Even if Sun TV News figurehead Kory Teneycke were to stroll across Parliament Hill wearing an “I Heart Trudeau” T-shirt and its on-air personalities express a fervent desire to see more government funding for the arts, the perception of Canada’s newest 24-hour news channel as a right-wing mouthpiece would probably endure. Soon after its initial application in May, and well before CRTC approval in November, the Category 2 service—which uses the tag line “Hard news and straight talk”—picked up the seemingly unshakeable handle of “Fox News North,” conjuring up the notion of a channel more focused on furthering a political agenda than providing objective reportage and analysis of the day’s events.
It’s a description that elicits different reactions from people within the Sun News team. “Ridiculous—a media creation,” sniffed Luc Lavoie, senior advisor to Quebecor president and CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau and a longtime company spokesman, when asked about the comparison shortly after the CRTC approved the service last November.
“Mind you,” he added with a chuckle, “if we become as profitable as Fox News, we wouldn’t mind calling ourselves Fox News North.” (In its 2010 annual report, Fox News parent News Corporation described the channel as “simply unstoppable,” noting that its year-over-year revenues were up 23% over fiscal 2009, with year-over-year ad revenues up 9%, primarily as a result of higher pricing.)
But Ezra Levant, a noted right-wing commentator who co-founded the Western Standard and will be one of Sun TV News’ on-air personalities when it debuts, seems flattered by the comparison. “I think ‘Fox News North’ was meant as an insult,” he says. “But Fox News is, by far, the most-watched cable news channel in the U.S., so at least that meaning isn’t an insult. “It’s also the most aesthetically pleasing channel, in my view,” he adds. “[The label] ‘Fox News North’ is an attempt to caricature our editorial flavour—which is quite something, given that we haven’t broadcast for a minute yet,” he says.
While it currently exists only as a concept, many assumptions have been made and Sun TV News has been branded everything from a “rancid idea” by Toronto Star columnist Heather Mallick to a purveyor of “American-style hate media” by online advocacy organization Avaaz.org. One media agency executive calls the CRTC’s approval of the channel “an all-time low” for the Canadian broadcast industry. Advertisers, however, tend not to discriminate; they follow the viewers, even if they do prove to be frothing-at-the-mouth, right-wing zealots. Hey, they gotta buy beer and toothpaste, too. So while expressing a personal dislike for Sun TV News’ rumoured program style—which he characterized as “drivel”—the media executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, says that won’t preclude his agency from buying commercial time on Sun TV News if the ratings are attractive enough.
“It remains to be seen whether we can field clowns as entertaining as the Americans, [but] if there’s audience there, it has spending potential, and my personal view has nothing to do with whether or not we would seek to connect the pockets of those viewers with those customers,” he says. Though sources indicated Quebecor planned to launch Sun TV News on April 18, by mid February there was still no definitive picture of what Sun TV News will look like when it goes to air. Quebecor declined to talk with Marketing for this article and was only beginning to meet with agency executives to make their sales pitch at press time. Florence Ng, president of video investments for ZenithOptimedia in Toronto, says Sun TV News’ sales teams provided her buyers with only a “very, very basic” overview of the channel. There is, she says, still no clear picture of what will distinguish it from the existing 24-hour news services. The Sun TV News website hints at a format new to English Canada but familiar to Americans: “Sun News will go beyond the headlines and to cover the full range of stories that impact our society, our democracy and our economy—using a format that has attracted viewers in Quebec, the United States and further abroad.” (In 2007, Quebecor’s Montreal-based LCN was reworked on a hard news and commentary model and produced strong numbers since. See “Proof Is In Quebec” on pg. 19.) The channel’s well-publicized formula calls for a mix of “hard news” during the day and “straight talk” at night. Levant says the concept for his as-yet-unnamed daytime show is still gelling, but it’s “a pretty safe bet” it will resemble his twice-a-week column for the Toronto Sun.
Based on feedback from other buyers, it’s believed Quebecor will be targeting a younger audience with its standard news channel mixture of headlines, interviews, talk and call-in shows. And while it assumes the moniker of the tabloid newspaper chain, Quebecor wants Sun TV News to be more serious and more respectable in the eyes of its viewers than its print namesake. While saying little about what it will be, the channel’s representatives have been adamant about what it won’t: namely a replica of existing all-news services like CBC News Network or CTV News Channel.
