Pierre Karl Péladeau, President and CEO of Quebecor Inc., Quebecor Media Inc. and Sun Media Corporation, today announced that Quebecor Media, through a partnership between its two subsidiaries TVA Group and Sun Media Corporation, will be challenging the English Canadian TV news establishment by investing in a new hard news/straight talk English specialty channel called SUN TV NEWS.
“Far too many Canadians are tuning out completely or changing their dials to American all-news channels. They’re opting out or switching over. That’s not good for Canadian television. It’s not good for Canadian democracy. And it’s not good for Canada itself,” said Mr. Péladeau in making the announcement. “Quebecor sees an untapped market opportunity in English Canadian TV news. We see an opportunity in offering Canadians something new, something better, something distinct. It is time to shake up the current players of the Canadian broadcasting system. It’s time for a new choice, a new voice. It’s time for SUN TV NEWS.”
Television remains a vital source of news and information for Canadians. And all-news specialty services play a vital role in keeping Canadians well informed on a minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour basis and ensuring that news coverage is both broad and deep. However, being well informed means more than being exposed to dry news. SUN TV NEWS proposes to go beyond the obvious day-by-day headlines and to cover the full range of stories that impact our society, our democracy and our economy.
“CBC News Network and CTV News Channel have had respectively 21 and 13 years to get it right and they’ve failed to win over viewers. Canadian TV news today is narrow, complacent, and politically correct,” added Kory Teneycke, Vice President, Development of Quebecor Media. “SUN TV NEWS will be different from the all-news channel format we know all too well in Canada. It will offer Canadians an attractive mixture of “hard news” reporting during the day and “straight talk” opinion journalism at night. This will not be another network catering to elite opinion and ignoring stories important to many Canadians.”
The hard news/straight talk formula is a proven recipe for success. The French-language all-news specialty service LCN saw its ratings more than triple when it moved toward that formula just three years ago. Today, LCN is not only a commercial success, but it has re-energized news coverage for French-speaking viewers; providing them with a new choice and a new voice that previously had been absent in the French-language news broadcasting space.
On June 1st, 2010, TVA Group, on behalf of a partnership to be constituted between TVA Group and Sun Media Corporation, submitted an application with the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) for a three (3) year Category 1 Specialty TV license for SUN TV NEWS to replace the over the air Sun TV station in Toronto. The application is under review.
check out the new website: http://www.suntvnews.ca/
