There is no question that fear exists in our operations, and it's not just our operations. It is in broadcast and conventional media as a whole. Even the digital players and platforms, both here and south of the border, have had to make substantive staffing cuts in recent years.
With respect to our commitment to local, we remain very dedicated to it. As I said in our opening remarks, we create 20,000 hours of local news across the country every year. Yes, we have eliminated weekend newscasts. We did that because the audience had dropped off. Over a five-year period of time, we had seen a 38% drop in our weekend news audience. You mentioned noon news. The drop there was even larger, at 43% for adults 25 to 54 over a five-year period. As I said earlier, we have pivoted resources to digital. We're trying to meet people where they're looking to consume news.
The last thing I want to add relates to staffing numbers. We continue to have a very healthy staff complement at our local news operations across the country. Our local English-language news operations employ almost 700 people from coast to coast. In Quebec, it's an additional 235 people. Those remain sizable numbers. As I said, we remain deeply committed to covering local news.