The Sun sets on "Fox News of the North."
February 20, 2015 8:33 AM   Subscribe

 
Let me be the first to say, good riddance to them.
posted by frimble at 8:50 AM on February 20, 2015 [10 favorites]


Seconded.
posted by Shepherd at 8:55 AM on February 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


Maybe they could have stayed alive if like every other cable tier network (History, Bravo, A&E, WomensTelevisionNetwork, for example) they just ignored their original reason for being and began showing some variation on home reno shows, dysfunctional backwoods family reality shows, and CSI reruns.
posted by TimTypeZed at 9:06 AM on February 20, 2015 [14 favorites]


Instead of wasting all that expensive graphics and branding, they could switch over to a 24x7 live unblinking shot of the actual sun. It'd been more topical and informative than their old programming, too. I know I'd tune in whenever I wanted to know the latest on current sun spot activity.
posted by Poldo at 9:09 AM on February 20, 2015 [6 favorites]


Gosh, that's too bad....

Now audiences clamoring for an authoritarian conservative voice from the perspective of an enormous arctic nation only have Russian State TV to turn to, and what if you don't even speak Russian?
posted by Naberius at 9:12 AM on February 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


Sun News Network hasn't gone off the air- it's just switched to a different format.


As I write this, Ezra Levant is outside my house shouting at the pigeons.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:16 AM on February 20, 2015 [23 favorites]


Say what you will about Fox News, they have the one and only thing a network needs: viewers.

Canadians just weren't as interested in home-grown craziness. If you're borderline paranoid in Canada you just watch Fox News because no one really cares exactly where the crazy conspiracies come from.

I have one former Canadian work colleague who I'm facebook "friends" with and he's on about how terrible Obama is 24/7. The guy never even goes to the US.
posted by GuyZero at 9:24 AM on February 20, 2015 [4 favorites]


One down. Here's to the ultimate demise of all cable news outlets!
posted by resurrexit at 9:25 AM on February 20, 2015 [2 favorites]




"Ezra Levant kept doing stupid things" *Click link*

Wow. Your right-wing idiots are just like our right-wing idiots.
posted by mr.curmudgeon at 9:30 AM on February 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


This is excellent. Congratulations Canada. Now, can you do something about Harper?
posted by adept256 at 9:32 AM on February 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


Steve Faguy is a freelance journalist who covers all things Canadian media landscape.

He' the kind of guy who will sit through CRTC hearings on stuff like mandatory carriage and analyze it.

Anyway, he wrote this really great post on the demise of Sun TV.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:33 AM on February 20, 2015 [9 favorites]


Now audiences clamoring for an authoritarian conservative voice from the perspective of an enormous arctic nation only have Russian State TV to turn to, and what if you don't even speak Russian?

You'll be pleased to learn that Sun News was on the dial right next to RT, which doesn't seem to be going anywhere for the time being.
posted by Sys Rq at 9:36 AM on February 20, 2015


This is excellent. Congratulations Canada. Now, can you do something about Harper?

The tricky thing is that Sun TV was partially defeated by Canadian apathy and indifference, which is the source of Stephen Harper's power.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 9:37 AM on February 20, 2015 [26 favorites]


Maybe they could have stayed alive if like every other cable tier network (History, Bravo, A&E, WomensTelevisionNetwork, for example) they just ignored their original reason for being and began showing some variation on home reno shows, dysfunctional backwoods family reality shows, and CSI reruns.

You would think, but
and briefly, the network gave a show to the Ford Brothers
posted by rodlymight at 9:38 AM on February 20, 2015 [6 favorites]


Also, here's his "Open-minded review of Sun News Network" from 2012.

As he points out, it doesn't matter if you're a fire-breathing conservative who fully agrees with Sun News' ideological stance. It's indisputable that their content was repetitive and amateurishly presented.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:40 AM on February 20, 2015


I've always been under the impression that there's infinite money for such propaganda organs. Did something replace it?
posted by clarknova at 9:44 AM on February 20, 2015


OMFG Ezra Levant you are such a piece of shit. I know this isn't raising the level of discourse here, but did you read that link? Christ. Please stop giving this evil man money.
posted by Hoopo at 9:49 AM on February 20, 2015 [7 favorites]


Canadians just weren't as interested in home-grown craziness. If you're borderline paranoid in Canada you just watch Fox News because no one really cares exactly where the crazy conspiracies come from.

I believe there is a case to be made where most right winged/conservative Canadians would be happy to do just as America/Fox News tells it to do and to worry about what America/Fox News worries about.
posted by furtive at 9:52 AM on February 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


OMFG Ezra Levant

Yeah. But while he's the most visible one of the bunch, we can't forget some of the other people engaged in this enterprise because I'd argue they're a bigger problem.

