The implications of today’s massive $2.65 billion deal between Corus Entertainment and Shaw Communications are wide-ranging, but as the smoke cleared this morning, a clearer picture of the post-deal Canadian broadcast landscape began to emerge.

For Canadian content producers, the news is mixed. While the combined force of Corus and Shaw Media creates a stronger company better poised to face the upcoming implementation of pick-and-pay and other Let’s Talk TV decisions, the underlying truth is that the deal creates further consolidation in an already-consolidated industry. And that will amplify Let’s Talk TV fallout such as the termination of Terms of Trade following the next round of group licensing.

Consultant Michael Hennessey, a former senior Telus executive and past president and CEO of the Canadian Media Producers Association, calls the deal good for Corus as a company, but calls the implications for Canadian content “very negative.”

“Corus always been hawkish on getting rid of Terms of Trade and now there’s even fewer people to do a business deal with. And now there’s less incentive to commission more original content because Corus is going to be saddled with significant debt. They’ve got to pay all that stuff down,” he told Playback Daily.

He speculated that the deal might spark a review of Terms of Trade under the new economic conditions facing the domestic broadcast industry.

Although there is no word yet on layoffs, the deal is also likely to affect staff at the companies, another hit to an employment sector already rocked by hundreds of layoffs in 2015. In its statement on the deal, Corus promised $40 million to $50 million in savings would be achieved, but did not specify where those savings would come from.

In an investor call on its Q1 earnings Wednesday morning, Corus president and CEO Doug Murphy said the deal allows the company to address its long-time challenge of addressing issues of scale in comparison to larger media cos, which in turn increases its appeal to advertisers.

“We now have the ability to offer a wider array of advertising solutions for advertisers to reach their audiences, since we now have conventional, speciality, radio and digital. As a consequence of that…it gives us the ability to bring scale to the pricing equation,” Murphy said.

His comments were echoed by media consultant Lauren Richards, who told Playback and Media in Canada this morning that the merged companies create a more attractive opportunity for advertisers.

“There has always been a level of cohesiveness both at Corus and Shaw,” she said, adding that the combined portfolio of assets creates significant efficiencies on the buying side. “Because agencies couldn’t integrate the assets into one cohesive go-to-market strategy, they will now be able to use more creative media executions.”

“It’s less about the cost and size of deals and more about better engagement and more interesting ways to reach the market,” she noted.

The deal would mean Corus Entertainment would have seven of the top 10 specialty channels in the country, along with the top six specialty channels for women and six of the top 10 kids channels. The new opportunity for Corus is conventional television, a sector of broadcasting under particular strain right now as ad dollars migrate across platforms and viewers contemplate cord-cutting.

An analyst on the call noted he was surprised to hear Corus express optimism about conventional television, given the struggles the business faces. Murphy countered by saying local television and conventional continues to “offer the broad reach that advertisers desire.”

“It will always be part of the national ad buy….for us, the question becomes how to do you marry most efficiently the power of local [programming] and the stickiness of local news programming with the broad reach of premium marquee content that drives audiences. So we are optimistic about conventional, we are optimistic about local television,” Murphy said.

With files from Julianna Cummins and Sonya Fatah

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