Small Celebration in Order–No Must Carry License For Fox North!

Woohoo! I can have a happy few minutes now! I can just imagine. Ezzy IrreLevant’s blood pressure must be shooting right up about now, hell he must be turning about 10 shades of purple about now.

The CRTC refused to issue a category 1 license to Sun TV.

In a private letter sent to Quebecor on July 5, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission rejected Quebecor’s request for a rare must-carry license. It would have guaranteed distribution by all cable and satellite firms – and the subscriber fees that come along with that distribution.

The license Quebecor requested – known as a Category 1, soon to be Category A – is rarely granted, and in March of this year, the CRTC announced that it would not consider any new applications for those licenses before October, 2011.

Quebecor applied anyway, asking for special consideration. Its reasoning, according to the letter, was that Sun TV News would be “an Information & Analysis channel,” and therefore different than its all-news competitors.

The CRTC rebuffed that claim. In the letter, Peter Foster, the director general of television policy and applications, suggested that there was little to distinguish Sun TV from other all-news services, since “news and analysis are sub-categories of the information programming category … news would be broadcast throughout the day … [and] in promotional material, the proposed service is referred to as the Sun TV News Channel.”

Read more about it here. Oh Kory & Pierre-Karl can’t be too happy about this right now.   But they appear to be quite stubborn and will continue plugging in spite of the fact that the CRTC is holding firm that they are weening away from issuing category 1 licenses. In fact they say that they plan to remove both CBC News Network and CTV’s News Channel off the preferred designation some time next year. So Kory, what makes you think the CRTC will see thing your way? You goin’ to go crying to your old boss man Steve? You goin’ to get Steve to break some heads over at the CRTC?

Many have said this before and I will say this again;  You hardcore cons preach the sanctity of not living of the government teat and the sanctity of free markets, do like other specialty channels and apply for the category 2 and do like the others and market yourselves. Not confident you’ll have enough suckers to pay to watch Brian Lilley have fun with math and try to play statistician on the Televised version of the blogging supposiTories? Then pack it in already and put all of us out of our misery. As it is, most of mainstream media is slanted to the right anyway.

You absolutely need the government teat so badly to have your wingnut channel? I never ever want to hear about the leaching CBC again. At least, we’ll know that if Steve pulls the plug on the CBC and somehow Fox North  manages to get that much coveted rare Category 1 license, lots of questions will be asked, because Steve saying there’s no money for the CBC just won’t cut it.

Oh dear, imagine that. Brian Lilley would have to go back to reporting the news.  He would have try oh so hard as he might to be neutral to the point the listeners can hear the nose bleed, and yet the news still came out slanted to the right.  He’ll have to shelve his homophobic fetus fetishist ways and keep them contained over at the Examiner.

Yes, the CRTC will unfortunately have to relent and many will surely be fired for refusing Steve’s old protege, but for now, let’s just celebrate the fact that the CRTC defied  Master Steve.