Employees prepare offer to buy Victoria TV station

Employees at B.C.'s oldest privately owned television station say they have a plan to buy it from the owners to stop it from being shut down.

CHEK-TV in Victoria was slated to go off the air by Aug. 31 after Canwest Global Communications announced last month it could not afford to keep it running.

About 40 employees still working at the station and private investors are putting their own cash into the deal  to buy the station, news director Rob Germaine told CBC News.

"We have a number of investors — potential investors who are business operators on Vancouver Island — that see the value in CHEK news as a community station. It's a heritage station, the first TV station in B.C., and they want to see the continuance of CHEK and CHEK News, as do the employees here," Germaine said Tuesday evening.

Germaine did not release the price they were offering to pay, but said the group plans to draft a letter of intent on Wednesday and submit a formal offer as soon as possible.

Even if a purchase goes through, Germaine acknowledged, the station will face long-term challenges.

"The real question I think is: Can this station make money? And we are proposing a completely different model than the way CHEK has operated in the past, much more locally oriented,  and we have a business plan and we believe it can be successful," Germaine said.

CHEK first went to air as a CBC affiliate on Dec. 1, 1956, three years after the CBC opened B.C.'s first station, in Vancouver. The station closure one is of two announced in July by the financially troubled Winnipeg-based media empire.