The early bird deadline has passed, but the Sun News Network won't say how many people have signed up to spend a weekend hobnobbing with its stars at an exclusive Muskoka resort.
Ezra Levant, a Sun Media commentator on TV and in print, is hosting Freedom Weekend, a getaway in the Muskoka woods from Feb. 24–26*. It’ll feature Sun News Network personalities and other as-yet-unnamed conservative speakers. Given the price tag, though, they may have a hard time selling tickets.
Rooms at The Rosseau, Canada’s only JW Marriott resort and spa, run $199–$379 per night. Early bird tickets to Freedom Weekend, which includes a couple of nights at the resort, sold for $1,050. They jumped to $1,200 after Jan. 16. The inflated cost is justified by the extras: the event’s website says guests will dine with and listen to speeches from Levant and his Sun News Network colleagues Charles Adler, David Akin, Michael Coren, Jacqui Delaney, Krista Erickson, Brian Lilley, Alex Pierson and Robin Tapley.
The website promises “several lively panel discussions featuring Sun News and conservative personalities, where you can participate in a Q&A session,” as well as “a choice of one of several Saturday afternoon fun activities (e.g. snowshoe trek; yoga; art class, etc.) plus an astronomy event, with a Sun News or conservative personality.” On Levant’s own blog, he describes the extras with similar enthusiasm. “The real fun is the informal part of the agenda,” he writes. “For example, you'll sit with a different Sun personality at your table each meal. So you can talk politics with David Akin over pancakes, or let the great Jacqui Delaney regale you with her tall tales over dinner!”
Freedom Weekend has ruffled some feathers on social media. Mentions of the event on Facebook have created hyperbolic posts by both pro- and anti-Sun New Network commentators. Twitter comments were almost uniformly dismissive, and generally quite condescending.
The reaction is nothing new. Even before its launch on April 18, 2011, Sun News Network stirred controversy. It was derided by many Canadian journalists and commentators, who labelled it “Fox News North” after the controversial American network. In fact, an online petition launched by New York City–based activist website Avaaz.org called Canada: Stop ‘Fox News North’ has garnered 83,574 “signatures,” 2,836 Facebook “likes” and 1,471 shares on Twitter. Among the petition’s more notable supporters has been author Margaret Atwood. In an email to The Globe and Mail, Atwood indicated that her opposition was based on her belief that Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper appeared to be manipulating the media, as evidenced by the fact that the head of the network was former Harper communications director Kory Teneycke.
For their part, representatives for the Sun News Network—none of whom went on the record for this article—accused critics of hypocrisy, charging they opposed freedom of speech. Lilley accused Avaaz of being “a far left-wing American lobby group funded by U.S. billionaire George Soros,” and of the entire affair as an American conspiracy to intervene in Canadian politics. Soros, who is a well-known opponent of American conservatives, did indeed own one of the many charitable organizations that helped fund Avaaz, and later threatened to sue Sun Media over an article by Levant—which has since been scrubbed from Sun websites—that accused Soros of “collaborating with the Nazis” when he was a 13-year-old in Hungary.
How to draw an audience
That kind of hyperbole makes headlines, and that’s exactly what many believe the Sun News Network wants. After its failed bid to be categorized by the CRTC as mandatory on digital cable and satellite providers across Canada, Sun News Network has had to rely upon paid subscribers for revenue.
“If their original plan had worked, or their other plan to have Sun News Network bundled with all the other news channels, it would be different,” says Christopher Waddell, director of the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University. “The advantage [in either scenario] is that they would be guaranteed a certain amount of revenue. And as long as operating costs are lower than that revenue, you can make money even if nobody watches your channel.”
But that’s not been the case, and other factors have made it hard for Sun News Network to attract subscribers. Waddell points out that Sun News Network is the first all-news network launched since CNN in 1980 that has not benefitted from an on-air partner—as examples, CBC News Network has CBC and Fox News has Fox. Their access to video, pictures and crew around the country and the world, Waddell says, allows those networks to put on more entertaining and up-to-date programming.
Not so at Sun News Network, says Waddell.
“What they generally have is a group of people sitting in a room talking about something that’s already been reported elsewhere,” he says. “There’s a market for a bunch of people in a room talking, but it’s finite.” The owners of Sun News Network do have access to newspaper reporters across the country, but that doesn’t mean they can compete with the other networks on even terms. “Just because there’s a video on a newspaper’s website doesn’t mean it’s any good,” says Waddell. “A reporter with a handycam just can’t provide what a TV news crew can.”
