Sun News Network Launch

[jon]

Lots of Press Releases about the on-air staff they are acquiring, but here is a twist: someone who has left BEFORE the launch!

Broadcaster
DAILY NEWS Apr 13, 2011 3:04 PM
Sun News Network Loses Prime Time Anchor

Sun News Network has lost Mercedes Stephenson, one of its prime-time anchors, just days prior to its launch. A spokesperson stated that Stephenson was not suitable and that the split was a mutual arrangement.

Stephenson who is a columnist and military analyst had been hired to co-host a political series called "Daily Brief" with David Akin, the Sun's national bureau chief in Ottawa. The show will continue with Atkin being the sole host.

Earlier this week Sun News announced it had signed a distribution agreement with Shaw Communications to be distributed to homes in Western Canada and Ontario starting on the launch day.

ref. - http://www.broadcastermagazine.com/issu ... =DailyNews

[Howaboutthat]

So my read on this is that she has a brain and is able to think for herself.

[Dan Sys]

The other board is telling us that "All Eyes Will Be Turned to the Sun News Launch on Monday". Well, these eyes sure won't. I think I'll be painting my bathroom on Monday because I would rather watch the paint dry than subject myself to this new form of Canadian garbage journalism.

[jon]

The actual article being quoted is not as "rah rah" as the headline would have one believe:
http://www.canada.com/entertainment/eye ... story.html

One line that caught my eye:
"He [Sun TV host Ezra Levant] points out that despite their mandatory carriage, CNN often has better ratings north of the border than Canada's two current news channels."

I recently read the new autobiography of Dr. Charles Allard, founder of CITV-TV Edmonton and SuperChannel (he also provided the financing for the launch of CHQT), and it recounts "what should have been": CCN was to be his Canadian equivalent of CNN, but the CRTC chose the CBC's proposal for NewsWorld instead. Although Dr. Allard was fervent about NOT delivering a solely Centralist (Central Canada) view of News, he was certainly no Red Neck, as CITV's National and International News coverage proved as an Independent, before joining Global after Dr. Allard's death.

Levant's comment about CBC's and CTV's All News services' ratings prove Allard correct that the CRTC made a huge mistake giving CBC the first (Canadian) All News license over Allard. And CTV did no better.

We could have had something better than the best we can expect now from Sun TV -- starting more than 25 years ago! Sad.

Historically, CCN was the last gasp of hope for keeping CITV-TV alive as a independent TV station running a world-class production centre in Edmonton. It virtually assured the affiliation and sale of CITV to Global.

[cart_machine]

I recently read the new autobiography of Dr. Charles Allard, founder of CITV-TV Edmonton and SuperChannel (he also provided the financing for the launch of CHQT), and it recounts "what should have been": CCN was to be his Canadian equivalent of CNN, but the CRTC chose the CBC's proposal for NewsWorld instead.

Sorry to hijack the thread, Jon, but I'm reminded that Charlie Allard's deal to buy CKO fell through because they wanted to play music overnight (12-5a) and the CRTC said "no."

I'm sure people wanting news tuned in for the in-depth sob story of a porn actress.

cArtie.

[Mighty Thor]

I recently read the new autobiography of Dr. Charles Allard, founder of CITV-TV Edmonton and SuperChannel (he also provided the financing for the launch of CHQT), and it recounts "what should have been": CCN was to be his Canadian equivalent of CNN, but the CRTC chose the CBC's proposal for NewsWorld instead. Although Dr. Allard was fervent about NOT delivering a solely Centralist (Central Canada) view of News, he was certainly no Red Neck, as CITV's National and International News coverage proved as an Independent, before joining Global after Dr. Allard's death.

Levant's comment about CBC's and CTV's All News services' ratings prove Allard correct that the CRTC made a huge mistake giving CBC the first (Canadian) All News license over Allard. And CTV did no better.

We could have had something better than the best we can expect now from Sun TV -- starting more than 25 years ago! Sad.

