I suppose this means my complaints about Sun News Network’s offensive attacks will never be resolved.
Oh well, I guess I can live with my objections being rendered moot by the disappearance of Sun News, fearless champion of the Canadian overdog, apparently the victim of, quelle horreur, a sound business decision and the fact there’s still not much of a market in Canada for far-right drivel.
Sun News was dedicated to the proposition that if only they could somehow build up sufficient numbers of listeners and viewers, they could create a Canadian equivalent to Fox News capable of deceiving Canadians into believing the neoliberal platitudes peddled by the likes of Stephen Harper, Preston Manning, Jim Prentice and their ilk.
In other words, to borrow the kind of language used regularly on the air by one of the network’s best known commentators, famous for his potty mouth, that p**p tastes like toothpaste.
For a spell, we were told, Sun News was the prime minister’s favourite TV channel, although not necessarily the one he actually watched himself.
In a strange way, I’ll miss Sun News, which will officially pass from the Canadian broadcasting scene forever tomorrow, an extraordinarily lucky Friday the 13th. It promoted me to “labour boss” in several of its hysterical broadcasts, after all, a recognition that the House o’ Labour itself never extended to me.
And every time I took a shot at Sun News for disseminating an endless stream of far-right codswallop, and occasionally outright hate, the readership of this blog soared through the roof as the Social Media Auxiliary of the Canadian Outrage Industry piled in to assail me for failing to pay suitable obeisance to Ezra Levant, Brian Lilley, Michael Coren and the rest of the dozen or so Sun News regulars.
It is unseemly to gloat, and probably unwise. The loony rightwing network, which lately has had his hand out for subsidies and favours as its cadre of enraged meat puppets waxed nearly incoherent at the thought of such funds for anyone else, will almost certainly soon resurface in an only slightly subtler form.
Moreover, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that that likes of Levant and Lilley have been engaged by the now thoroughly debased CBC, which has now been effectively integrated into the prime minister’s electoral propaganda machine. Indeed, I hear there is an opening at the Mothercorp’s “Q” for which a suitable Sun News Survivor could be enlisted.
No doubt the network’s minuscule number of fans will blame a conspiracy of the “liberal media,” or perhaps the price of oil, for the decision that caused it to perish. The reality is much more likely that someone at Quebecor Inc. used their head and realized there was very little entertainment value or moneymaking potential in enraged talking heads insulting people’s mothers.
Certainly there was precious little profitable about the business now. The Globe and Mail reported tonight that with its ratings at rock bottom, Sun News lost $14.8-million in 2013 and $46.7-million over the past three years.
Nevertheless, in its short life, Sun News Network can take credit for having permanently debased Canadian public discourse.
It was, in short, a big disgrace, and now it has mud on its face. So long, Sun News!
This post also appears on David Climenhaga’s blog, AlbertaPolitics.ca.
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