Kory Teneycke, the VP who ran Sun News Network, is that most distasteful of creatures, the man-child whose only life experience is that of frothy-mouthed hyperpartisanship. Think of him as the brother-from-another mother of Pierre Poilevre, whose political star seems to be rising with the departure of John Baird from cabinet. These guys have known nothing but the conservative echo chamber their entire lives.

That said, if you want some more "OMFG Levant," it's interesting that in this interview, Levant only goes as far as saying he said he was sorry about what he said about Roma people, had to issue an on-air apology, but wouldn't go so far as to say he actually doesn't believe in what he said when pressed on it.

Draw your own conclusions about the guy from that, eh?

But I think Fagstein has it about these guys when he says this:

[Sun News] felt like that uncle you sit with at the family Christmas party who spends the whole time complaining about the government. Even if you agree with many of his points, eventually you just want to get up and ask him what he has to offer society.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:07 AM on February 20, 2015 [10 favorites]


Or, to butcher some Hunter S. Thompson in paraphrase, let's go with something like:

There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a Canadian ultraconservative in the depths of a media binge. And I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:10 AM on February 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


Controversials are like Millennials without student loans.
posted by jsavimbi at 10:15 AM on February 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


I don't watch Fox news, but I'm glad that we have it. This Sun station looks like it was just a bad business model though. Unlike a lot of other social liberals, I like that we have conservative view points on TV here in the U.S. When I travel to the UK there is only ONE side of TV news and the other side is non-existent. As a result the populous is fed a lot of untruths and aren't given any other viewpoints to compare them with. I'm of the belief that both liberal and conservative news outlets are going to be untruthful because that's unfortunately the way the media works around the globe, so you might as well have access to both viewpoints to make your own decision. If both are going to lie (and they are) it's better to have both.
posted by manderin at 10:17 AM on February 20, 2015


Sun TV just didn't have owners with the deep pockets needed to incubate it into a profitable format like its US counterpart. Fox News struggled before it could find the formula to get it going.

We don't have that in Canada. It took forever to get a show here or there to break out, but an entire network not based on cheap cooking, building or serialized game shows is a very ambitious undertaking.

You would think, but
and briefly, the network gave a show to the Ford Brothers


Which gave them their highest ratings ever. Sun TV did not have the carny needed for it to gain traction.

Media ownership in Canada is atrocious-- too few owners and too few places for a news producer to find employment that actually sort of pays the bills.

I'm not cheering its demise -- there is a bigger problem in the industry of stemming the loses to gain traction and with the recent job losses in other outlets, it is not a thriving time in the industry...
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 10:28 AM on February 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


As insufferable as Sun's content was, I honestly can't dispute the need for more voices in the Canadian media wilderness.

For example, when you look at concentration of media ownership in Canada, it's a pretty bad picture. When you consider that the media market I live in has one of the three major national dailies owned by a company that owns phones, data networks and a chunk of TV (and a big stake in our crappy local hockey team), we've got a situation where a lot of voices are going to be drowned out.

That said, I don't think Sun TV was the answer, because they're owned by Quebecor, who also own our tabloid media here in Canada. Let's leave aside the fact I think the people they had on the air were largely a rogues gallery of bigots and sociopaths.

The big problem with the demise of Sun TV was the media jobs it axed in a market where those are tough to come by for people who work in the industry. Don't forget, Canadian media has to compete with the size and scale of US media, so a viable homegrown business has required a mixture of protectionist measures over the years to make it work to the extent it does, and that makes for one dire job market.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:32 AM on February 20, 2015 [6 favorites]


I don't watch Fox news, but I'm glad that we have it. This Sun station looks like it was just a bad business model though. Unlike a lot of other social liberals, I like that we have conservative view points on TV here in the U.S.

I'm not clear what your point is. We have plenty of conservative commentary: CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC. Fox isn't conservative; it's off-the-charts insane.
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:46 AM on February 20, 2015 [16 favorites]


Oh. And. It's worth mentioning that while Sun TV's main editorial hobbyhorses was CBC funding (they hated it - "CBC is taxpayer-funded socialist propaganda, blah blah blah"), Quebecor, its parent company, benefited greatly from government largesse intended to support Canadian media.

