Political Ottawa is buzzing about the fledgling Sun TV News, nicknamed "Fox News North," and Kory Teneycke, Quebecor Media's vice-president of development, who promises to leave the "boring" coverage to the CBC, says the network will offer less "inside Ottawa" coverage and more "populist" appeal.

Mr. Teneycke, the Prime Minister's former director of communications and the man shaping the all-news network who shook up the Sun Media Hill's bureau last week, said the news network will compete with CTV Newsnet and CBC News Network. Although he has close ties with the Harper government, he said the reporting will be "straight" and the opinion talk shows would have a range of opinions.

"There are many people who have moved from the media to politics and from politics to the media. I'll let the hires that we've made speak for themselves," he said.

Mr. Teneycke said he's focused on integrating Quebecor's primarily print-based news gathering operation, QMI News Agency, with the new TV channel, Sun TV News, which pending CRTC approval is set to be on the air on New Year's Day, 2011. He said the "sensibility" of news coverage would be similar to that of the Sun chain newspapers.

David Akin, formerly of Canwest, has been brought in to replace Kathleen Harris as Ottawa bureau chief, and radio broadcaster Brian Lilley was hired as a senior correspondent. And last week experienced reporter Tobias Fisher, the son of the late Sun columnist Doug Fisher, was named national news editor. It was reported that former CBC journalist Krista Erickson was joining the network after resigning from her job at the public broadcaster last week, although if true it has yet to be announced. Comedian Rick Mercer was also unsuccessfully wooed by the new network.

There were casualties as well, which included well-known Hill reporters Elizabeth Thompson, Christina Spencer, and Peter Zimonjic.

"Just been fired by Darth Vader in Ottawa Bureau Sweep," Mr. Zimonjic wrote on Twitter last Thursday.

Ms. Thompson, in an email to The Hill Times, said she was told there were no problems with her performance, just that there is a new boss, Mr. Teneycke, and that her position was being eliminated.

She noted her termination comes only a month after being nominated for the Canadian Association of Journalist's "Scoop of the "Year" award for stories she did on the accidental sale of heritage silver from Rideau Hall.

Formerly of The Montreal Gazette, she said she was hired by Sun Media for her experience and ability to work in various forms of media, and is puzzled why this skill set doesn't fit with the new TV channel.

"In addition to my traditional print job, I was filing web hits, tweeting, blogging, doing web videos and computer-assisted reporting projects. In addition, I made regular appearances on television and radio, analysing and discussing political events in both French and English. If I've been good enough for CBC, CPAC, CFRA, CTV, I'm not sure why they didn't think I wouldn't be able to do Sun TV," she said.

Ms. Thompson said her plan is to stay in the Parliamentary Press Gallery, and was looking for the silver lining in her firing.

"At least I can stop wondering what would happen the first time the PMO called my bosses because they didn't like a story or what I would do if Kory asked me for the name of a confidential source or a whistleblower," she said.

It's still not clear what's happening with Sun columnist Greg Weston who may also be leaving the Ottawa bureau, but neither he, nor Mr. Teneycke would confirm that's the case. Mr. Weston has recently written critically of the Harper government's spending on hosting the G8 and G20 summits, which are set to cost over $1-billion. Most recently, Mr. Weston broke the stories on the fake lake, and how the government will spend $1.1-million for podium backdrops in the two meeting halls hosting the summits.

"Greg Weston is a tremendously talented reporter and columnist and somebody who Sun Media is proud to have involved in their organization. I think his work around coverage of the G20 is a credit to the papers," said Mr. Teneycke.

Some are worried about the stinging invective, the "resolutely patriotic and culturally conservative," tone the fledgling news network will have, according to Ottawa Citizen columnist Susan Riley.

Liberal Party culture critic Pablo Rodriguez (Honoré-Mercier, Que.) said he will wait and see the new channel, owned by Quebec media magnate Pierre-Karl Péladeau, before passing judgment. He added, however, that there is no room in Canada for "ideology driven TV."

"We have to wait and see. They are fully capable of hiring competent and objective people, as long as they leave their personal opinions and beliefs at the door when they go and work for that TV channel. But I have to give the benefit of the doubt and see how things go," he said.

Chris Dornan, director of the Arthur Kroeger College of Public Affairs at Carleton University, said the school has studied viewers' preferences in the past and found that those on the left and centre-left of the political spectrum liked the CBC, while CTV's audience was slightly older and more conservative, and Global TV was the most popular among people on the right and those living in Alberta.

"It's really about tone, they basically cover the same stories, it's the way in which they cover them," he said. "The likelihood is that Sun TV will occupy another waveband on the political spectrum. I would imagine their news reporting won't be that different from Global's."

At the station's launch, in Toronto last week, Mr. Teneycke derided the competition, particularly the CBC, from which he recently resigned as a contracted pundit, as "smug, condescending," and "often irrelevant," and said the Sun TV News would be "taking on political correctness."

"We will not be a state broadcaster, offering boring news by bureaucrats for elites and paid for by taxpayers," he said.

But industry experts have raised questions about the viability of a 24-hour news channel if it does not obtain the Category 1 "must carry" licence it has requested from the CRTC. Quebecor is asking the broadcast regulator to grant it a limited three-year version of the license that CTV Newsnet and CBC News Network hold permanently, which forces cable and satellite providers to offer them to subscribers.

