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Sun TV News: Origins and Resultant Expectation
Tue, 2011-04-19 10:15
#1
Sun TV News: Origins and Resultant Expectation
Tue, 2011-04-19 10:24
#2
The news media has a civic responsibility to hold politicians and industry accountable – to expose exploitation, unethical behaviour and dealings, and ambiguous ethics – and this can only be done by ensuring the citizenry is well-informed. If the people are unaware of what is happening, injustices cannot be known; they cannot be stopped or prevented; they cannot be fought.
A darkness veils a community in which a responsible media presence is wanting. News outlets are a source of light, of illumination, but only when they function in the interest of the people. The landscape now is dark and will only darken further with an influx of 24-hour news channels that follow a news/opinion format.
A program that features a host whose opinions are not only known but celebrated and continually presented and constantly defended is surely one of entertainment and in no form is it news, and to have such programming on what is labeled an ‘all-news channel’ is disastrous in how harmful it is to democracy. Such programming commonly and readily supports a narrative, an agenda, and news stories can be selected or highlighted in a way to coincide with hosts’ views (and the network owner’s views) so as to blur news and opinion, and when the lines have been sufficiently blurred, a narrative truly takes hold of viewers. Viewers’ opinions are not independently derived; rather, they are either reinforced – namely by pandering and concealing pertinent data – or provided, given, or implanted.
News outlets’ responsibility is to provide, as objectively as possible, as much reliable information as possible for viewers’ opinions to be formed independently through logical analysis of facts. Laziness is perpetuated by the myth that opinion-hosts matter, and people depend more and more on those who are supposedly news experts (due mostly to their affiliation with an all-news network) because it is their job to comment on political issues. Their position suggests insight, but opinion programming has no responsibility to be insightful or informative or factual. Their purpose is to get high ratings, to be entertaining.
The news/opinion programming format has devastated U.S. politics, and I fear Canada will follow.
Thu, 2011-04-28 10:37
#3
Sun News is not exactly a roaring success.
Thu, 2011-04-28 14:29
#4
Yeah,
Some programs are down to 4000 viewers
You can only imagine how low its numbers will be, after the election.
Thu, 2011-04-28 19:18
#5
and most of the viewers are lefties trying to see what they other side is preaching.
Thu, 2011-04-28 19:39
#6
Is any major brand name advertising on it?
Thu, 2011-04-28 19:45
#7
Uh oops now I see the other thread. I attempted to edit this out but it would not let me blank it. So sorry.
Is any major brand name advertising on it?
Mon, 2011-06-13 03:27
#8
Mon, 2011-06-13 13:36
#9
I think the local access channel in Winnipeg gets more viewers for replays of high school football games.
Mon, 2011-06-13 14:32
#10
a friend of mine, whose work connects him to the Sun channel against his will, calls it the cranky old white guy channel, but notes that this demographic has recently given Sun newspapers quite a boost in readership, after years of relative decline;
so nothing is settled yet, although the intial quality is really bad, and the TV critic at the Globe raked them for a head-butt of an interview they held with dancer Margie Gillis:
John Doyle: Television
Sun News Network - Canada's new comedy central TV
Mon, 2011-06-13 14:54
#11
yeah, and that piece charles adler did on the lingerie football league (no really, that was a topic on his show!) was such a great example of "straight news, hard talk" that they've been preaching....
really dealing with the issue that are "important to canadians", eh? gimme a break!
Tue, 2011-06-14 21:16
#12
Well not having seen it (and not really inclined to search for it and watch it) I would take a quess and say that it was at least the least pro-Tory, pro-Chamber of Commerce piece they have done so far.
That Adler is so horrible; he is on that way even when there is no microphone. A cousin of mine had a bizarre experience 13 years ago whereby for 3 months straight, every time he went to a restaurant, Adler was at the same place. Everytime he would go off on some topic he would project his voice as if he wanted everyone else in the room to listen to him. My cousin lost his appetite for eating out literally.
yeah, and that piece charles adler did on the lingerie football league (no really, that was a topic on his show!) was such a great example of "straight news, hard talk" that they've been preaching....
really dealing with the issue that are "important to canadians", eh? gimme a break!
Wed, 2011-06-15 01:09
#13
the most hilarious adler bit is still when he had the CEO of Rona on right before the election and adler was trying to say "we have to cut corporate taxes or the economy will suffer" and you could tell he figured a CEO would be a shoo-in for a pro tax cut point of view.
except the Rona guy insisted a tax cut isn't a major factor in how he runs his business...Adler tried to rephrase several times and eventually resorted to trying to get him to just agree with SOMETHING along those lines, trying to put words in his mouth "..but would you at least agree that if taxes aren't reduced you will HAVE to lay off some of your workers or reduce their wages??"
in the end it was so obvious he went into the interview with an agenda it was ridiculous...
