I couldn’t let this good news pass without comment.
The Sun News Network, geared toward a Canadian audience was forced to shut down its operations due to financial loss and poor viewership. Sun was known for being an Islamophobic propaganda outlet with programs led by the likes of Michael Coren and Ezra Levant consistently promoting Islamophobes such as Rev. Deacon Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller.
This wasn’t very popular among a Canadian audience that saw through the cheap propaganda and voted to just watch something else.
“Over the past four years, we tried everything we could to achieve sufficient market penetration to generate the profits needed to operate a national news channel. Sadly, the numerous obstacles to carriage that we encountered spelled the end of this venture,” Tremblay said in a statement
The network’s website featured only a Sun News logo on Friday morning.
- Quebecor sells 175 Sun Media newspapers and websites to Postmedia
- Ezra Levant, Sun News Network host, ordered to pay $80,000 in libel case
- Justin Trudeau gets apology from Sun Media
The network began broadcasting in April 2011, launching a right-of-centre programming schedule, but it has had a constant challenge attracting viewers.
Its supporters blamed the CRTC for not giving it the same access enjoyed by news channels operated by CBC and CTV.
The federal broadcast regulator denied Sun News a guaranteed spot on basic cable TV packages in August 2013.
Data released as part of that application showed that while the network was available to 5.1 million households, it was only attracting, on average, 8,000 viewers at any given time.
That number was far lower than what well-established all-news networks operated by CTV and CBC were reporting. CBC, for example, said it had eight times as many viewers as Sun News.