Nobody watches SUN-TV outside of a few elderly shut-ins, the staff at QMI newspapers who are a captive audience, Blogging Tories and professional media watchers.
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 a typical mid-week night, Wed. 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.”
The idea behind the "news" network is to make a lot of noise through calculated and contrived outrageousness and get the other media in the country to pay attention. This results in the media that most people do watch and read - the CBC, CTV, Global TV, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Montreal Gazette, Vancouver Province et al - reporting "both sides of the story" and thus giving the radical right wing side of an issue equal balance with the truth, thus advancing the radical conservative neofascist agenda.
Every time Ezra Levant prances around in a fright wig or tells a foreign executive to go fuck his mother for opposing the destruction of the environment, every time some ignorant spokesbimbo insults a guest and spouts nonsense, every time Michael Coren tells the audience that real Canadians hate brown people and non-Christians --it makes the news, the blogs (including this one) go nuts and people talk about it.
With very few exceptions - and they should be ashamed of themselves - the people on SUN TV don't care about the news or journalism or truth - that isn't the business they are in. They will say or do anything to get covered by other media. They have to, because no one is watching them.
Essentially, SUN TV is engaged in cultural trolling and the way you get rid of trolls is to quit feeding them. So I call on other bloggers, other journalists, the real news media in Canada to stop giving these trolls the oxygen of public attention.
As long as the CRTC refuses to force cable companies to make them a standard station and force subscribers to give them money, SUN-TV will not turn a profit. Eventually PKP will get sick of shovelling money down a hole and Levant, Adler, Coren, Erickson and the rest will all be forced to go out and try to get real jobs.
And being a professional clown only looks good on a resume if you are applying for a job at Ringling Brothers or a rodeo.
Crossposted from the Woodshed
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11 comments:
Bang, bang, bang on Rev.
And the reason it is important for everyone to understand why this media organ grinder monkey must be called out for what it really is at every opportunity (as opposed to just 'ignoring' it or 'laughing' at it because of its low viewership) is precisely because it is this non-stop wurlitizering of the codswallop that makes it impossible for the mainstream to call a demonstrable falsehood what it actually is.
And once that happens we are doomed to a discourse devoid of any reason and/or reasonableness.
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Too true. I never watch them. Then again, I never watch Peter Mansbridge or any of the other foolish nonsense that's out there either.
I'm immune to about 95% of mainstream news's charms.
so show us the BBM numbers. You accuse SUN TV of making up the news and here you are presenting a blog with zero fact checking as gosspel.
Pot calling kettle.
Rye and Ginger, try clicking the link or reading the quoted material that has the numbers in it.
And the point is not so much that no one watches it, PKP and his CPC pals don't care if no one watches it, as long as the rest of the media gives them a platform and repeats their talking points as if they were credible
And I never said SUN TV was making up the news, I said they were making the news, as in they are being covered by the other media as if what they say is newsworthy. There were probably a hundred times as many people who read about Levant telling the Chiquita Banana guy to go fuck his mother through coverage in the Toronto Star, Globe&Mail, etc than actually saw it happen on SUN-TV.
Rev. Paperboy the links point to web articles that claim to report BBM data yet none actually show the BBM data itself. Also one of the links from the open file piece points to a CBC articles from April of 2011. The article also references personalities like Theo Caldwell who hasn't been on air for months.
Hardly relevant in January of 2012.
Besides the article is about Bill Brioux and his claims of BBM numbers. The only article I could google about him and SUN TV was from April of 2011. Again hardly relevant in January of 2012.
My gripe is that the article is based on articles that are out of date and that the BBM data is unverified and thus hearsay.
There are a lot of things to criticise SUN TV about, for me it's that they present opinion as news (but then again so does everybody these days.)
However if you are going to write a piece condemning the journalistic practices of SUN TV you better do a better job than calling people bimbos and taking the word of one freelance TV critic, writing for a competitor and using suposed data from 10 months ago.
Just because it has a hyperlink doesn't make it true.
Rye,
the BBM numbers are not really obtainable without spending a lot more than I intend to spend, though the author of the linked article claims to have confirmed the numbers used by CBC, SUN-TV and Bill Brioux with BBM.
What is available at the BBM site is a list of the top-viewed 30 shows each week. Just scanning Dec and Nov for last year you can see CTV news, Global news, the National, Marketplace all making appearances, but no SUN-TV.
The article is not "about" Brioux, he is merely one of the sources quoted. And he is a reliable source. Brioux is a professional expert when it comes to talking about TV, in fact he was Sun Media's TV critic for about a decade. He has access to the number and if he says no one is watching the network, I believe him.
Your complaint seems to be that because you don't think that the article I cite provides 100% of the data, with a copy of the original sources in triplicate, then nothing in that article can be trusted and therefore the opinions I've expressed about the subject of the article must be discounted.
Your definition of hearsay is interesting. I guess unless you do the ratings surveying yourself, personally, with fault-proof set-top record keeping instead of viewer's diaries, then it is all going to be hearsay.
And calling CP a competitor with SUN-TV is like calling Oxford a competitor of Pat Robertson's Regent University.
Y'know what? I've had it. I've really had it.
rye and ginger, with no due respect, fuck off. Why don't *you* present and document the BBM numbers, asshole? Oh, you've been to the site, eh? They want money for the data. Tough shit. Just fuck off. Quote me asshole. I've had enough of your fascist lies, your fake outrage and the disingenuous playing dumb that is just getting way too old. Stop being an ignoramus. Did I mention, fuck off? If not, then fuck off.
Please run around claiming that my swearing at you vindicates you and proves what you say must be true. Even though it doesn't.
By the way. Fuck off. Thanks.
Sun News is just plain sad. My son produces more substance in his diaper. Its bad enough my tax money gets flushed into the CBC. Thank God this isn't the case with SN. The tipping point for me came when an Sun-owned paper slammed Fort McMurray by screaming a misleading headline that had fuck all to do with the actual article. Honest to God, SN, how pathetic are you when you piss off a Conservative Albertan?? Haven't watched that crap in a few months now and I feel cleansed.
Stop feeding the trolls? You should see some of the repeat offenders on the comments section in both Star and Globe and Mail. LOL, AlbertaLad, Bitumen Bob, Responsible to name a few. Never support an argument with facts, simply abuse and bully with misspelled words and hate talk. By the way, why not post an answer to: Who voted Conservative, why and would they change their vote in 3 years' time? I have a feeling that Harper's got a Sarah Palin cult of crazy going. Or... what about polls? Naxos, come on. They're fabricated.
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