UPDATE: Bell Media sells 45 radio stations, including Fort St. John, Dawson Creek, Fort Nelson

UPDATE: Information from Vista Radio has been added.

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. — Bell Media announced Thursday morning that it has sold 45 radio stations, including two in Fort St. John, one in Dawson Creek and one in Fort Nelson.

The rest of the radio stations sold are spread across B.C., Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada.

CKNL, or Bounce Radio, and CHRX, or Move, in Fort St. John, are being sold to Vista Radio.

Vista Radio also intends to aqcuire CKRX, Fort Nelson’s Bounce radio station. 

CJDC in Dawson Creek is also being sold to Vista Radio.

Vista Radio is buying a total of 21 Bell radio stations and has said there will be no layoffs or closures, but the sales are subject to CRTC approval.

Vista Radio president Bryan Edwards says the stations have a total of about 80 employees, and he believes some are understaffed.

Edwards says his company, based in Courtenay, B.C.,  pays attention to the needs of individual markets with local staff that live in the communities, and it doesn’t use centralized programming.

Following the closure of the Alaska Highway News and Dawson Creek Mirror last year, Energeticcity.ca and CJDC-TV News are the only remaining news outlets in northeast B.C. covering the entire region.

Bell Media’s parent company, BCE Inc., announced it was also cutting nine per cent of its workforce on Thursday.

The job cut is the second major layoff at Bell Media following last spring, when six per cent of Bell Media jobs were eliminated, and nine radio stations were either shut down or sold.

Bell chief legal and regulatory officer Robert Malcolmson blames the federal government for taking too long to assist media companies and the CRTC for being too slow to react.

Malcomson also attributes the cuts to Bill C-18, also known as the Online News Act, which was meant to force online sources, such as Facebook, to compensate Canadian news outlets for their content.

British Columbia Premier David Eby responded to the announcement by calling Bell “corporate vampires” who had overseen the “encrapification” of local news by laying off journalists. 

For more information on Bell Media’s decision, click here.

With files from Canadian Press.