The company is proposing that it give up its license for Sun TV, a local analogue station in Toronto, and that in exchange the CRTC grant it a Category 1 licence that would switch to a Category 2 licence, under which Quebecor would have to negotiate with distributors for carriage, in three years time. The thinking being that by that time Sun TV News will have had time to establish a brand and create demand.

The Category 1 licence brings in approximately $65-million annually for CBC News Network, but the CRTC has signaled it is reluctant to grant any more of those licenses.

When asked last week, Heritage Minister James Moore (Port Moody-Westwood-Port Coquitlam, B.C.) said he thinks the new channel is a good thing because it gives consumers more variety, and refused to speculate on whether Cabinet would overturn a decision by the CRTC were the arms-length agency to deny Quebecor's request.

"There's an application before the CRTC. The CRTC will consider it and we'll go forward from there," he said.

Prof. Dornan said if Quebecor manages to get a Category 1 license then the profitability of Sun TV News is assured. If the request is rejected, however, it could be a tough go for the upstart news channel because ratings for public affairs television in Canada tend to be low, with corresponding advertising revenues.

He said the CRTC is in an "interesting political position," however, because it will have to justify why CTV and CBC deserve Category 1 licenses and Sun TV does not.

"Why would you privilege two media companies at the expense of another," he said. "It's a backhanded insult to people of a conservative stripe to say that the country doesn't need to have as part of its news and political mix a channel that skews more conservative."

hmacleod@hilltimes.com

The Hill Times

THE WORD ON THE STREET:

"It feels that with hundreds of channels on my cable TV tuner, the large majority of which I never watch, the downside of this channel is imperceptibly small. On the other hand, the upside may be significant, including for those on the left, the fact that it might stimulate more support for the publications and broadcasts that reflect their point of view."— Globe and Mail blogger Bruce Anderson

"The Harper Conservatives have been able to stay in power, albeit with minorities, because in office they are generally less ideological than they were in opposition. Do they really need a right-wing news channel urging them to be more rabid and stirring up the party's hard-core base, which would only make some Conservative MPs less easy for the PM to control."—CBC's Don Newman

"Canadians are perhaps a little calmer, a little milder than our friends in the United States. ... The viewership of Fox News in Canada, the right-winged news agency in the United States, the viewership in Canada is almost nil."—CTV News President Robert Hurst

"One of the incongruous things to me is you are running a channel that believes in fundamental conservative values...and yet your business model relies on sucking on the public teat."—CTV Power Play host Tom Clark

"My general view is the more music, the better, the more movies the better, the more television the better, the more books the better, the more choices in life the better. And so I don't see greater choices in life as a bad thing."—Heritage Minister James Moore

"Canadian TV news today is narrow, it's complacent and it's politically correct. It's boring. ... Our aim is not to bore people to death, we'll leave that to the CBC."—Kory Teneycke

"This is Canada...we're the true north strong and free and the greatest place on earth. That's why it's time for a whole new concept, a whole new type of television, a channel as strong and proud as the country we love, Canada. It's time, time for Sun News."—Sun TV News advertisement on its website

"Quebecor sees an untapped market opportunity in English Canadian TV news. ... It is time to shake up the current players of the Canadian broadcasting system."—Pierre-Karl Péladeau, president of Quebecor

"The CBC every week gives a radical left-wing activist called David Suzuki a full hour for his propaganda, and there is no voice on the other side."—Pundit Ezra Levant

"[Pierre-Karl Péladeau] is very, very conservative, not to say extremely right wing."—CTV personality Craig Oliver

"If it's smart, fun and only occasionally ridiculous, and if it flies, Sun News should provide a much-appreciated jolt to the Canadian discussion — something of which no one should disapprove."— National Post columnist Chris Selley

"Us Liberals need to get better at getting our message out in a compelling, interesting way. We will either do that or we will lose. If Teneycke's network forces us to pick up our game a notch or two, then this may be a catalysing event the same way the rise of Fox was to progressives in the U.S."—Liberal Party Globe and Mail blogger Rob Silver

"It's not that there's an imminent conservative cultural takeover. It's that we're going to wind up with more and more media silos that serve only to reinforce our biases, rather than to challenge us."—Globe and Mail blogger Adam Radwanski

"If Sun TV was on the air today, would they be crowing about how wonderful it is that they're spending a billion dollars on the G20? I would hope not. If they're true conservatives, they would be more aghast than liberals."— Comedian Rick Mercer

"If the CRTC turns down KoryVision, Cabinet could overturn the decision on the grounds that the country needs a conservative TV channel. It's an argument that would strongly appeal to their base and deeply irritate a bunch of people who vote for other parties. It could be the most significant decision Harper makes as prime minister."—Halifax Chronicle Herald columnist Stephen Maher

"Teneycke is right that political correctness is inhibiting real debate -- but it is no longer the smug assumptions and unexamined naïveté of the liberal-left that is to blame. The new political correctness is aggressively enforced by the right, through ridicule, glib ad campaigns or orchestrated smears in the form of "member's statements" just before question period begins." —Ottawa Citizen columnist Susan Riley