Wed, 2011-06-15 15:58
#14
I think they are going to fail eventually or morph into something else because these folks miscalculated the appetite for the drivel they spew at Canadians. I mean how could they hire a bunch of ex-beauty queen types who parade around in sleeveless tight-fitting dresses and expect anyone to take them seriously?
And then there are the two frat-boy twins, Levant and Caldwell. Yikes! The day I watched Levant in a karate outfit bouncing around on the set was the day I knew these guys had lost their minds for starting up this cheesy faux channel. I mean I work in the biz and I can tell you the production people must have been falling out their chairs laughing at this clown.
Wed, 2011-06-29 15:50
#15
Wed, 2011-06-29 16:45
#16
Catchfire
That interview was a disgrace.
Wed, 2011-06-29 18:57
#17
It makes RT look super polished by comparison.
Wed, 2011-06-29 18:59
#18
As I mentioned in another thread, complaining to broadcast standards council is what Sun T.V. really wants, I think. They've been wanting to have something to point to where they can brag that they tell the "truth". The best advocate with Sun T.V. would be an irate or nervous advertiser.
Something struck me the other day. It would be interesting to see what the exact CRTC mandate of Sun T.V. is. If it's news, then it wouldn't be hard to put them in violation of their mandate, as there's no news, just opinion.
Wed, 2011-06-29 23:34
#19
Never let any of these guys close to you. Sun media types are a**holes. In every way and everyday. Yet they've got my ENG supervisor quacking in his boots. He thinks they're it. Don't bother with crtc. They're bought and paid for. Thank god I don't have to be around them where I am.
These guys are pushy arrogant, entitled a**holes. They're driving around Calgary and Edmonton in brand new minivans with scanners and cameras. But they don't know anything! They're just projecting image.
They'll push a guy like me out of the way just to get the story. They line up right along side you and bang their tripod against you and tell you, stop moving around and get out of the way. Welcome to Calgary.
No. They will fail because they're strictly what we used to call, "community cable hour", with a nasty twist. You can barely stand them being around you. About the only guy who really stands out is Rick Bell. At least he's trying.
Thu, 2011-06-30 20:18
#20
So many complaints were made about that dancer interviewer. The Sun spokesperson said it was a well-organized campaign but I never even heard about it until I came here. Hrmph
Sun, 2011-07-03 00:13
#21
SunComical Network may not need any 'organized campaigns' against it as it seems to be its own worst enemy. :-]
Sun, 2011-07-03 20:19
#22
Exactly. Sun will basically implode. Everything about their operation is a joke but someone in the Quebecor royalty thinks that Canadians are getting stupid. So they want to beat everyone else down to the bottom.
I mean having beauty queens as your hosts is troubling. Worse. Having non-white beauty queens as your "ethnic" element is even worse. Pandering to the lowest common denominator of ethnic stupidity.
But guess what? I live in Canada and that is now the new normal.
Even Bernard Shaw was a journalist when CNN started up. He was the real deal.
Sun, 2011-07-03 20:30
#23
Even Bernard Shaw was a journalist when CNN started up. He was the real deal.
Heh. When I first read that, I thought you were talking about GEORGE Bernard Shaw, and figured you must have your dates a little off.
Though I just found out yesterday, from a Globe And Mail article, that GBS did in fact win an Oscar in 1938.
[url=http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_received_an_Oscar_and_a_Nobel_Prize]link[/...
Sun, 2011-07-03 21:26
#24
With so much material for valid criticism, the way the women look and dress seems a bit ... irrelevant.I mean how could they hire a bunch of ex-beauty queen types who parade around in sleeveless tight-fitting dresses and expect anyone to take them seriously?
Thu, 2011-07-07 18:57
#25
Sigh. Some people are so militant in their feminism, they miss the point. Do you see the male anchors all buff and shiny wearing muscle shirts?
Yes voice of the damned. I do like Bernard Shaw. Sorry you want to see everything in msm as bad.
Thu, 2011-07-07 19:37
#26
Fox is like that too. Extremely short skirts, too tight tops considering that they have to sit in a hot studio for hours. Yet every network has this thing where the male bingo callers' heads are in the centre of the screen but a woman's chest is in the centre of their shots.
Sat, 2011-07-09 19:59
#27
I agree. The stupidity factor at Fox/Sun is relentless. My problem is that tv is a visual medium and so the back story is the one they're showing you with presentation, not the words. They're using distraction to hide the fact that a lot of self obsessed airheads can get on tv and really not tell you a whole lot.
The real sad part? I just saw a CBC weather girl dressed almost the same way. This is our public broadcaster using our tax dollars. They are so scared of what Sun is doing they're making changes on the fly and I doubt they know where they're going. I think this was the whole intent of Sun anyways. To rattle the big networks.
