I woke up very early on Saturday (4:30 AM) and couldn't get back to sleep so I turned on the only station doing live programming at that time.

What a mistake!

They were I.D-ing the station as "Vancouver/Calgary's News" not even mentioning Toronto. The stories were almost all west coast, including a note about ferry service in Vancouver, a landslide risk after the B.C. rain, and a few very local yarns, with the occasional mention of some issues in Calgary. I'm not sure Toronto was mentioned more than once, and there was absolutely no reporting on that armed gunman standoff in Welland, which was still going on at the time. 

To make matters worse, the woman reading the copy was doing so at breakneck speed, as if she was afraid the computer would cut her off, so the local traffic and weather would air on time. (The traffic was severely cut down - normally, they mention every ramp and pothole to try to extend the segment, because there's not a lot of news overnight. Then came a very quick local weather and even with all that rushing, they often missed the network rejoin, coming back in the middle of a sentence.)

It was horrible. The rushed delivery, the missed cues, the lack of anything to do with Toronto stories. There was no point in tuning in and even if you did, you had to speed listen, as the newsreader dashed through the thing like an Evelyn Wood course. 

I get it - it's the holidays and Rogers wants to cut down on staffing at a time when few ears are available. But this was not the way to do it. It was a terrible product. Either you're going to do it right or don't do it at all. Toronto is the biggest market in Canada. It deserves its own proper newscast. This was irrelevant to whatever audience there was and was unlistenable. I hope this isn't the plan for the entire holiday - and worse, beyond.