[BRIEF NOTE] On why Sun News died today
Feb. 13th, 2015 05:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldLast night on Facebook, I shared a National Post report that the ailing Sun News Network was set to shut down. With abysmal viewership and no buyers, Quebecor did just that, ending its venture into television.
Tremblay's statement is incorrect, as the Sun News network just did not have the viewship. The Globe and Mail's James Bradshaw points out that the company just never got any significant number of viewers.
Bradshaw also points to controversy over carriage, as well as controveries over hosts--Ezra Levant's multiple bigotries feature prominently--that overshadowed the channel's lack of star-making ability. Jonathan Kay in the National Post, meanwhile, today suggested that Canada lacked a climate of ideological competition and culture wars, of political controversies that mattered, such as sustained Fox News in the United States. Jaime Weinman of MacLean's emphasizes poor production values. Torontoist's Christopher Bird, meanwhile, has at the station with some degree of pretty justified vitriol.
Sun News Network went off the air at 5 a.m. ET Friday after failing to find a new owner.
Programming on the channel was replaced with a Sun TV logo.
Sun Media Corp. issued a statement saying it spent months unsuccessfully trying to find a buyer, but financial losses meant it could not continue to operate.
"This is an unfortunate outcome; shutting down Sun News was certainly not our goal," said Julie Tremblay, President and CEO of Media Group and Sun Media Corporation.
"Over the past four years, we tried everything we could to achieve sufficient market penetration to generate the profits needed to operate a national news channel. Sadly, the numerous obstacles to carriage that we encountered spelled the end of this venture," Tremblay said in a statement.
The network's website featured only a Sun News logo on Friday morning.
Tremblay's statement is incorrect, as the Sun News network just did not have the viewship. The Globe and Mail's James Bradshaw points out that the company just never got any significant number of viewers.
The straight talk about Sun News Network is that its failure traces back to the math. When it launched in 2011, the network cautiously told advertisers it expected to draw perhaps 5,000 viewers in an average daytime quarter-hour, and maybe twice that in prime time, during its early days. Ad buyers were wary. But even after the channel gained a foothold in nearly 4.9 million Canadian households, its day-to-day ratings never substantially improved. One-time events aside, many shows still attracted just a few thousand viewers, and ad rates stayed low – the company took in just $1.7-million in ad revenue in 2013, while the network lost $14.8-million. The debut episode of Ford Nation, a talk show hosted by Toronto politicians Rob and Doug Ford, was an outlier, drawing about 155,000 viewers to its first airing. The network cancelled the program the next day.
Bradshaw also points to controversy over carriage, as well as controveries over hosts--Ezra Levant's multiple bigotries feature prominently--that overshadowed the channel's lack of star-making ability. Jonathan Kay in the National Post, meanwhile, today suggested that Canada lacked a climate of ideological competition and culture wars, of political controversies that mattered, such as sustained Fox News in the United States. Jaime Weinman of MacLean's emphasizes poor production values. Torontoist's Christopher Bird, meanwhile, has at the station with some degree of pretty justified vitriol.
The network employed approximately 200 people, and most of those 200 people are not Ezra Levants and Michael Corens, who only have to stand up and shout something vaguely racist, and some right-wing media platform will give them some money. The Ezra Levants and Michael Corens of the world have learned that, regardless of the impact on the subjects they discuss, spreading poison can be very profitable, and by God have they got a lot of practice. The guy who was operating the camera that was on Ezra Levant, on the other hand? Nobody’s giving that guy money for being a cartoon villain any time soon.
The writing was on the wall for Sun News more or less from the beginning. Although early on the network tried to brag about its ratings (at a time when CBC News had about 14 viewers for every one of Sun’s—and this was when Sun News was being heavily promoted and had novelty on its side), the truth is that practically nobody watched Sun News. In 2013, the news channel nobody watched actually tried to get the CRTC to force cable carriers to give it a basic cable spot, because if you’re an irony-free pro-free-market news channel, of course you run to the government like a mewling baby. At that time, they were forced to disclose that their average viewership was approximately 8,000 people at any given time despite a reach of over five million households in Canada. More Canadians watched CTV News Channel than Sun News. More Canadians watched CNN than Sun News. More Canadians probably watch the Golf Channel than Sun News.