Oh please,...when I was in j-school more than 20 years ago, I did a research paper once on the rival pitches to the CRTC by CBC and Allard's group for the all-news licences, and believe me, they weren't even close. For one thing, Allard's bid stated that the news HQ would be in Edmonton with five bureaus across the country. Except that none of these bureaus would be linked via microwave to the HQ in Edmonton. So, if a major story broke in, let's say, Ottawa, the anchors would have to cover the story by telephone until (and I'm not making this up) footage could be sent in by commercial airlines to Edmonton. That kind of thinking went out in the 1950s. As for international news, the Allard people stated they had a letter from VizNews, the satellite newsgathering organization that eventually morphed into APTV, claiming that they would "consider" providing footage to Allarcom. When it was pointed out that the CBC was one of the partners in VizNews and would be unlikely to support supplying a competitor with news footage, the Allard people could barely muster a response.

The CBC had a credible news organization with boots on the ground and an infrastructure already in place to link its operations together seamlessly to produce national and international news coverage. All the Allarcom people had were very vague plans and pipe dreams. Frankly, the decision was slamdunk from the get-go.

[jon]

Oh please,...when I was in j-school more than 20 years ago, I did a research paper once on the rival pitches to the CRTC by CBC and Allard's group for the all-news licences, and believe me, they weren't even close. For one thing, Allard's bid stated that the news HQ would be in Edmonton with five bureaus across the country. Except that none of these bureaus would be linked via microwave to the HQ in Edmonton. So, if a major story broke in, let's say, Ottawa, the anchors would have to cover the story by telephone until (and I'm not making this up) footage could be sent in by commercial airlines to Edmonton. That kind of thinking went out in the 1950s. As for international news, the Allard people stated they had a letter from VizNews, the satellite newsgathering organization that eventually morphed into APTV, claiming that they would "consider" providing footage to Allarcom. When it was pointed out that the CBC was one of the partners in VizNews and would be unlikely to support supplying a competitor with news footage, the Allard people could barely muster a response.

The CBC had a credible news organization with boots on the ground and an infrastructure already in place to link its operations together seamlessly to produce national and international news coverage. All the Allarcom people had were very vague plans and pipe dreams. Frankly, the decision was slamdunk from the get-go.

Interesting, but it varies markedly from the account in Allard's bio:

His application, with its acronym CCN for Canadian Cable News, proposed 11 bureaus across Canada. The bureaus would be located in Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Fredericton and Halifax....the news channel should affiliate with a number of private broadcasters across the country...would create a diversity of resources as well as a new revenue stream for independent broadcasters: it would also link up with recognized international news services. The doctor's aim was to provide a broad spectrum of coverage.

On the next page, it states that 286 new employees were to be hired across the country on Day One.

[jon]

As for the contention that CCN planned to airfreight film to Edmonton, and use audio telephone links until it arrived, I find that even harder to believe since, four years earlier, Dr. Allard had co-founded Independent Satellite News (ISN) in Ottawa, to distribute News via satellite to his own CITV-TV Edmonton and other stations.

Unfortunately, the CRTC does not provide applicant proposals from that era on-line. A reading of http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/1987/PB87-260.htm is a public statement that says the CRTC chose the CBC's NewsWorld proposal because of two major considerations:

1. the CBC was already producing the kind of News (e.g. - The National and live event News coverage) envisioned for an All News station
2. there were no financing issues because the federal government funded the CBC, in contrast to CCN and others who were having trouble getting commitments from cable companies for carriage fees

[Mighty Thor]

Your comments caused me to dig out the paper that I prepared more than two decades ago and while I'm sure Dr. Allard's biographer was well-intentioned, he neglects to point out certain key facts:

(1) Many of the "bureaus" that Allard proposed (and I stressed only proposed) to establish were either one person, one camera shooter operations in places like Fredricton and Winnipeg, or else sharing a body and paying part of the cost of a reporter at an established TV station. The 286 employees that were projected represented the combined staffs of the TV stations he hoped to affiliate with for his operations. I suppose if you counted the janitors and the lunch-ladies, the 200+ figure might seem realistic.

