Sun launches ‘hard news, straight talk’ TV network
June 15, 2010
Robert Benzie
Vowing to be a “controversially Canadian” TV version of the right-wing Toronto Sun tabloid, Quebecor is launching a feisty all-news network to tackle CBC and CTV.
Sun TV News, which is promising “hard news” during the day and “straight talk” opinion at night when it launches Jan. 1, will jolt the nation’s somnambulant cable airwaves, said Pierre Karl Peladeau, Quebecor president and CEO.
“English Canada today … is ill-served by the incumbent specialty news channels,” said Peladeau, who is modelling the channel on Quebecor’s successful French-language LCN all-news network.
“We see a real opportunity in offering Canadians something new, something better, something distinct. It’s time to shake up the players of the existing Canadian broadcasting system. It’s time for a new choice, a new voice,” he said Tuesday at the Sun’s King St. East building.
Peladeau would not confirm reports the firm will invest $100 million over five years in the venture.
Kory Teneycke, a former communications director to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and now Quebecor Media vice-president, said, “We’re taking on the mainstream media.”
“We’re taking on smug, condescending, often irrelevant journalism, we’re taking on political correctness. We will not be a state broadcaster, offering boring news by bureaucrats for elites and paid for by taxpayers,” said Teneycke, who resigned last week as a CBC pundit.
“We will be unapologetically patriotic, we will offer the type of raw debate that Canadians only find today in coffee shops and around the dinner table,” he said, deriding the politic discourse on existing networks as “play fighting.”
“Sun News will be controversially Canadian. CBC News Network and CTV News Channel … have failed to win over Canadians despite their obvious advantages of incumbency.”
Indeed, ratings for both CBC and CTV cable news channels have traditionally been low, which Teneycke said is a huge opening for a livelier format like Sun TV News.
“Canadian TV news today is narrow, it’s complacent and it’s politically correct. It’s bland and boring. Our aim is not to bore people to death, we’ll leave that to the CBC.”
But Teneycke bristled at suggestions Sun TV News would be “Fox News North,” a Canadian imitation of the conservative U.S. home of loquacious hosts such as Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity.
“Our competitors and our critics will throw all kinds of stones to try to label us, to try to have Canadians dismiss this. I just dismiss that as our competitors taking a shot,” he said, adding anyone wondering what the network will be like should “pick up the Sun newspaper.”
So far only veteran Ottawa journalists David Akin and Brian Lilley have been hired, but Sun TV News is also believed to have retained the services of controversial former CBC reporter Krista Erickson.
Erickson made headlines for being the sponsored travel companion of Conservative MP Lee Richardson (Calgary Centre), which means she is eligible for taxpayer-funded flights, and for feeding questions to a Liberal MP during committee hearings into the business relationship between former prime minister Brian Mulroney and Karlheinz Schreiber.
“We have approached a number of personalities—some in the media, some well-known, some less well-known—but we’ll have announcements to make in terms of personalities in due course over the coming weeks and months,” said Teneycke.
In terms of newsgathering, the network will rely mostly upon the resources of the Sun newspaper chain, which operates dailies in Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, and Ottawa.
Sun journalists privately complain that those understaffed newsrooms are already stretched to limit supplying the tabloids, free papers, and Quebecor’s various websites.
Peladeau, whose company locked out workers at Quebecor’s flagship tabloid, le Journal de Montreal, 17 months ago over a wage dispute, said he was not worried about the company’s ability to gather the news.
Quebecor is asking the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission for a three-year specialty channel cable license to replace the current over-the-air Sun TV station in Toronto.
But TV advertising experts said it’s unclear whether money can be made with a talk-TV format.
“Are there enough angry white guys out there to make it pay?” said one industry insider, who buys about $4 million in advertising time during an election season and asked that his name not be used.
Another advertising veteran questioned the business rationale.
“Talk radio is old, poor, and not educated—not the audience TV advertisers want,” said the ad man.
