'Terrible for the community': Medicine Hat's CHAT-TV shuts down after nearly 70 years

A southern Alberta television station is going off the air after nearly seven decades, the parent company said Tuesday in a statement.

"It is with heavy hearts that we announce the closure of CHAT-TV, a trusted local television station that has served the Medicine Hat community for the past 68 years," Pattison Media said in a post published on Chat News Today.

The Kamloops, B.C.-based media company cited operational losses, economic pressures, and reduced support for local television as the main reasons for the closure, while expressing regret.

"We've tried to hang on as long as we possibly could," Pattison Media president Rod Schween told CBC News in a phone interview Tuesday.

"Revenue here has been very challenging for a long period of time and COVID only made that worse."

Schween said the writing was on the wall some time ago.

"We made a decision a couple of years ago to keep going, to give it a little more time to see if it would turn around but we just don't see where this operation would ever get back to even a break even standpoint, never mind something we thought was viable in the long run."

'The community suffers'

Ted Clugston, who served as mayor of Medicine Hat from 2013 to 2021, said he was "quite upset" about the closure.

"I spent a lot of time in that studio," he said. "It was almost like a family."

He said that during his time as mayor, he spoke with reporters from across the country regarding issues such as homelessness, but he considered speaking to Medicine Hat's local media to be the most important.

The Homestretch7:40CHAT-TV closing its doors

Medicine Hat lost its local TV station today. We talk to a longtime politician there about the shutdown of CHAT-TV.

The chair of Mount Royal University's broadcasting and journalism program said this is just another blow for local news.

"Every time a community loses yet another local news outlet, the community suffers," Sally Haney told CBC News.

"We know that communities rely on those local reporters to attend city hall, report on the goings-on of the community, and hold local politicians to account. When we see yet another local news outlet shuttered, it is terrible for the community itself."

She said local bloggers and news startups can sometimes help fill the gap, but it's just not the same as having a newsroom of journalists and editors.

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"We've seen the local news deserts expand over the last number of years. Researchers are tracking these gaps and they just continue to grow," she explained.

"We know that democracies suffer when strong journalism outlets are shuttered. Who is covering the community? Who is going to city hall? Who is understanding the impacts of budget cutbacks on health, on city infrastructure?"

Sixteen positions are affected by the closure.