It's in the news, Canada might be getting a Fox like news/opinion cable channel .A former aid to the Prime Minister Harper, Kory Tenecyke has been tasked to see whether a "conservative view" news channel would fly here in Canada and to set one up if it's feasible. Ezra Levant, another well known conservative, might be tagged for the anchor job.
Is it possible to find an audience in this country for a news channel dedicated to providing a conservative view point? You bet their is. All you need to do is convert the audience already reading conservative newspapers and listening Talk Radio.
The great many who claim the CBC is a Liberal run media outlet, will clamor for the opportunity to pay for a news outlet that is run by conservatives. If that seems strange, you are not alone in your confusion. Conservatives say they dislike the CBC for a whole bunch of reasons, bias, poor programming, or because government shouldn't be running a television network. The real problem is paying for something that provides them no benefit. If the CBC shifted to a decidedly pro-conservative stance like the National Post or the Toronto Sun, all but the conservative purists would learn to say nice things about the CBC.
The next question is how successful can they be? Can you just transfer a successful format from the United States to Canada? I don't think you can. It is not that were more sophisticated than Americans, sorry were not, Canadian Idol anyone. Fox news is 4 hours of sort of news and 20 hours of opinion. I don't think we have enough news or opinion for that matter to fill the air waves. America has 50 different states for fox to pick news from, plus overseas. The united States has commitments all over the world that can be drawn into the debate. It also help that America has a distinct dividing line, between republican and democrat, well the claim is made, though I'm sure their is considerable overlap.
In Canada the line is there but with less hostility. Over the years attempts have been made by right wing think tanks and institutions to create strong lines of difference but it has yet to take. Just compare Canadian Talk radio to that of the American version. The vitriolic hate filled screeds so evident on American air waves just isn't found here. Radio hosts like Charles Adler and Jerry Agar are card carrying conservatives, after that they bear no resemblance to their American counterparts. I don't know if it's a conscious decision on the part of the radio outlets or broadcast rules.
We have a multiparty system, a multi ethnic population, two officail languages, a smaller social and reilgious divede. There are a whole lot of topics that the preceeding sentence renders difficult to expliot by a conservative news outlet. How do attack language, immigration, minority and ethnic rights in the same fashion that opinion makers on Fox do and not aleinate portions of your potential audience.
How do you attack only Liberals or New Democrats leaving Conservatives alone and retain credibiltiy. There will always be a core audience that wants that type of news and to see the enemy always skewered, but in Canada i don't think that audience is large enough to pay the bills.
I think that when this Channel hits the air waves, it will end up looking a lot like CTV or the CBC. We are no less partisan than Americams but the Canadain public isn't ready for a Fox North. We haven't been conditioned to accept the echo chamber quite yet.
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