Anti-Welfare TV Network Asks for Government Bailout
I don’t think there’s really any need for a detailed analysis of the following: the right-wing, free-market, anti-government “news” channel set up by Quebecor and some former Harper staffers is losing money and wants the government to mandate a special tax on cable consumers to guarantee it a revenue source. Apparently the free market isn’t so much fun after all, even for a free-market channel. Much easier just to have the government require everyone to pay for your service, right?
The depressing thing is that I would place the odds of Sun News getting basic cable status at something better than 50%. It’s tried and failed in the past to curry special favour, but I have a hunch that under its current leadership the CRTC is highly vulnerable to, shall we say, persuasion from its political masters. It’s a ridiculous application, but I don’t think it will do to laugh it off as a bad joke. They are completely serious about this. They want the government to require that all Canadian households with cable pay Sun News a monthly fee, so that Sun News can bombard them with the rantings of third-rate hacks who claim that big government is evil and the welfare bums should just suck it up and get a job.
I can’t find a copy of Sun’s latest submissions online yet, but the CRTC consultation notice associated with it notes that there are currently just 10 networks in Canada that have been given the status Sun wants: CBC News in Quebec, Radio-Canada’s RDI in English-Canada, Avis de Recherche in Quebec, the Weather Network, TVA, APTN, CPAC, AMI Audio, Accessible Media, and Canal M. Most of these are minority-language (i.e. French) non-profits, the most obvious exception being the Weather Network. Sun is asking for a special tax of $0.18 per month on all cable subscribers, which would make it the third-highest recipient of mandatory carriage subsidies after APTN and the Weather Network. As of 2013 no other news channels are mandated as part of basic service.
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BemusedLurker
… wait for it… Good Riddance…
This is what you call the market in play. Make a product that people want, and they will beat down your doors. So can anyone put their finger on what the problem with Sun TV is?
Oh yeah, too many to cover with only 10 fingers and (I’ll cut you all a break and add in the) 10 toes…
Face it, when you provide 8 hours of really cr@ppy TV broadcast 24 hours a day, are you surprised at the lack of support.
Rest assured that my letter to the CRTC to let the sucker die (sooner rather than later) will be in the mail as soon as this hits.
Sam Gunsch
re: SE said “Most of these are minority-language ”
An elite minority is probably a fair characterization of the press moguls/plutocrats/selve-serving corporatists behind the Sun, and most of Canada’s MSM.
Is it going to far to suggest these fine citizens from on high, behind the high quality newsthink of Sun News editorial decisions and hiring choices, constitute an elite ‘minority’, an elite with money… engaged in manipulating populism?
Perhaps the Presto centre for building reformatory conservative plutocracy would have some relevant archival material around manipulating populism in service of the monied elite’s agendas?
Or for a potentially relevant precis of their twins in the USA, perhaps this below…
http://www.zcommunications.org/against-the-manipulation-of-populism-by-elitism-by-paul-street
excerpt: “Conveying a political mood of “resentment against established power and “elitist liberals,” distrust of major institutions, and a sense of powerlessness even as it is “concocted” by right wing elites and their corporate sponsors, this “rancid populism”[1] gets very, very ugly: “The other party’s candidate is not simply depicted as unworthy of public office, but is connected to alien forces within the society that threaten to overwhelm decent folk – libertine sexual behavior, communists, criminals, people of color demanding more than they deserve. The Republican Party, thoroughly modern itself, poses as the bulwark against unsettling modernity.”
Along with the left political scientist Anthony DiMaggio, I have detailed the latest version of this plutocratic and rancid, right-wing fake-populism – “the Tea Party” – in a recent book: Crashing the Tea Party: Mass Media and the Campaign to Remake American Politics (Paradigm, 2011). ”
excerpt: “by Paul Street Iowa City, IA, October 14, 2011.
The formerly left Christopher Hitchens once usefully described “the essence of American politics” as “the manipulation of populism by elitism.” The manipulation of populism by elitism – the cloaking of plutocratic agendas, of service to the rich and powerful, in the false rebels’ clothing of popular rebellion; the hidden and unelected dictatorship of money masquerading in the dress of the common people. “That elite is most successful,” Hitchens added in his study of the corporate-neoliberal Bill Clinton presidency:
“which can claim the heartiest allegiance of the fickle crowd; can present itself as most ‘in touch’ with popular concerns; can anticipate the tides and pulses of public opinion; can, in short, be the least apparently ‘elitist.’
http://www.zcommunications.org/against-the-manipulation-of-populism-by-elitism-by-paul-street
Sixth Estate
None of that do I dispute, but what I meant was something much simpler. The basic regulation has been stripped down somewhat, and its core appears to be basically just a small number of channels which speak to a particular cultural and constitutionally protected minority in a market which could otherwise not susatined them – CBC English in Quebec, CBC French and TVA in English communities, and APTN for First Nations. Sun News doesn’t seem to fit the bill.
