According to an internal memo sent to Bell Media employees, CP24 and BNN will be leaving the iconic 299 Queen Street West location this October.
The news was first reported on X/Twitter on Wednesday afternoon by Kris Pangilinan (a former blogTO/CP24/CTV News employee) and has since been confirmed by multiple media outlets.
#BREAKING: According to an internal memo sent to Bell Media employees, CP24 will be leaving the iconic 299 Queen Street West location this October.
The news station that has been downtown for decades, will now move to CTV’s Agincourt campus. pic.twitter.com/Kvd3PRfRwG
— Kris Pangilinan (@KrisReports) June 19, 2024
The memo, reportedly written by Bell Media president Sean Cohan, states that the company will be pausing redevelopment of the Queen West building. CP24 is expected to join other CTV news outlets at Bell Media’s Agincourt studio in northwest Scarborough this October, while BNN is expected to move in during the third quarter of 2025. The Agincourt studio is about a 30-minute drive or up to an hour and a half away by transit from the Queen West building.
“We are establishing a permanent news hub at our spacious Agincourt campus,” Cohan wrote in the memo, as reported by The Star. “The hub will be home to BNN, CP24 CTV National News, CTV News Channel, CTVNews.ca, and CTV News Toronto.”
“With all of Bell Media’s Toronto-based news operations together in one location, teams will be able to work more closely and collaboratively together,” Cohan added.
The neo-Gothic heritage building on the southeast corner of Queen Street West and John Street is a landmark in the Canadian media industry. It was built more than a century ago in 1913, originally housing the administrative offices of the Methodist church. In 1985, CHUM Limited bought the property and used it as its headquarters, before it was acquired by Bell Canada Enterprises in 2011.
The studio move comes a few months after Bell announced 4,800 job cuts company-wide as well as the end of multiple local newscasts. Many Torontonians have a lot to say about the upcoming move — particularly regarding the fate of the iconic van hanging out of the side of the Queen West building:
“Is the CP24 truck in the wall moving as well to Agincourt?” one X user asked.
#BREAKING: According to an internal memo sent to Bell Media employees, CP24 will be leaving the iconic 299 Queen Street West location this October.
The news station that has been downtown for decades, will now move to CTV’s Agincourt campus. pic.twitter.com/Kvd3PRfRwG
— Kris Pangilinan (@KrisReports) June 19, 2024
Still the truck is iconic and should be kept, even if something new and more dynamic takes over..
— Politics&PublicTransitJunkie2005 (@PoliticsFan05) June 19, 2024
Even Reddit users got in on the topic, explaining the history of the City Pulse Chevrolet G-Series van, which dates back to the late 1970s:
“My understanding is that the truck is the original one used for on the scene reporting, and might be either the first one ever used for that purpose in Canada, or the world. This was from a time before we had wireless internet, so I think that to do live broadcasts, they would have required an uplink via the CN Tower,” one user stated. “If that’s true, then it’s a part of our history and should be preserved.”