Thu, 2011-07-28 22:58
#28
So the summer campaign is on with Suntv and the Harper pr people. Everybody else talks about real news, these guys (yes they are guys, no ladies have opinions).
Everything is the fault of somebody else. I wonder about the timing of this "network's" attacks on its competition. Ratings season is the fall, not now. They remind me of a primitive version of Fox.
Fri, 2011-07-29 17:00
#29
Gee whiz; tonight Coren is on for two different slots - so much that I will be missing. He is filling in for Levant in addition to his own show. When will my tears dry?
Sat, 2011-07-30 12:59
#30
Sigh. Some people are so militant in their feminism, they miss the point.
Uhhh, this aint the forum to question a woman for pointing out that we should judge women by their minds not their looks.
Haing said that I do see your point. When everyone is dressed the same one starts to wonder whether its a coincidence or a uniform.
A much more egregious example is Gretchen Carlson on FOX in the States. Stewart went to town on her for acting like she didnt know what 'czar,' 'recession,' or 'ignoramus' meant, despite having: graduated cum laude from Stanford, studied at Oxford, and being an accomplished classical violinist.
So when she says "I'm just a mum trying to make sense of all this stuff" there's something insidious at play
Tue, 2011-08-02 23:25
#31
[/quote]
Uhhh, this aint the forum to question a woman for pointing out that we should judge women by their minds not their looks.
Haing said that I do see your point. When everyone is dressed the same one starts to wonder whether its a coincidence or a uniform.
[/quote]
What I meant to say was specific to Sun TV and yes, their "uniforms". If I had specifically insulted the feminist perspective, I'm sure it wouldn't have sat well with the moderator. Don't you think that many women of all stripes are offended by Sun TV and its obsession with dressing female hosts a certain way to appeal to the macho instincts of the male audience?
Anyway, as someone who knows a tiny little two-bit corner of the business - they (Sun TV) keep making a lot of key technical/ethical mistakes, so once the Canadian audience actually has to pay to watch this drivel, then we'll see what happens.
Wed, 2011-08-03 01:04
#32
dacckon
Sun tv is still alive?
I thought that garbage would be dead by now.
I watched a small session of debate, all three debaters had the same perspective, the same ideology, and the same conclusion.
I wanted to vomit.
Wed, 2011-08-03 18:08
#33
Well Fox News has been a money loser since its inception so there is no reason to believe that Pile-a-dough will not do the same as Murder-dock.
Thu, 2011-08-04 05:28
#34
2dawall:
it is one thing to wish bad luck on your adversaries, but another thing to ignore their strengths;
Fox News is doing great by any objective measure:
http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2011/08/03/cable-news-ratings-for-tuesday-august-2-2011/99536/
they draw as many viewers as CNN, MSNBC and CNBC combined; somebody likes their content, and advertisers follow ...
Fri, 2011-08-05 17:00
#35
Uh actually advertisers want a specific audience; that is why David Letterman's show use to be able to sell adverts at a higher rate than Leno's because he had a younger, more educated, more affluent audience even when by pure numbers, Leno was whaling on him. Many advertisers shun the intensity of Fox. Yeah, somebody likes their content allright; angry old white straight men who do not want to change their buying habits and who will not change their beer brand.
"Richard Maddox Ad Agency Marketing, Market Research Austin, TX - Apr 09, 2010 10:29 AM Advertisers and media buyers need to do the right thing and avoid Fox News. Year-by-year, it becomes more obvious that it is the propaganda machine of the far right and shows little regard for honest, problem-solving discussion. Recent rhetoric could even be seen as seditious in nature. Be it news or entertainment, Fox News hurts the U.S. in a time when people need to come together --buying ad time only sanctions the caustic troublemakers in its ranks. "
Sun, 2011-08-07 15:22
#36
this guy says Sun TV already has 1.2 billion viewers... impressive:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=486518230326
Sun, 2011-08-14 20:46
#37
At least that's a real tv network. This joke that is trying to pass itself off as a real tv network in Canada is desperate. They keep pushing news during the summer, when their competition is already getting ready for the fall ratings season.
They are so desperate they'll push anything that they see from the US or Britain as "news" but it's all wasted effort. People do not watch news in the summer, and that's a proven fact among MSM. These guys and gals are crazy. All this effort to get some sort of credibility.
I think Canadians are not going to buy. You see they now only have about 3 months of free preview time left with cable and satellite watchers. What's going to happen when the freebie runs out?
They've tried everything. Clownish antics with guys doing karate on screen, female anchors dressing like they're doing the Hollywood cocktail circuit, right wing pundits talking about guns and castles. Old grumpy men saying that the world is not right, and dittoheads agreeing with them.
