SUN TV NEWS NOT THAT BAD

The highly anticipated arrival of Canada's Sun News Network has been a mixed bag: No, it is not a "Fox News North"; no, it's not an unofficial "mouthpiece for Stephen Harper and the Conservatives"; as for being "on your side", well, it doesn't really do that either. All said and done, it's another... news network. And hardly one that talks about 'issues nobody else will touch'. That pompous and often repeated line is nonsense. I have not seen a single story where I'm thinking, "Wow, nobody else would dare cover this!"

So, is Sun News a disappointment? Probably. It does not push any boundaries in the profession of journalism here in Canada (and it certainly will not single-handedly send the CBC's news division packing), nor would it impress the average angry right-winger who is looking for a channel where "Socialists", "Liberals", "Lie-berals" (I just love that one, from the brainless twit), and "Commies" get raked over the coals 60 times an hour. Far from it. (By the way, don't you love name-calling? If those right-wing, loony-toons, wingatics spent as much time readin' as they do dispensin' insultin' words they don't even understand, they might actually advance intellectual-like.)

Maybe Sun News is a disappointment as it is getting terribly low ratings -- odd for a new channel, where what often happens is ratings are very high, even if they drop over time and rest. Sun did have okay numbers in the first half hour, to carry over the next day or so, but after that it was a big plummet job. Even hot-head Ezra Levant is getting very low audience counts... 19,000 for Canada-wide is pathetic. And those are the high numbers. The average is around 4 to 5 thousand. (It's not for lack of coverage; Sun is carried by many cable companies, plus it is offered over-the-air on the 'old' SunTV spot of channel 52, UHF, in the Toronto broadcast area.)

From a technical standpoint, the channel is amateurish; looking like 'community access television', more often than not. The news set is junk. More suited for an Entertainment Tonight-type show than a news network. Now that I think about it, Sun News does look kinda....

We'll see how long they continue in this mode. After all, it is very tempting to turn it up a notch when blessed with continually low ratings. As a friend said to me after I told him that I was impressed that Sun News was "not that bad" and explained why: "Yet..."

We'll see.