Part of the reason Quebecor has such a weed up its ass about CBC funding has a lot to do with the media market in Quebec, which is another kettle of fish entirely.

tl;dr - being "Canada famous" in Canadian English-language media can't hold a candle to what it means to be "Quebec famous" in Canadian French-language media. Quebec actually has a pretty lucrative homegrown star system (people of a certain age may remember Roch Voisine - that's a good example, or someone like Denys Arcand or Celine Dion) that often translates into syndication, album sales, etc in Europe or other francophonie countries.This means there's waaaay more at stake in the Quebec media market for eyeballs and revenues -- hence the (Quebecor-owned) TVA vs. CBC/SRC spat.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:55 AM on February 20, 2015 [6 favorites]


I'm not sure I need any more commentary, right or left in my life. What I need is more nuanced reporting on issues that affect me and that I can do something about. I was reflecting on this today listening to CBC run yet another series of interviews on ISIS. Honestly. I have no idea what to do about ISIS, but someone today, talking about Italy's involvement with Libya, said that "most of what politicans say is for domestic consumption."

This is the problem with pundits-as-news these days. Almost everything I see or read is not about making good policy choices, but about shilling for votes domestically. As a result, we sometimes do end up making actual policy decisions and they are increasingly TERRIBLE policy decisions because they are based on retaining the opinions of voters that are formed with simplistic punditry. So now for example we have a Senate bill in Canada called The "Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act." which is an amendment to our Refugee Protection Act, Civil Marriage Act and Criminal Code. It may or may not contain important policy refinements for Canadian society, but it is a bill that, regardless of its content, has a title that is built not for civic deliberation, but for simplistic punditry, point-scoring and vote getting. does it actually protect refugees? Or does it protect voting blocks? Because at this stage those two agends seem very far from connected.

If anyone can help me find places that are actually reporting on the boring but important parts of our democratic life without trying to inflame my sensibilities, I'd be most grateful.
posted by salishsea at 11:00 AM on February 20, 2015 [8 favorites]


I lived in Quebec for five years (Sherbrooke) and as an American, it was really weird and cool to realize there is a whole Francophone pop culture system of fame that is pretty much unknown outside of the province.
posted by Kitteh at 11:01 AM on February 20, 2015 [4 favorites]


I'm not sure I need any more commentary, right or left in my life. What I need is more nuanced reporting on issues that affect me and that I can do something about.

Preach it. That's why I was singling out Teneycke - when you've got someone whose entire life has been devoted to partisan shilling (regardless of whether it's right or left) running a network, we can bet that said network's mandate is not going to be nuanced, in-depth reporting. It'll just be people screeching talking points day and night.

And where media jobs aren't being created or retained is in those investigative reporting roles that get into the sometimes dry-as-dust policy matters that actually matter. The media jobs that Sun TV did create were certainly not those ones.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:12 AM on February 20, 2015


Ezra set up a new click/outrage bait site a few days before SNN went off air, over here: The Rebel - it's about as terrible as you'd expect.
posted by angerbot at 11:15 AM on February 20, 2015


Kitteh: "I lived in Quebec for five years (Sherbrooke) and as an American, it was really weird and cool to realize there is a whole Francophone pop culture system of fame that is pretty much unknown outside of the province"

Isn't this the case for France too?
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 11:37 AM on February 20, 2015


The one episode of Canadaland I haven't been able to listen to was the one where Jesse Brown had Ezra as a guest. Whole body shudders at the thought. Do not want.
posted by maudlin at 11:40 AM on February 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


The one episode of Canadaland I haven't been able to listen to was the one where Jesse Brown had Ezra as a guest. Whole body shudders at the thought. Do not want.

I subscribe to the podcast and usually devour them as they come out. It took me two weeks of putting it off, and then an entire bottle of wine to finally sit down and listen to it. It wasn't as bad as I thought, actually. It was enlightening when Jesse Brown asked him point blank - twice - if Levant really believed in his own racist comments about Roma people and wouldn't say no.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:46 AM on February 20, 2015


I'm of the belief that both liberal and conservative news outlets are going to be untruthful

Your belief, honestly held though it might be, is demonstrably false. Conservative news outlets prize ideology first, with reality coming a distant tenth or so.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:50 AM on February 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


Also, I am not concerned at all about the loss of journalism jobs--anyone working for Sun in a journalistic capacity knew exactly what they were doing. The off-air staff, them I'm slightly worried about but not much; yes we are in a shitty economy, which is why they get a partial pass, and at the same time anyone involved in putting that dreck on the air is culpable.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:54 AM on February 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


I lived in Quebec for five years (Sherbrooke)

How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now...
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:57 AM on February 20, 2015 [9 favorites]


...Goddamn them all.
posted by salishsea at 11:59 AM on February 20, 2015 [4 favorites]


I was told- we'd cruise the seas for American cable carrying gold...
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:02 PM on February 20, 2015 [4 favorites]


...we'd fire no guns, shed no tears.
Now I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier.
And this punditry has cost us dear.
posted by salishsea at 12:06 PM on February 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier, the last of Peladeau's privateers.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:07 PM on February 20, 2015 [8 favorites]


Outstanding!
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:08 PM on February 20, 2015


I figure for the benefit of anyone who's finding the preceding nonsense altogether perplexing: previously.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:10 PM on February 20, 2015


Could we just have one Canada thread that doesn't devolve into a group sing of "Barrett's Privateers"?