The ratings war
BBM Canada, the company that measures television viewership in Canada, only publishes ratings for the top 30 shows at any given time, so it’s hard to tell how exactly many people are watching Sun News Network. But, at any given time, it isn’t many. BBM says the top show during the week of Dec. 12–18, 2011 was Global’s Survivor Pacific, which garnered 2.501 million viewers aged two or older.
Sun News Network has repeatedly attacked the CBC. Pierre Karl Péladeau, president and CEO of Quebecor, the network’s parent company, has been quoted as saying that CBC News Network and other Canadian news services are “uninspiring”, which has Canadian viewers “fleeing to American networks to get their fix.” But viewership of CTV and CBC broadcast evening newscasts are generally over 1 million.
By comparison, Sun News Network viewership is tiny. On April 18, 2011, the network’s opening night, a Canadian Press report quoting BBM showed that Levant and Adler’s debuts both drew 31,000 viewers across Canada, while Lilley’s drew 17,000. Two days later, Levant’s audience had dropped to 12,000, with just 1,000 in the coveted 25–54-year-old demographic. While former Sun News Network host Theo Caldwell was drawing 11,000 viewers, CBC News Network drew 263,000 and CNN drew 38,000 Canadians.
Sun Media claimed to the contrary. In August 2011, the network claimed to have “scorched” its competition in ratings, and quoted BBM’s data to that end. It reported that Adler was drawing 89,000 viewers, while CBC News Network drew just 58,200.
If you’re confused, it’s because both sides—Canadian Press, which is owned by Torstar, The Globe and Mail*, and the Power Corporation of Canada; and Sun Media—appear to be selecting self-serving snippets from a massive sea of otherwise secret data. Still, BBM spokesman Tom Jenks confirmed that all numbers in this article are genuine.
Bill Brioux, a freelance TV writer for CP, owner of TVFeedsMyFamily.com and a former Sun Media TV columnist, has access to BBM numbers. He says the audiences for Sun News Network are indeed minuscule.
“Very few Canadians watch Sun News Network. A look at the BBM Canada overnight, estimated ratings for [Wednesday, Dec. 28],* showed that their highest rated show was The Source with Ezra Levant at 10 p.m. with 38,000 viewers across Canada. ByLine with Brian Lilley at 9 pulled 35,000. Only 5,000 and 6,000 of those viewers were between 25 and 54, across Canada. There are more people, on any given night, in a mall in Toronto,” says Brioux.
So who does watch Sun News Network?
“The vast majority of the few viewers SNN does get are way over 50, outside the demo advertisers want. So SNN draws enough on a nightly basis to fill a senior’s mall,” says Brioux.
He went on to say that after the top two shows, Sun News Network gets even fewer viewers.
“Beyond Lilley and Levant’s shows—the two highest rated SNN offerings by far—everything else stiffs,” says Brioux. “Charles Adler has bombed from the beginning, drawing 8,000 at 8 p.m. and 2,000 at 11 p.m. on the 28th—and zero in the 25–54 demographic both hours, across Canada.”
As for David Akin’s Daily Brief, Brioux says 6,000 viewers tuned in over the supper hour. But the late-night slot tanked. “Daily Brief at midnight got zip and zip—so few viewers, BBM Canada could not measure them. The same night, CBC News Network peaked at 198,000/60,000 viewers.”
(UPDATE: As David Akin pointed out in a Jan. 18 tweet, this was a holiday week and a live broadcast of Daily Brief did not air.)
What’s Sun Media trying to accomplish?
Some say the Sun News Network exists not just to draw viewers, but to help shift the political conversation of the country. Brioux finds that idea ridiculous. “The purpose of running any TV network is to make money, period,” Brioux says. “Certainly that is Quebecor’s goal. Their attacks on ‘the state broadcaster’ are being mounted to wound CBC in Quebec, and to gain advantage in that market, plain and simple. Hammer CBC, gain viewers, sell ads. That is their business plan.”
Responding to critics who say frequent attacks on the CBC by the Sun News Network and other Quebecor media outlets were politically motivated, Péladeau says he does not provide editorial or political direction to his journalists. “Since when have I ever made my personal political views known?” he said to The Globe and Mail. “I never have.”
* CORRECTION JAN. 18: This story originally stated that the Freedom Weekend was February 26-28, not the correct Feb. 24-26. OpenFile regrets the error.
*JAN. 19: Canadian Press is part-owned by the Globe and Mail, not CTVglobemedia, as reported in an earlier version of this story.
* CLARIFICATION JAN 18: An earlier version of this story published a quote saying Dec. 28 represented a typical weeknight on Sun News Network. In fact, it was not a typical weeknight, because the live broadcast of David Akin’s Daily Brief did not air that week. We have updated the story to clarify this point.
