Sun down

More blood on the floor at Sun TV, the station that viewers forgot. According to the Canadian Media Guild, which has been in contract talks with management, 13 people are getting the boot from what is already a skeletal staff left over from the last round of cuts. Positions getting axed include camera operator, video editor, reporter and producer jobs.

Says the Guild's Keith Maskell

(T)he program "Inside Jam" is moving from a nightly program to a one-hour weekend broadcast, effective immediately. I have also been told that a new program called "Canoe Live" (where do they come up with these crap names?) will fill the 6-7 pm weeknight slot, starting probably in May or so. What we haven't been told yet is whether this will be an in-house production. I'm guessing it won't be.

This station has been a disaster from the day the CRTC gave the licence to the now dead Craig Broadcasting in 2002. Back then I was furious that the licence did not go to Torstar which identified the frequency and initiated the race for the licence. Instead, in a controversial split decision which just about every other major broadcaster in Canada protested, the CRTC handed the station to Craig for its ill-conceived Toronto 1. (RIP). The justification was that Craig was already a player in the system which protects its own and doesn't like to open up to new competitors. Last year Toronto 1, in a sale of Craig's assets, was flipped to CHUM who flipped it to Quebecor, which owns the Sun chain of papers plus French-language TV and newspaper properties. Sun TV killed most of the promised local programming and instead slapped up some rinky dink shows with Sun sportswriters squeezed together at a desk.

Calls to Sun TV honchos Mike Nesbitt and Jim Nelles have yet to be returned.

Comments

[Edward Stun]

Is it just me, or does it smell of schadenfreude in here?

[Joan Tintor]

Perhaps the Star will eventually end up owning it. It would be interesting to see how much they spend and how many jobs they create.

[Bill-Muskoka]

Antonia,

I can not keep up with the bloody name changes. I have watched TO1 several times and the programming very good on those nights. That was on Star Choice!

Its similar to the changes made from New VR to A-Channel! We watch the Barrie station for the weather and some programming, but wondered where it went when the change ocurred.

A-Channel is big in Alberta as I remember.

The constant selling of companies and the loss of known brand names has just gotten ridiculous.

[Antonia]

Joan, I doubt the Star would buy it. Craig built it into a bloated enterprise with bricks and mortar and a whole lot more. What the Star had in mind was a much more modest, somewhat revolutionary, concept. It would have been housed in the now-empty bank on the ground floor at One Yonge, shared our librtary facilities and, more important, would have been a showcase for very low-cost Canadian fare. It would not have done news as we understand it but provided local coverage of local events, history etc. Plus our licence application included separate operations for Hamilton and Kitchener-Waterloo, neither of which have good local TV anymore. I am simplifying what was a complex application but, the point is, the overhead would have been very low.

There is no way Quebecor would let the station go for less than what it paid, and we're talking maybe $40 million, give or take. I can't quite recall the figure, assuming it was ever made public. I remember numbers like that being bandied about.

Schadenfreude? No. Vindication -- I took a lot of criticism for defending the Star's application. I was accused of being a corporate suck-up. Not by rival broadcasters, mind you, all of whom complemented me on the objectivity of my coverage during the actual hearings. In fact, I was quite hard on the Torstar team's actual performance at the hearings in Hamilton.

Frankly, I am just sad about it all because it cost a lot of people their careers and it brought down an old western broadcasting dynasty, while proving the CRTC is deeply flawed.

[Vik]

I'm surprised that Sun TV was stupid enough to put the show up against eTalk (on CTV) **AND** ET Canada (on Global)...not to mention The Insider (on CH) plus Showbiz Tonight (on Headline News). Who was the bonehead who thought of that program move? At least they could have given the program a decent timeslot and given it a shot there before just giving it the shaft right away...

[Moni]

This makes me very sad. Inside Jam was the only entertainment show I watched (and I do have to watch them for what I'm studying). Sometimes they made fun of shows and movies and they didn't take themselves too seriously.
I HATE some of the other enterainment shows that are sooooo ass-kissy. Puke! Oh, well...I'll have to find another show that is not too annoying.

Other than that, the channel sucked. Never had it on other than from 7 to 8. When it was Toronto 1 it was worse. It made me sad seeing all those CBC alumni doing such a crappy job.

[Declan]

I'd say the Star is better off without it (although their proposal sounds interesting).

But the Star should stick to what it's good at, there's plenty of room for expansion left in the newspaper business. What's the furthest West, non-right-wing paper in Canada? The Globe by virtue of being 100m west of the Star?

[Joseph]

Although not in the area, I do follow the broadcasting industry in North America closely, and have come to the conclusion that Toronto has one English-language TV station too many.

Maybe Sun/Quebecor should drop English-language programming from CKXT and convert it to a station broadcasting in Asian languages (espeically Mandarin Chinese) 24/7, to take advantage of the large Asian-Canadian community in Toronto.

By broadcasting in Mandarin Chinese, CKXT, regardless of who owns it, might actually make a profit.

[Antonia]

Joseph, it would not be so simple. It would have to go through an extensive CRTC process and probably lose since there are digital channels that telecast in Asian languages, plus OMNI

[Someone]

Toronto one/Sun Tv was junk from the start and it had very tough competition i hope The Star doesn’t buy it i just hope it gets off the air completely and the carnage will be over. * one other note I would like to make is that the names for the shows are based on Toronto Sun columns I guess you guys don’t keep a look out for the competition.