he goes away, but you also can’t let him define everything about the thing that you love or see yourself as endorsing him because you happen to love a thing that he spent decades making himself the face of.
I don’t know if every single allegation made against him over the years is true. Chances are none of us ever will. But lord knows that there’s more than enough out there to make you think that yes, most of them probably are. And it’s nice that after all this time, it’s finally caught up to him. My only hope now is that he faces some real accountability before it’s too late. Shame isn’t enough, because he’s shown himself many times to be shameless. Banishment from his life’s work isn’t enough, because he’s still rich beyond belief thanks to that work. Making all of the people whole that he’s hurt in one way or another is impossible, but not being able to buy his way out of actual consequences for once would go a long way.