After six months of speculation and debate that included the likes of Margaret Atwood, the CRTC has approved Quebecor Media‘s application for a 24-hour news channel to be called Sun News.
Luc Lavoie, senior advisor to Quebecor Media president and CEO Pierre Karl Péladeau and head of the Sun News venture, called the decision “fully expected.”
“It’s neither a surprise nor is it the end to a frustrating period,” he told Marketing. “It followed its course and came to an end today and we’re delighted.”
The CRTC approval comes after Quebecor backed away from on an earlier attempt to have the channel granted mandatory carriage on cable and satellite systems. As a Category 2 service, Sun News will need to negotiate carriage with cable and satellite companies.
Lavoie said those negotiations are already underway and it’s “looking very very good.” The company is aiming for carriage on all of the country’s major cable and satellite systems, he added.
The service’s operating philosophy is described as “hard news” during the day and “straight talk” at night.
In a release, Quebecor called the formula a “recipe for success,” noting that its Quebec service LCN has seen its ratings double since adopting the formula in 2007.
According to CRTC data, LCN’s subscriber base grew from 1.9 million in 2006 to 2.2 million in 2009, while advertising revenues increased from $9 million to $12.3 million in the same time period.
Lavoie said that the company has high expectations for the English-language service, which he said will fill a void in Canadian news.
“If we didn’t think there was a market for it, we wouldn’t go forward,” he said. “Canadians, when they watch all-news channels, watch CNN–they don’t watch domestic services. It’s CNN that dominates, and that says a lot about the level of satisfaction with the service they’re getting.
“If you choose to watch the news of another country, you must be quite dissatisfied with what’s offered to you in your own country.”
Lavoie called the repeated characterization of the Sun News service as Fox News North “ridiculous,” but said that he’d be happy to duplicate that station’s success. “If we become as profitable as Fox News, we wouldn’t mind calling ourselves Fox News North,” he added with a laugh.
Quebecor had originally planned to launch the service as early as Jan. 1 but Lavoie said that some “infrastructure challenges” means that it will now be on the air by March.
In announcing its decision, the CRTC referred to a 2008 notice in which it reiterated the importance of “maintaining and enhancing” a diversity of editorial voices in local and national markets and ensuring that Canadians are exposed to an “appropriate plurality” of such voices.
“The Commission is of the view that the licensing of additional competitive mainstream national news services is one means of achieving this objective,” it stated in its decision.
Péladeau said in a release that the decision marks “the dawn of a new era for Canadian news media,” and said that Sun News will be “welcome addition” to Sun Media Corporation’s English language newspapers and news websites. “It will aim to challenge conventional wisdom and offer Canadians a new choice and a new voice on TV,” he added.