(2) ISN was, for the most part, a vehicle to provide Ottawa political coverage for non-affliates of either CBC or CTV. It involved the purchase of two 12-minute windows of satellite time to exchange stories. One timed for mid-morning for noon newscasts, with the other for late afternoon for feeds from Ottawa to the stations. At most, maybe 7-8 stories would be transmitted per day. As was stated in Allard's application, any breaking news that had to be fed outside of these feed times would be airfreighted to Edmonton. Not exactly enough to operate a 24-hour a day news operation.

(3) The comparisons between the proposed CCN and CNN were largely unavoidable, since if Allard's bid had been successful, Canadians would have been seeing a lot of CNN on a so-called "Canadian" news channel. In off-peak hours, CCN proposed to run a five minute news update at the top of the hour, followed by 55 minutes of uninterrupted CNN coverage from Headline News.

(4) As for the supposed "centralist" bias of the Newsworld, as it was initially known, the line-up of shows certainly doesn't bear that out for the first few years:

-CBC Morning Show - from Halifax
-Mid-mornings and mid-days - Toronto (including Midday - the national CBC news package at noon on the main network)
-Afternoons - Call in shows from Winnipeg hosted by Ann Petrie and Brian Yasui, among others
-Evenings - This Country from Calgary, with each CBC region providing a 10-minute summary of its headline news.

Sorry Jon, but I will always maintain that Canadians have been much better served by CBC's and CTV's newschannels than they would have been by anything proposed by the Allarco crew.

[jon]

Thank you for seeing this (discussion of CCN) through to its logical conclusion. For me, anyway, it makes fascinating reading.

[pave]

Meanwhile, as to the launch of Sun-TV: I am delighted they are on-the-air. Given their yearly budget is that of one week over to the Ma Corp, they're doing just fine. Although, because of my persnickety approach to language, I do find their promotional statements to be extremely, overly strident and somewhat patronising. And, I am completely satisfied this would not be their intent.

Further, any reference to Fox News North is another cheap shot from someone who expects their prattling to be taken seriously. Could possibly have been Margaret Atwood, the national literary treasure, CBC shill and main gate-greeter. Besides, and unlike Fox, Sun-TV is hardly a warm and sunny spot for the Jesus-freaks to be hanging out while waiting for Armageddon.

It's refreshing to be exposed to alternative material and spins other than those injected - or more subtly... sprayed - by The Ministry of Truth and Correctness as the CBC does give me a rather irritating rash on a regular basis - consistent as the affects of a Metamucil regimen, but not nearly as beneficial or satisfying.

[Anotherwpgguy]

So ... about 3 days ago, I was listening to "The World At Six" while driving home. At approximately 13 minutes into the newscast comes a story connected with the election and the possibility of a coalition being formed should another minority govt be elected. The coverage included representatives of the Liberal Party of Canada, and the NDP discussing how whomever wins, regardless of the number of seats, must have the confidence of Parliament to form a government. That was tagged with telephone quality audio actualities by 2 "members of the public" supporting the concept of a coalition ..... and that was the total content of the coverage. As one-sided as you could ever ask for. It would have been perfect for telling at a CBC staff party as a joke, or at The Press Club over a beer at the bar.

At the end of the newscast, Allison Smith asked for calls or emails to "Tell us how we're doing at The World At Six." I called immediately and left a message that indicated I'd listened closely for a balanced approach to dissemination of information on the topic, and found it lacking. That I was disappointed that an organization with as much power to shape thought and provoke action in Canada would allow itself to appear so partisan toward the ideals of the Liberal Party, NDP, and Greens."

Of course they didn't air the call the next day. Instead they selected flatterng callers who explained what a wonderful resource the CBC was .... tying the country together from sea to shining sea, and northward to the ice flows of the Arctic Ocean, and how the coverage had been just about right.

I've been tired of that drivel for decades and welcome Sun News to the airwaves of Canada. For many months I've followed other Canadian broadcast forums where references to "Faux News North" and countless other negative jabs were taken at fellow broadcasters by persons working for the major networks. Whenever I need to answer a question regarding the potential of media bias, I simply give them links to various forums, and have them read the posts for themselves. The underlying attitude is as evident as the nose on their faces. From there, I just say "make you own mind up based on what you read there."

Oh, but of course .... they must surely check their personal beliefs at the door of the station when they come to work .... right?

Anotherwpgguy