Sun News Network

Sun TV News Channel (also known as Sun News) is an English language Canadian television news and opinion channel being proposed by Quebecor Media. The channel will be operated under a partnership between two Quebecor subsidiaries, TVA Group Inc. and Sun Media Corporation, and is scheduled to launch on New Year's Day 2011 pending regulatory approval by the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission.^[1]

Sun News' schedule will be modeled after Quebecor's French language news channel, Le Canal Nouvelles, featuring news reportage during the daytime hours and analysis and commentary programmes at night. The network will have a general on-air attitude that its founding executives claim will be lively, "unapologetically patriotic," and "less politically correct" in comparison to the established CTV News Channel and CBC News Network.^[2]

Sun News will also take a populist, conservative-leaning approach that will mirror both the namesake Sun chain of Quebecor-owned tabloid newspapers ; that, and the designation of Quebecor vice-president of development Kory Teneycke to head the network, led media reports and pundits to bill the proposed network as "Fox News North." (Teneycke has a political background similar to Fox News' president, Roger Ailes, including serving as Prime Minister Stephen Harper's director of communications.)^[1][3] Teneycke has dismissed the "Fox North" comparisons as critics throwing stones, insisting that the network will have "a range of opinion" and that anyone "wondering what the presentation of what kind of news stories we’ll be interested in, and a flavour of the commentary that we’ll have, [should] pick up the Sun newspaper."^[1] Indeed, Sun News will rely in part on newsgathering resources from the Sun chain and other Quebecor-owned newspapers.^[4]

• David Akin - National Bureau Chief
• Brian Lilley - Senior Correspondent
• Tobias Fisher - National News Editor

The above three names will work out of Sun News' Ottawa bureau. Rumoured future hires include former CBC reporter Krista Erickson and right wing columnist and author Ezra Levant. Sun News made an offer to comedian Rick Mercer to join the network (Mercer declined); they also denied rumours of an offer to Kevin Newman, who would leave his anchor position at Global National in August 2010.^[5]

Quebecor's initial licence submission to the CRTC for Sun News would have the new channel replace Quebecor's existing licence for CKXT-TV (Sun TV), an over-the-air TV station in Toronto that also is relayed through translators in Hamilton, London, and Ottawa. In exchange for CKXT-TV, Quebecor requested that Sun News be awarded a limited, three-year Category 1 digital specialty channel licence for Sun News, a licence that would revert to Category 2 status after three years.^[6] Category 1 status, if the CRTC had approved it, would have required all Canadian digital cable and direct broadcast satellite providers to offer Sun News to their customers should those carriers have the capability to do so.^[1][2] (Category 1 would not have made the channel, contrary to common belief, a compulsory part of every customer's basic package; digital channels of this type cannot be carried on traditional analog cable at all.)^[7]

Quebecor requested Category 1 status for Sun News on the insistence that the channel's combination of news, analysis, and opinion programming would create "a completely new [TV] genre" different from the other all-news channels in Canada. The CRTC disagreed, however, and in a July 5, 2010 letter to Quebecor turned down its license request. In its letter, the CRTC noted that Sun News was being promoted in part as a news channel, and suggested that "news and analysis are sub-categories of the information programming category," which therefore would not, in the CRTC's eyes, make Sun News unique.^[8] Additionally, the CRTC had stated earlier in 2010 that it was not planning to entertain any new applications for Category 1 licences until at least October 2011.^[9]

After the CRTC's rejection of its original licence application, Quebecor resubmitted its application for Sun News, with the commission scheduled to consider it in a November 19, 2010 meeting. Though the new application is for non-mandatory Category 2 status, Quebecor will still seek a limited "mandatory access" period, arguing that the channel requires up to "three years to effectively expose and promote its programming to viewers across Canada" without obliging cable and satellite customers to add it to their package.^[10] Quebecor had previously turned down a suggestion by the CRTC to keep CKXT-TV and convert its format to all-news.^[8]

Quebecor's carriage attempts for Sun News are still the subject of criticism, including the belief that Prime Minister Stephen Harper intends to pressure the CRTC to ensure carriage for Sun News and its possible favourable coverage of his government.^[11] An online petition titled "Stop Fox News North" has been established, with Margaret Atwood announcing on Twitter that she put her name to the petition as a criticism not against any rightward slant of the network but of Harper's style of government; Sun News' supporters, including its Ottawa bureau chief David Akin, accused Atwood of attempting to squelch Quebecor's free speech rights by signing the petition.^[12]

• Sun TV News Channel