Canadian broadcasting began 2008 with fewer big players striding into the digital age after a string of expensive acquisitions.

Now the industry is ending the year with dominant media groups slashing costs and jobs as TV ad expenditures and the Canadian economy shift into reverse.

Canwest Global Communications this year swallowed 13 former Alliance Atlantis Communications specialty channels, in partnership with Goldman Sachs & Co., while CTVglobemedia rebranded the six A-Channels acquired from CHUM Ltd. as the As, and absorbed another 20 specialty channels, including MuchMusic and Bravo!.

Elsewhere, Rogers Media relaunched five Citytv stations as its own, and Corus Entertainment launched Cosmo TV and Viva to complement W. Together, Corus and Astral Media got HBO Canada underway. Astral also acquired 52 radio stations and two TV stations from Standard Broadcasting.

For its part, CBC launched comedies and dramas, including The Border and Sophie, in a bid to make up ground in primetime against rivals CTV and Global Television.

But as a measure of its primetime domination in the Canadian market, CTV brazenly grabbed the rights to CBC’s iconic Hockey Night in Canada theme song for an estimated $3 million.

CBC caused its own controversy as it sold its international sales catalogue to British distributor ContentFilm.

The market upheaval came as conventional networks picked up specialty channels for a more predictable revenue stream in an increasingly fragmented digital universe.

Those moves were impacted by the Writers Guild of America strike and the Canadian Television Fund coming under CRTC scrutiny following earlier attacks from cablecasters Shaw Communications and Quebecor Media.

The WGA strike did, however, deliver Canadian TV some home runs. CTV series Flashpoint and The Listener, as well as CBC’s Sophie, were among a slew of homegrown dramas and comedies picked up by cost-conscious U.S. networks in 2008. But underlying the drama was sliding viewership for the conventional networks, as specialty channels and pay-TV services continued to bite into their market share.

In 2008, conventionals grabbed 56% of broadcast revenue, against 44% for specialty and pay channels, according to Statistics Canada. Those figures are down from a decade ago – before the proliferation of digital cable and satellite TV service penetration – when conventional networks earned 79% of Canadian TV revenue.

The rise of specialties is most marked in Quebec, where Astral’s niche channels continued to grab advertising revenue from conventional leaders CBC/Radio-Canada and TVA. That competitive threat led conventional player Télé Quatre Saisons to ask the CRTC to slash its newsroom costs as new owner Remstar Diffusion saved it from bankruptcy. Other conventionals asked the CRTC for regulatory relief.

During BDU hearings last April, Canwest CEO Leonard Asper tag-teamed with CTVgm CEO Ivan Fecan to unsuccessfully bid for subscriber fees from BDUs for carriage of their over-the-air signals.

As 2008 closes, steep advertising declines led Canadian broadcasters to unveil painful cost-cutting plans. Debt-laden Canwest said it will cut 210 broadcast jobs, and CTV announced 105 job cuts. CBC has not yet specified a body count in its own downsizing, but says it is freezing discretionary spending and other expenditures as well.