In the lead-up to Sun TV News’ debut, Quebecor has been unrelenting in its criticism of Canada’s incumbent news services. In its application, it suggested that Canadians are being ill-served by current broadcast news outlets and stated that Atlanta-based CNN—which it characterized as a “struggling cable news laggard”—is beating both CBC News Network and CTV News Channel “by a country mile” in the Canadian ratings.
“What does that say about the current news broadcasters not meeting Canada’s needs?” says Levant. “If the most-read newspaper in Toronto was the New York Times, don’t you think that would point to a problem with Toronto’s daily newspapers?” But if there’s any hand wringing about Sun TV News on the part of the incumbents, they’re not letting on. So far, there is no indication its debut will result in a coarser, louder CBC for instance.
Jeff Keay, head of media relations, English services, for CBC/Radio-Canada, for example, suggests that Sun News is simply after publicity with its repeated attacks on the likes of the CBC. “They’ve been fairly successful in getting the attention of media with their provocative comments. We await their debut to see what they offer,” he says dryly. “Meanwhile, CBC News will continue to provide the usual authoritative, independent and accountable public service journalism that Canadians expect and trust.” “We always embrace new competition, and I think any new voice in this country is great for everyone,” says Wendy Freeman, president of news for CTV. “I say bring it on.” ZenithOptimedia’s Ng says TV news viewers tend to be loyal to a particular service, making it difficult for a fledgling channel to gain traction. Further complicating matters for Sun TV News, she says, is that U.S. news channels like CNN also have a sizeable Canadian audience.
“You almost have to convince people that they’re offering something that other broadcasters aren’t,” says Ng. “You have to build audience, and once you’ve reached a sustained level of tuning, then you can try to differentiate yourself from the competition. It takes time.” Ng also predicts that while it will likely be negligible at first, any growth for Sun TV News is ultimately going to come at the expense of rival services. “I really don’t anticipate that incremental [advertising] dollars are going to pour into the market,” she says. “They will have to come from what’s out there already.” Sidneyeve Matrix, assistant professor of media and film at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., predicts that Sun TV News will cater to a Conservative niche, but questions its fit with a Canadian
desire for what she calls an “objectivity ethos” in news reportage.
“It’s definitely going to give us a different perspective, one that we don’t necessarily consume on a regular basis in Canada,” she says. “While it could be many things, one thing it will be for sure is more conservative than we’re used to. “Even if they’re just a little bit further to the right than what we’ve seen in CTV, people will see that as extreme conservatism,” she says. Serge Sasseville, vice-president, corporate and institutional affairs for Quebecor Media, turned down an interview request, so it’s unclear at this point how carriage negotiations with BDUs are progressing (as a Category 2 service, BDUs can carry the service at their discretion), but Lavoie told Marketing in November that he fully expected the service to be picked up by all of the country’s major cable and satellite operators. The expectation is that Quebecor will launch Sun TV News with a free trial and a basic cable positioning where possible (channel 15 in Toronto on Rogers Cable for example, the current home of Sun TV) before moving further up the dial to digital spots and introducing subscription fees. In some cases, dial position won’t be as favourable as originally thought, says Ng, which could hinder consumer trial of the service–particularly if it is located in the high double or triple digits.
But while Quebecor is mum on how launch plans are progressing, the Sun TV News application did provide a comprehensive overview of how it expects the service to fit within the Canadian news landscape. An analysis conducted for Quebecor by media services firm Carat Canada determined that the channel would earn $1.1 million in advertising revenues in its first year (based on a CPM of $7), growing to $9.9 million in its seventh year of operation. (See “Sunny Outlook,” pg. 18.) Combined revenues for the channel, including subscription fees, would grow from $5.7 million (based on a subscriber base of 1.5 million) in year one to $26.7 million in year seven.
By contrast, CBC News World had revenues of $79.1 million in 2009 according to CRTC data, while CTV News Channel—which has 8.5 million subscribers compared to CBC News Network’s 10.6 million—had revenues of $23 million. The application promised that Sun TV News will be an “information service with zest,” utilizing Quebecor’s more than 1,000 journalists spread across its 20 daily and 34 non-daily newspapers while making use of the internet and mobile to “develop and nourish” local content. In yet another backhanded slap at the incumbent services, Quebecor noted that the service “may well put Canada back into the lead of its own TV information.” No small feat for a fledgling yet to launch its first anti- Liberal broadside.