Source
June 15, 2010
Robert Benzie
Vowing to be a “controversially Canadian” TV version of the right-wing Toronto Sun tabloid, Quebecor is launching a feisty all-news network to tackle CBC and CTV.
Sun TV News, which is promising “hard news” during the day and “straight talk” opinion at night when it launches Jan. 1, will jolt the nation’s somnambulant cable airwaves, said Pierre Karl Peladeau, Quebecor president and CEO.
“English Canada today … is ill-served by the incumbent specialty news channels,” said Peladeau, who is modelling the channel on Quebecor’s successful French-language LCN all-news network.
“We see a real opportunity in offering Canadians something new, something better, something distinct. It’s time to shake up the players of the existing Canadian broadcasting system. It’s time for a new choice, a new voice,” he said Tuesday at the Sun’s King St. East building.
Peladeau would not confirm reports the firm will invest $100 million over five years in the venture.
Kory Teneycke, a former communications director to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and now Quebecor Media vice-president, said, “We’re taking on the mainstream media.”
“We’re taking on smug, condescending, often irrelevant journalism, we’re taking on political correctness. We will not be a state broadcaster, offering boring news by bureaucrats for elites and paid for by taxpayers,” said Teneycke, who resigned last week as a CBC pundit.
“We will be unapologetically patriotic, we will offer the type of raw debate that Canadians only find today in coffee shops and around the dinner table,” he said, deriding the politic discourse on existing networks as “play fighting.”
“Sun News will be controversially Canadian. CBC News Network and CTV News Channel … have failed to win over Canadians despite their obvious advantages of incumbency.”
Indeed, ratings for both CBC and CTV cable news channels have traditionally been low, which Teneycke said is a huge opening for a livelier format like Sun TV News.
“Canadian TV news today is narrow, it’s complacent and it’s politically correct. It’s bland and boring. Our aim is not to bore people to death, we’ll leave that to the CBC.”
But Teneycke bristled at suggestions Sun TV News would be “Fox News North,” a Canadian imitation of the conservative U.S. home of loquacious hosts such as Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity.
“Our competitors and our critics will throw all kinds of stones to try to label us, to try to have Canadians dismiss this. I just dismiss that as our competitors taking a shot,” he said, adding anyone wondering what the network will be like should “pick up the Sun newspaper.”
So far only veteran Ottawa journalists David Akin and Brian Lilley have been hired, but Sun TV News is also believed to have retained the services of controversial former CBC reporter Krista Erickson.
Erickson made headlines for being the sponsored travel companion of Conservative MP Lee Richardson (Calgary Centre), which means she is eligible for taxpayer-funded flights, and for feeding questions to a Liberal MP during committee hearings into the business relationship between former prime minister Brian Mulroney and Karlheinz Schreiber.
“We have approached a number of personalities—some in the media, some well-known, some less well-known—but we’ll have announcements to make in terms of personalities in due course over the coming weeks and months,” said Teneycke.
In terms of newsgathering, the network will rely mostly upon the resources of the Sun newspaper chain, which operates dailies in Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, and Ottawa.
Sun journalists privately complain that those understaffed newsrooms are already stretched to limit supplying the tabloids, free papers, and Quebecor’s various websites.
Peladeau, whose company locked out workers at Quebecor’s flagship tabloid, le Journal de Montreal, 17 months ago over a wage dispute, said he was not worried about the company’s ability to gather the news.
Quebecor is asking the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission for a three-year specialty channel cable license to replace the current over-the-air Sun TV station in Toronto.
But TV advertising experts said it’s unclear whether money can be made with a talk-TV format.
“Are there enough angry white guys out there to make it pay?” said one industry insider, who buys about $4 million in advertising time during an election season and asked that his name not be used.
Another advertising veteran questioned the business rationale.
“Talk radio is old, poor, and not educated—not the audience TV advertisers want,” said the ad man.
Source
