Thank you for your question, Mr. Champoux.
Obviously, we bought the stations to grow them, not to keep them as they are.
That said, the stations are in good shape. We've bought stations that were in worse shape. Initially, we bought a lot of stations that were on the verge of going bankrupt or technically bankrupt, and we were able to turn them around. In this case, though, the stations are in good shape.
I want to echo something Mr. Gonez said, which I found interesting. Obviously, we are humble and take great pride in our stations, but I do want to make two or three other points.
It's true that radio is boring. It's a bit square. For me, though, radio is still the literal lifeblood of news and information in Canada. That's the first point.
Second, I was careful to point out that we have digital platforms in each of our regions, and that is fundamental. Generally speaking, they replaced the local paper. Our platforms get a good bit of traffic. We have more than 100,000 subscribers, and $60 million to $70 million views each year.
I want to add something important. Meta has been talked about a lot, and I'm not trying to say that I am for or against the bill. I do want to say, though, that Meta has no effect on us. Why? Because, for the past 10 years, we've been focused on building a relationship with our listeners and readers. We boldly took the initiative of going after them one by one.
When I see everyone panicking all of a sudden, I think to myself that they should have known. This isn't the first time Facebook or another platform has changed its algorithm. BuzzFeed disappeared overnight, as did media company Diply in Canada. Every media company has to own up to its responsibility. I somewhat agree with Mr. Gonez on that. Media companies need to take responsibility and work to build their relationship with their audience. I watched the absolute shock of most traditional media companies, as they came to the sudden realization that they had to go to the source. Of course they have to go to the source, but that's always been the case. That is the responsibility of media companies.
If they send a listener, viewer or reader to a competing platform, it's natural that they would lose that person to the other platform permanently. That is media and business 101. I do think that, overall, the players were incompetent and failed to grasp that basic concept. What happened? They sold their souls to the devil and sent people to competing platforms, rather than betting on themselves and focusing on their own platforms.
At Arsenal Media, our ecosystem is in good shape. Yes, we are going to save jobs. Yes, we are going to grow our stations. We've built an ecosystem that has not just digital news platforms, but also online stores.