MELFORT — Melfort-based radio stations 105 CJVR and CK750 have been bought by the B.C.-based Jim Pattison Broadcast Group.
The purchase is a part of a takeover of Fabmar Communications Ltd. and its four radio station licences (and related assets) located in British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan.
As part of the deal, the company also purchased FabVision, an outdoor signage business in Saskatchewan that includes an electronic sign on Melfort’s Saskatchewan Drive, and online news portals yourtownnews.ca, mychilliwacknews.com and mytowntoday.ca.
The Pattison Broadcast Group also owns three radio stations in Prince Albert, as well as online news site northeastnow.com.
Rod Schween, president of the Pattison Broadcast Group, said there will be no lay-offs as a part of this acquisition.
“No significant changes are planned at this time, nope. They’re successful operations and that’s why we acquired them,” Schween said. “So we acquire stations that are well-run and have good solid teams in them, and this was an acquisition based on the strategic fit into our broadcast company.”
That doesn’t mean there will be no changes at all.
“Well I’ll say this, I said to the team in Melfort today that, ‘there will be change, sure’, because we’re going to do some things differently than they might do,” Schween said. “Now, I don’t want to insult anybody’s intelligence and say there will be no changes, because we’re going to do some things differently, there’s not going to be any personnel changes and there’s not going to be any changes in their culture and service to the communities. If there are changes, they will be changes that the teams in the markets decide they want to do based on their knowledge on running, and billing in this market.”
The same might not be said about the online news portals.
“We have another news site, being Northeast Now, so we haven’t made any decisions on whether we will continue to run two or how we do that, but our plan in the long run will be how we strengthen our service to the community, whether or not there will be two sites or one. We haven’t made a decision on that. If we do go to one it will be about how we improve the service on whatever one we go to.”
The Jim Pattison Broadcast Group calls itself the country’s largest private, western-based broadcast group.
“We’re trying to grow our footprint here and it was a really nice strategic fit.”
