While QMI outlets brag about Fox News North’s ‘walloping’ of its news rivals on certain days, things aren’t looking so rosy for the right wing propaganda channel in future days. This October, the network will lose its free access; it will only be seen by those subscribers whose cable company has a deal in place with Quebecor. In effect, Fox News North will ‘lose preferred access to more than three million Canadian TV screens’.
Quebecor’s strategy kicked up a fuss in the television industry. BCE has argued the company is trying to have it both ways, guaranteeing universal reach to audiences while also asking for subscriber fees, as a regular specialty channel would. But now Quebecor is changing course, telling the CRTC in a letter that it will give back its over-the-air broadcasting licence.
The decision means that at the end of October, free access for Sun News will end (except in Ottawa, where this will happen at the end of August, for administrative reasons). Like other specialty stations, Sun News will then be seen only on cable, satellite and Internet TV services that have made a deal with the company to carry the channel.
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Rather than arguing for the over-the-air licence to be renewed, Quebecor replied in a letter on July 15 that it would give the licence back to the CRTC.
It also means that Sun News will no longer be able to market itself by being visible to all viewers in Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, Ont., and London, Ont., and will appear only on TV services with whom Quebecor has reached deals to carry it. That includes western cable giant Shaw Communications Inc. and the cable service Quebecor owns, Vidéotron Ltée.
One notable absence on that list is Bell TV, the most vocal critic of the Sun News broadcast-specialty hybrid. In May, Bell yanked Sun News from its satellite service at Quebecor’s demand when Bell refused to pay the subscriber fee requested for the channel.
Cogeco Cable Inc. and Rogers Communications Inc. both carry Sun News for the moment as a local broadcast signal. If it does not have a specialty agreement in place by the end of October with those two carriers, that would represent a hit to its ratings.