Mon, 2011-08-15 11:22
#38
Wed, 2011-08-17 08:49
#39
Wed, 2011-08-17 11:18
#40
one thing you can be sure of: advertisers insist on verified viewership/readership counts, like the ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulation) for print media;
so if SUN TV is faking it, it will be short-lived -- and highly publicized
Wed, 2011-08-17 12:02
#41
Speaking as a conservative, I can say that the reason I don't watch Sun TV is that I don't have the time to waste watching people spend an hour talking about things that I can read about in three minutes in the press or on the web. I don't know who the people are who watch talk or political TV for hours, but I have too much going on in my life to sit and watch Ezra Levant or anyone else talk about politics, when it's all available on the web to be easily read....it's not their politics that put me off, just the waste of time....
Wed, 2011-08-17 18:38
#42
Well they appear to be but they are also about a Friday in August. The previous numbers were for April which is far more important viewing month.
We should wait and see for September to see if this really means anything.
http://www.torontosun.com/2011/08/16/here-we-grow-again
I wonder if these numbers are real.
Wed, 2011-08-17 21:33
#43
Great link to the Macleans article. I hadn't read that DaveW. And 2dawall you took the words right out of my mouth! Friday, August and shouting about ratings when it is not ratings season. To me that's a sign of desperation for the Sun gang who couldn't find their conscience if they had a diagram scrawled in crayons.
September and October is where its at, but if they want to shout about it I suppose that's part of the "white noise" we are going to put up with for now.
Thu, 2011-08-18 01:57
#44
dacckon
You know what I've always been suprised about?
How so many people could actually watch and believe Fox News and other garbage like it.
And seeing the comments on a sun tv site make me ill. How could so many be so blind?
Thu, 2011-08-18 21:07
#45
These were the previous numbers I was talking about; in April CBC had 263 000. I wish we could get more important numbers like a Monday or Tuesday in May, November, February, etc. That being said, Pile-a-dough may just keep the one money loser in an otherwise money-making machine just like Murder-doc did. We need Quebecor to get its own hacking scandal to set it back a bit.
Sun News is not exactly a roaring success.
Thu, 2011-08-18 21:08
#46
Uh the same people who were brought up on Reader's Digest, Saturday Evening Post, the New York Post. Faux News is just the exaggeration of tendancies that have been there for a long time.
You know what I've always been suprised about?
How so many people could actually watch and believe Fox News and other garbage like it.
And seeing the comments on a sun tv site make me ill. How could so many be so blind?
Sat, 2011-08-20 10:58
#47
Sun News gives up over-the-air licence
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/sun-news-gives-up-over-the-air-licence/article2134376/
Sun News has used some unconventional methods to ensure that millions of viewers have access to its brand of right-leaning news and punditry – even if few of them actually watch it.
But the 24-hour news channel is about to abandon the strategy that gave it a preferred access to more than three million Canadian TV screens, according to documents submitted to the federal broadcast
Thu, 2011-08-25 22:42
#48
http://www.torontosun.com/2011/08/16/here-we-grow-again
I wonder if these numbers are real.
There's a giant hole in the Sun's article: CP24.
SUNTV's record so far is 89,000 viewers
CP24s record was set during the G20:
"Toronto’s source for breaking news, CP24 blew up its own ratings record with an astonishing 3.2 million unique viewers on Saturday and 3.6 million viewers on Sunday, the most-watched day in the station’s history. The total unduplicated reach from Friday to Sunday on CP24 was 4.6 million viewers."
and they're not even national
4 600 000 divided by 89 000 = 51.6853933 times the viewers
Thu, 2011-08-25 23:16
#49
...Anyway, it all reminds me of when Frank magazine would routinely run the various Toronto/ National dailies spin side by side.
One time, when the Globe's numbers were on an uptick;
-the Star crowed about how its absolute numbers stomped the competition but not how they had fallen a few percent by total circulation
- the Globe trumpeted their modest increases in total circulation, but not the fact that the Star still walloped them
-The Stun and The Toast mimeographed their CEOs press releases about how they continued to be popular without quoting any of their disastrous year over year numbers
Sat, 2011-08-27 16:14
#50
Here in Winnipeg, the Winnipeg Sun, the daily tabloid, has pretty much become a free daily in many parts. There were experimenting with this in certain area off and on and then they really upped it once that free daily, The Metro, came to town. You still see the regular pay-machines for the Sun but near any bus stop it was have a free one. Is this happening in Toronto and Calgary too?
Sun, 2011-08-28 00:12
#51
You might be thinking of 24 Hours? That's their freebie-handout that they've done in Calgary and Edmonton. Long on splashy pics and short on content. About a grade 8 reading level. Metro is a much better looking paper but it's in the same mould. Not a lot of in depth jouralism there either. But it is free.