TVA Group hoped to save its disastrous season with an exclusive media stunt: an interview with global superstar Celine Dion.
After the heavy financial losses suffered by TVA Sports, the 20-minute interview conducted by Jean-Philippe Dion was seen as a breath of fresh air.
However, hopes were quickly dashed. Celine Dion’s performance, broadcast after a series of similar appearances on NBC, CBC, People magazine and the BBC, turned out to be a real flop, to the point of dissatisfying the sponsors and disappointing the public.
The host Jean-Philippe Dion, although seasoned, was not able to work miracles with the 20 minutes allocated. Expectations were high, but Céline only repeated what she had already said in her previous interviews.
Hugo Dumas, journalist at La Presse, gave an uncompromising assessment of the media damage. It is difficult to follow the giants of international information, and TVA has paid the price.
The special program entitled “Céline Breaks the Silence”, broadcast Sunday evening, attempted to delve into the singer’s private life.
TVA heavily promoted this failed event and sold sponsors the high price of a one-off major TV show. In the end, it was the equivalent of a damp squib.
We can compare the situation with the Stanley Cup series, broadcast exclusively on TVA Sports, but which struggle to attract people. We are trying to make it a big event since the exclusive rights were purchased for 720 million dollars, but without the Montreal Canadiens, hockey fans are not at all interested.
Result? The managers are disappointed, the sponsors are unhappy because they feel that they paid top dollar for nothing and in the end, everyone loses money.
Despite this resounding failure, Pierre Karl Péladeau, president and CEO of Quebecor, swears that he has no intention of closing TVA.
However, the TVA Group has shown the exit door to nearly 40% of its workforce. This restructuring includes the overhaul of the information sector and the cessation of internal production activities of entertainment content. But for Céline, we pulled out all the stops to save TVA Sports’ horrible year. Without success.
Among the laid-off employees, 300 work in internal production, 98 are linked to the activities of regional TVA stations, and 149 others are in various sectors of the company. These people were given at least 16 weeks’ notice of termination, according to a company press release.
The TVA Group justifies this upheaval by the media upheavals caused by the proliferation of on-demand digital broadcasting platforms, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple TV+, Crave, TOU.TV Extra, Peacock, Roku, Hulu, and others.
At the same time, advertising revenues are massively absorbed by web giants like Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and arrived.
TVA Group’s television broadcasting sector recorded a deficit of nearly $13 million, compared to $1.6 million for the same period the previous year. It is clear that the traditional television business model is profoundly transformed forever.
Pierre Karl Péladeau continues to point out the repercussions of paid platforms on the television industry.
It showed that these platforms reach a wider audience than traditional television. The Celine Dion interview failure is the best example. Everyone had already seen his interviews with the Americans, the English and the French on social networks. The interview that followed on TVA no longer had anything exclusive.
“We have a duty to save TVA”, said Péladeau.
“It’s more than a brand, it’s a historic vehicle for our culture, our language.” He insisted that this is not the end of TVA and that he wants to remain the owner of the channel.
In any case, it is indeed the end of “exclusive interviews” like the one last night. Celine Dion recalled that she had suffered from vocal spasms for nearly 17 years, a condition amplified by stiff person syndrome.
Excerpts from a show given in Ottawa in October 2019 clearly showed the diva in difficulty, losing control of her vocal instrument.
The problem is that we already had all this information on hand. It’s as if Celine Dion came to repeat the same thing for Quebecers who didn’t understand English.
Céline tried everything to relieve her pain: steam, eucalyptus, anti-inflammatories, and even extreme doses of Valium.
“I went to the maximum and beyond the acceptable dose, I could have stopped breathing, I could have died”, she confided. This revelation had already been making the rounds in the media for a week and questions the responsibility of TVA managers who presented the interview as an “exclusive interview”.
The 56-year-old singer simply repeated ad vitam eternam what she had confided to the Americans, the English, the French…
She doesn’t want to lie about her state of health anymore, but after saying it a hundred times, we got the message. She is now devoting herself to physiotherapy and vocal training to attempt a return to the stage, although the date and location remain undetermined. In short, exactly the same words heard all over the world.
Céline acknowledged that there were limits to functioning like a robot and ignoring her own emotional needs, telling Jean-Philippe Dion: “It wasn’t right, I should have grieved. »
The problem is that she was repeating herself…like a robot…
For TVA, this resounding failure marks a new disappointment in an already very difficult year. The ambitions to bounce back artistically after sporting setbacks were, once again, disappointed.
We have to take our hats off to Pierre-Karl Péladeau for wanting to keep TVA and TVA Sports alive. But at what cost?
