Sunday, August 11, 2013

TOO LONG IN THE SUN NEWS


The CRTC's ruling last week denying Sun New Network's request for mandatory carriage brings out the "Big O's" (big opinions). Here's mine...

Toronto Sun columnists Warren Kinsella and Michael "M.C." Coren are putting extra spin on the CRTC's grand verdict. Fine, they are entitled to their opinion and to display their facility for illustrating that the gavel-bonk in question is actually a good thing.

No: The problem, and they are both forgetting this, is that viewer numbers for Sun News are catastrophically low. Some programs draw barely 5,000 viewers. Current carriage for the angry network is about 40 percent. Double that and you get barely 10,000 viewers. Equals: Pathetic. Another thing that gets forgotten is that there is a finite amount of possible 'saturation' since many people, me included, do not have cable.

There can be no spin on raw data.

The fact is Sun News has to start acting like a real news organization, and demonstrate technical proficiency -- maybe then more viewers will tune-in.

As I like to say: The math is simple.


Warren Kinsella...
Is it Sun down? No, it’s Sun rise
http://www.torontosun.com/2013/08/09/is-it-sun-down-no-its-sun-rise

Michael Coren...
Sun News will shine on
http://www.torontosun.com/2013/08/08/sun-news-will-shine-on


PS: After reading the Kinsella piece this morning I took a gander at the comments below. Awesome entertainment. (My favourite today: "Shut up stupid lefty idiot." Absolutely precious.)

I've posted before on the issue of the Toronto Sun comment boards...

http://barrysmight.blogspot.ca/2013/02/toronto-sun-comment-board-gold.html

http://barrysmight.blogspot.ca/2011/11/right-wing-newspaper-comment-boards.html

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