Canada will be getting another all-news TV channel, one that aims to banish the established “boring, smug and condescending” news networks to the sidelines with a snappy, right-wing take on current events modelled on America’s wildly successful and controversial Fox News.
Quebecor Media Inc. announced Tuesday it plans to launch Sun TV News, ending months of speculation and anticipation in Ottawa over what had been dubbed “Fox News North.”
Sun TV News will replace the Sun TV station in Toronto. It is set to be a collaboration between Quebecor Inc., its TVA Group and Sun Media Corp. units, and will challenge “the English Canadian TV news establishment,” Pierre Karl Peladeau said Tuesday at the network’s launch at the Toronto Sun Building in downtown Toronto.
“We see an opportunity in offering Canadians something new, something better, something distinct. It is time to shake up the current players of the Canadian broadcasting system,” Peladeau said in a statement.
Heading the new channel will be newly hired Quebecor vice-president Kory Teneycke, a former staff member at the Prime Minister’s Office, who said Canadians have tuned out traditional news channels that are “boring, smug and condescending.”
“CBC News Network and CTV News Channel have had respectively 21 and 13 years to get it right and they’ve failed to win over viewers,” Teneycke said.
“Canadian TV news today is narrow, complacent and politically correct,” he said, adding that Sun TV News will be “different,” with hard news reporting during the day and “straight talk” opinion journalism at night.
“This will not be another network catering to elite opinion and ignoring stories important to many Canadians.”
Peladeau has already applied to the federal broadcast regulator for an all-news, English-language television licence after a year of personal lobbying in Ottawa. The application is reported to be for a first tier designation, meaning all cable subscribers would get the channel whether they want it or not.
That application is under review.
