To say that the extreme right is often hypocritical is tantamount to saying that when the sky is clear, it is blue. Nonetheless, I can't help but feel more than my usual disdain when that hypocrisy is especially overt and egregious.
This morning, while waiting for my wife at the dentist's office, I picked up a copy of The Globe and Mail to read one of the few columnists I actually miss from the days that I subscribed, television critic John Doyle. In his column today, entitled Warning: This column contains scary Sun News scenes unsuitable for some readers, he reports that the Sun News channel, which enjoys what could most charitably described as a miniscule audience,
... has put in for mandatory carriage on basic cable in Canada. The elusive, lucrative 9(1)(h) category, as it is called by CRTC wonks. What it means for us is that if you purchase a basic cable package, Sun News would be part of it, whether you bloody well like it or not.
As Doyle points out, this desperate measure to save the station runs completely counter to its notion of freedom:
... isn’t Sun News anti-mandatory on everything? Watching Sun News doesn’t bring many surprises; you’re more likely to get variations on a theme watching the Fireplace Channel. So, mere minutes spent watching its continuing hilarity confirm that it’s against folks being obliged to do anything they don’t wanna do. Like, you’d think, pay for a TV channel they don’t want to watch. On the day Sun News went on the air, Levant declared, “We’re talking about truth and freedom. If you love freedom like I do, it’s a pretty happy day.” Well, sunshine, “freedom,” also means freedom from not having to pay for your channel.
Yet one more reason to hold the extreme right-wing in the contempt they so roundly deserve.
This on the heels of Quebecor, media giant and owner of Sun publications and Sun News, announcing that it's laying off 500 employees. Disgusting. If their corporate losses are so profound, why not stop their failed TV news experiment? Do they really think that foisting that crap on basic cable subscribers is going to bring them a significant audience? Perhaps the bean counters are looking at a long game... hoping to build a FOX news behemoth while print news dies a slow and agonizing death.
ReplyDeleteGiven that their philosophy seems to mirror that of the Harperites, I fear that pressure will be exerted on the CRTC to give Sun what they want, Beijing.
ReplyDeleteIt's already on my Shaw cable package. I tried and failed to have it deleted. "Can't be done" I was told. I wrote to Shaw to complain of having to receive political porn in my home. No response.
ReplyDeleteMy sympathies, Mound. Even though you don't want or watch it, I assume you are amongst the tens of thousands considered to be consumers of their paranoid hate-mongering.
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