UPDATE: here’s the new site for the new channel, Sun News. See what you think.
“Canadians are tired of the same talking heads saying the same things on the same networks. Sun News will cut through the clutter. New voices with new insights – not just an echo chamber – will be announced soon. Colorful, intelligent commentary on the issues that are important to you.”
Also: here’s today’s press conference video. (Yeah, that’s a French guy, but he’s just at the beginning. And I’m pretty sure they won’t be using this particular camera dude…)
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Ezra Levant on the revealing uproar over an as-yet unborn “conservative” Canadian TV channel:
I’ve been reading some of the commentary and criticism about the all-news TV channel being proposed by Quebecor. It’s interesting not because of what it says about Quebecor (how could it be? only a handful of staff have been hired, and they haven’t broadcast anything yet) but because of the insights it gives us into those commentators and critics themselves.
It’s like a Rorschach Test that way: a chance to see what is on the minds of people who look at it.
Pat Martin, the anti-Catholic MP from Winnipeg who says Opus Dei gives him “the creeps”, says Quebecor’s TV station is “kind of frightening”.
I think it’s safe to conclude that a lot of things are frightening to Martin, including schoolchildren and little lambs, as long as they disagree with his far-left views.
Don Newman took an interesting point of view: not only does he not like what he thinks Quebecor’s TV channel will be, but he’s not satisfied with making a personal choice to not watch it. He says it will be bad for the whole country — he doesn’t want his neighbours to watch it, either.
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I don’t know anything more about this new channel than anybody else does.
However, what I do know about it doesn’t have me all that excited.
Sure, I’ll absolutely watch certain shows if Certain Rumored Hosts get signed. Names of people I know, like and respect are being tossed around, and if everything works out, I’ll be thrilled for them.
And for me: I’d like to have a decent show or two to look forward to.
But other names associated with the channel so far are just too Establishment for my tastes.
Not in the “What? I thought he was dead!” category of Canada’s mainstream broadcasters and newspaper hacks (see above), but hardly (as these same guys fear) the next Glenn Beck or something.
You know what I mean: the “young fogeys” as opposed to the “old” type… Guys who aren’t bad, just… boring.
If this new channel hires too many careeerist, connected, Upper Canada College, cocktail party conservatives, the station won’t satisfy the very viewers who have been pleading for years for a “Canadian Fox News.”
And believe me, they outnumber Don Whatshisname and his friends.
But I doubt those ordinary Canadians will be thrilled if they tune in and get “conservatives” who are vaguely hawkish and low tax, but otherwise on board with Trudeaupian bullshit about immigration, bilingualism and multiculturalism, and still believe it matters what party is in power.
And that’s what most Canadian “conservatives” are. Especially the men. And so far, all the names I’m hearing are male ones.
So unless there’s gonna be a game show called “Go Back Where You Came From!,“ I don’t expect “Fox North” will be that much different than what’s currently on Canadian TV.
There are strict rules broadcasters have to follow, for one thing.
For another, even the most out-there conservatives (with notable exceptions) get all weasel-ly at the prospect of the chintzy Canadian equivalent of “fame and fortune.” Everybody wants their Order of Canada or Senate seat in the end.