*hums The Rodeo Song*
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:13 PM on February 20, 2015 [6 favorites]


Sun News may have been looking to game the system, but in that they weren't unique. Networks like W(Women's)TN and AP(Aboriginal People's)TN do the same, collecting fees from all cable users while serving small audiences. In the case of those two specialty networks it might be worthy policy if they served their original mandate well, but that's questionable. Then there are all the broader based cable networks which seem to stray from their original purpose, load their schedules with cheap crap and are all owned by about three or four companies who are already collecting the base cable fees. Even something like the Comedy Network, which probably draws a better than most audience, shows no embarrassment showing the same two seasons (at maybe 40 episodes a season) of Match Game three times a day five days a week for the next six years.
posted by TimTypeZed at 12:14 PM on February 20, 2015


Sun News may have been looking to game the system, but in that they weren't unique. Networks like W(Women's)TN and AP(Aboriginal People's)TN do the same

Both of those networks at least nominally serve the purpose of putting underrepresented groups on the air. (And having watched stuff on APTN and W, only the former is still actually doing that; W is basically Cosmo on TV). Sun served the purpose of putting right-wing lies, misogyny, and racism on the air. We already have the National Post for that.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:19 PM on February 20, 2015 [6 favorites]


In the case of those two specialty networks it might be worthy policy if they served their original mandate well, but that's questionable.

Related:

Ice Road Truckers is an historical show because we have historically had ice roads.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:21 PM on February 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


Overheard on reddit: "The Sun is like if Fox News and The Daily Mail got together and had an ugly, bigoted baby."
posted by ovvl at 12:39 PM on February 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now...

Ha! Back then you could have it, my friend. I would have lived in Montreal if it had been an option, but IMO, the Townships are not great for long term living (they are fucking pretty as shit though).
posted by Kitteh at 12:43 PM on February 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


If it's indeed true that news from both left and right is lies, I don't see the utility in multiple lies for discovering the truth. Even one lie would seem to be one too many.
posted by riverlife at 12:44 PM on February 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


As someone whose parent's are elderly and whose father has been slowdancing with senelity I am hugely relieved that Sun TV went off the air. It is a shame about the radio and the American channels though. I wonder what my father would have been like for the last twenty years if there weren't assholes whispering in his ear all time.
posted by srboisvert at 1:16 PM on February 20, 2015 [4 favorites]


Sun News always struck me as an odd choice for Péladeau. I figured it was a double play: first, to make money by gaming the CRTC; second, to push Anglo Canada far enough to the right that he could launch a successful bid for sovereignty and realize his dream of becoming Québec's Silvio Berlusconi. I guess his innate greed got the best of him and he put too much emphasis on the first goal.

Also, Ezra Levant is so profoundly loathsome because he believes what he says. Even when he loses libel suits because he fabricated quotes, and even when forced to non-apologize for calling entire ethnic groups subhuman vermin, he's not doing it for money. He's doing it because he believes that certain people are more people than others, and that saying mean things about the tar sands or Israel should be punishable by summary execution, because freedom.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 1:50 PM on February 20, 2015 [5 favorites]


I don't watch Fox news, but I'm glad that we have it.

I'm not. I've got nothing against a news organization with a conservative viewpoint because, like you said, it's good to get contrasting perspectives. But Fox isn't a news organization, they're a propaganda organization. You literally cannot trust them to state the factual truth. A conservative (or liberal) viewpoint should come from analysis and opinion, not the editing of facts.
posted by LastOfHisKind at 3:39 PM on February 20, 2015 [9 favorites]


These guys have known nothing but the conservative echo chamber their entire lives.

This is very worrisome. We have a party and a prime minister in power who live in a filter bubble, when the world is changing rapidly and what we need is decision-making based on some level of real-world knowledge.
posted by sneebler at 9:36 AM on February 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


Ezra set up a new click/outrage bait site a few days before SNN went off air, over here: The Rebel - it's about as terrible as you'd expect.

Looks like at least a few people are willing to pay for this! :
According to the outspoken host's website, he has already raised roughly $100,000 for new equipment and more than $15,000 a month in ongoing contributions to pay for the site's operations.

Levant said the money, which is being deposited into a Paypal account, has come from about 2,000 individual contributors.

posted by Kabanos at 12:32 PM on February 26, 2015


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