Lisa LaFlamme chose not to say goodbye on-air before ouster, internal memo says | CBC News
CTV’s parent company says Lisa LaFlamme was given the opportunity to say farewell to viewers before being unseated from the anchor’s chair of the network’s nightly newscast.
Karine Moses, senior vice-president of content development and news at Bell Media, said in an email to staff that the network wanted to give LaFlamme a “proper on-air send-off” to celebrate the highlights of her 35-year career.
But Moses said LaFlamme “opted not to say goodbye to the public” during CTV’s national news broadcast.
LaFlamme said she was ‘blindsided’ as Bell Media ended her contract after more than 30 years.
In a video posted to social media Monday, LaFlamme said she was “blindsided” by Bell Media’s decision to end her contract in what executives described as a “business decision.”
Moses told staff that the shakeup at Canada’s most-watched national newscast was part of a shift toward digital content creation amid “changing viewer habits.”
LaFlamme began her journalism career in her hometown of Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont., in the late 1980s at the television station CKCO, which later changed its name to CTV Kitchener. She would eventually go on to spend nearly a decade as CTV News’s national affairs correspondent, before becoming chief news anchor of CTV National News with Lisa LaFlamme in 2011. There, she won “best national news anchor” at the Canadian Screen Awards five times, including in 2021 and 2022.
Messages sent to LaFlamme through social media since she posted the video have not been returned, while representatives for Bell Media did not respond to requests for comment.
Omar Sachedina is set to take over the anchor’s desk on Sept. 5.
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