'Losing an icon': Long-running Lloydminster TV stations abruptly shut down

Chris Edwards · CBC News

· Posted: May 18, 2025 7:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 10 minutes ago

The proprietor of 2 section tv stations successful Lloydminster unopen them down connected Tuesday, abruptly terminating the jobs of 19 employees and ending much than 60 years of section broadcasting. 

Stingray Group, a media conglomerate with respective twelve vigor and tv stations crossed the country, announced the closure of CKSA-TV and CITL-TV successful a unit gathering connected May 13. A erstwhile worker who mislaid her occupation connected Tuesday said connected societal media that determination was nary precocious announcement of the shutdowns. The stations were closed down that day, denying the workers the accidental to nonstop retired a farewell broadcast.

CKSA began broadcasting successful 1960, portion CITL launched successful 1976. Both were affiliates for larger outlets including CBC, Global and CTV.

Steve Jones, the president of Stingray Radio, said the fiscal concern of the outlets had been deteriorating for years and became particularly dire aft the COVID-19 pandemic. 

"It was an perfectly agonizing decision," helium said. "The fragmentation of audiences crossed antithetic integer and streaming platforms, and distant from over-the-air television, has been a large factor. The migration of immoderate advertisers implicit to integer has been a origin arsenic well."

According to Jones, the stations' revenues declined by much than 50 per cent implicit the past six years.  

Jones said Stingray spent months trying to find a purchaser for the stations and that the company's determination manager for Alberta spoke to the politician of Lloydminster astir the closure.

But Mayor Gerald Aalbers disputed that claim.

"This was a full surprise," Aalbers said. "I would person surely welcomed the accidental to astatine slightest effort and alteration their minds if that accidental had been fixed to me. But it wasn't. So I was conscionable successful this overmuch successful the acheronian arsenic the employees who got their quality Tuesday morning."

Aalbers said people successful Lloydminster, which straddles the Alberta-Saskatchewan border, and the surrounding communities volition present person to trust connected Edmonton and Saskatoon for section news.

"It was deeply, profoundly saddening from the position that we're losing an icon successful our city," Aalbers said. "It truly rips the cloth of the community.

"How is assemblage accusation going to beryllium shared? How are sporting events being recorded and captured for the future? It conscionable opens up a full clump of things from the position of the city's communications."

Aalbers besides said the nonaccomplishment of the stations is indicative of the wider occupation of section quality diminution successful Canada.

"There's been a batch of speech successful the state astir however we effort and support Canadian media content," helium said. "Certainly CBC, CTV, Global person each provided large sum crossed Canada, but who fed you that accusation with a large lawsuit present successful Lloydminster? It was our section TV station."

Lloydminster continues to person astatine slightest 1 section newspaper, the Meridian Source, and is inactive location to respective section vigor stations, including 1 owned by Stingray Radio. Jones said determination were nary plans to unopen down immoderate of Stingray's vigor stations successful the area.

'Lloydlove': former reporters measurement in

CKSA and CITL were known for fostering journalists astatine the opening of their careers, and spawned a diaspora of salient reporters that fanned retired crossed the country.

"I genuinely don't judge I would beryllium astatine TSN if it wasn't for CKSA and Lloydminster," said TSN Ottawa bureau main Claire Hanna. "I was capable to descend my teeth into truthful galore antithetic sports, but besides truthful galore antithetic jobs wrong that, that I learned that I similar to study and I similar to anchor."

Hanna, whose archetypal full-time occupation was astatine CKSA, said she's disquieted the diminution of section tv stations volition starve young reporters of the opportunities to larn earlier moving connected to larger stations.

"Young radical who are entering this manufacture won't person a spot to enactment their teeth in, train, larn what it takes to beryllium a journalist," she said.

"Are we conscionable going to commencement throwing them connected aerial astatine TSN without a batch of experience? And that concerns maine for the prime of journalism that we're going to beryllium delivering astatine a nationalist level."

WATCH | TSN's Claire Hanna describes however hard she worked to get her archetypal occupation astatine CKSA: 

"It was conscionable a fantastic place," said Brian Mudryks, who present works arsenic a SportsCentre big and play-by-play announcer for the Montreal Canadians, but did a stint astatine CKSA astatine the opening of career.

"Young radical that were learning however to broadcast could bash a lot, and evidently marque mistakes, but get amended and larn the craft."

The presumption closures travel years of section stations shutting down crossed the country. According to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, astir 2.5 cardinal Canadians present unrecorded successful a postal codification with either 1 oregon zero section quality outlets, treble the number in 2008.

Private broadcasting outlets successful vigor and tv person gone down by 9 per cent since 2008, with closures astatine CTV and Corus driving a peculiarly beardown diminution successful 2024.

For communities with less than 100,000 people, each state and territory but Ontario has seen an implicit diminution successful the fig of section quality outlets.

"It's truly bittersweet to maine for the young journalists, and it's besides truly disappointing for those communities due to the fact that I cognize however overmuch what we did meant to them too," said Carly Agro, a erstwhile Sportsnet Host who launched her sports reporting vocation from CKSA.

"We were doing those communities and those radical a truly important service. We were telling them the stories and showing them the things that they truly cared about," she said. 

"If we weren't doing it, those things wouldn't get the attraction that they deserved."