Their argument will be that in the past news stations were incorporated in the mandatory carriage regulation, and therefore that as a new news station Sun should get several years of mandatory carriage time. Think of it as the reverse of grandfathering — because the rule no longer applies to anyone else, Sun deserves a shot at benefiting from teh rule, too.
Basically, it seems as though there are not many people willing and able to pay for Sun News voluntarily, so Sun wants everyone to pay for it involuntarily.
Rab
Is this the application?
10. TVA Group Inc. and Sun Media Corporation, partners in a general partnership carrying on business as Sun News General Partnership
Across Canada
Application 2012-0687-1
Rab
Sorry, wrong link.
Rab
Actually this is the correct link. When I read French and English in the application summary it threw me off, but the application documents are for SUN TV News in English.
Not sure how they will be “devoted to English and French language mainstream national news” when they are an English language specialty channel but i’m not the expert on these things.
Their application focuses on a national survey as well as focus groups held with “typical Sun News demographic” in Vancouver, Calgary, Regina, and Toronto (not sure how Toronto made that list).
Their National Survey determined that Canadians felt:
A) more perspectives are needed in News media
B) most news media are afraid to discuss some issues that need to be discussed
C) a small majority feel that news media in Canada is dominated by a few voices who all think alike
I would make 2 points:
1) I think the people surveyed responded the same way I would. However I feel that Canadian media is dominated by an overwhelming pro-business (anti-common folk) right wing tilt.
How strong that tilt is can be argued, but if this website has done anything it has established quite clearly that the idea of a liberal left-wing media is a myth.
SUN TV turns the survey response on its head and will actually end up, assuming it is successful, in providing even more of the same things that the respondents do not want.
2) I don’t understand how they can apply for a NATIONAL mandate when their demographic (white, male, older, English speaking) seems a tad narrow.
Sam Gunsch
Rab said: “2) I don’t understand how they can apply for a NATIONAL mandate when their demographic (white, male, older, English speaking) seems a tad narrow.”
Rab, you’re being way too kind and civil in saying a ‘tad narrow’. And I would argue, that it’s the RICH white male demographic they actually serve/represent. Their false front operation is, of course, openly directed at ordinary white male older, English speaking, working class Canadians, and especially those with a taste for bigotry, or full on prejudice, enlivened by the politics of social resentments, etc.
My commentary/rant above was meant to point out the elite minority that Sun News is actually representing via it’s deceptive, misleading, ‘we’re for the ordinary Joe’ editorial stance.
They merely pose as speaking for the ‘silent majority’ of real Canadians, when unlike the ‘minority’ TV stations that SE listed, they are actually serving interests that screw over the majority of ordinary citizens.
Sam Gunsch
I’m obviously quite a rookie at satire via comments on blogs.
But let me take another stab…
My first comment above was meant to pick up on the ‘minority’ angle and mock the Sun News corporate exec’s and their fellow plutocrats and their political colleagues, i.e. Presto, for adopting a ‘poor oppressed us’ editorial stance under the boot of Big Liberal/Special Interests in Ottawa.
Yet now when they can’t direct the Free Market to fund them, they come cap-in-hand to the back door to an agency, ostensibly charged with serving the public good, an agency they’ve villified, but now they are begging for GOVERNMENT help from this agency.
( and if I wasn’t clear enough, when I yapped about Presto, I was meaning the clever preacher boy, who used the disguise of a populist to build a political movement that serves the god of the free market, of which Harper is his spawn).
Sixth Estate
Yes, judging from its patent inability to turn a profit on its own dime, Sun News really does appear to represent a minute constituency.
The difference is, unlike First Nations or French-speakers, I’m reasonably certain that the “ignorant old white male” demographic doesn’t have Constitutional status.
trevorus
i like reading nicky hager. although he is from new zealand, and his writing is about new zealand politics, his speech at the latest bruce jesson lecture applies to canada and the rest of the world bombarded by these corporate shitheads.
lengthy, but a good read.
http://pundit.co.nz/content/truth-prevails
kootcoot
If Cable subscribers were forced to accept (and pay for) Sub(n)TV that might provoke a scene like the old opening of SCTV – you know, TeeVees being hurled from the windows of apartment blocks and condo towers!
Sixth Estate
trevorus — Interesting. The only thing I’d read from him before is a book on signals intelligence he wrote years and years ago.
kootcoot — I kind of doubt it.
An equally interesting question would be: how many people would be prepared to cancel their cable subscription on principle to avoid paying a legally mandated tax to a far-right news network?
kootcoot
” a legally mandated tax to a far-right news network”
They seem to be an arm of government already, Harper’s (and Rethuglican’s) public relations bureau! I must admit though I might find them entertaining to watch sometimes if we had an NDP government in Ottawa………………..Like I never watch Faux, mainly cuz I don’t even get it, but I happened to catch KKKarl Rove’s aneurysm approaching meltdown on someone else;s TeeVee when he challenged the station for putting Ohio in the Obama column. I enjoyed that immensely!
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