Named after Alan Freed, the original Rock and Roll DJ and dedicated mostly to music & radio. See also my Classic Film & TV blog @ http://thesilverscreenchronicles.blogspot.ca/
For My CIUT 89.5fm in Toronto radio playlists; http://moondogsplaylists.blogspot.com/
By now we've all enjoyed the story about the radio station in Vancouver, Canada (KISS FM) which laid off it's staff so in protest someone has been playing Rage Against The Machine's "Killing In The Name Of" ever since 4AM. "Rolling Stone" covered it followed by other international news and news even reached Rage's Tom Morrello who Twitter posted about it. I hate to be a killjoy because I'd dearly love for this to be true but it's fake. Oh they've been playing Rage alright, in fact I checked the feed and as of late last night they still were although they aren’t now (more on that in a bit), but this is no protest.
I've worked in radio for over twenty years so here's the deal; Is it possible for the host to lock himself in the studio and play Rage over and over again? Well yes up to a point, and if it started overnight they might even get away with for a few hours before anybody noticed and rushed down to the station but once they did the fun & games would be over. There is no way management wouldn't have keys to the studio or that if they somehow didn't security couldn't and wouldn't just bust down the door and drag him off. It's obvious that hosts are in fact there because they keep taking calls on the air and bantering with callers.
Also there is something called a "dump button" that will take the station off the air. There is one in the booth but there is also at least one more in the separate EQ closet where they keep the servers and relays plus another at the transmitter tower any one of which would have been pressed by now ending the feed and then they would replace it with a prerecorded one. I don’t know if KISS FM has more than one studio but since it’s owned by Rogers (Canada’s largest radio and TV conglomerate) I assume so and they could cut also the feed from one and transfer to another. Management doesn't even need access to the on-air studio to do so. This sort of thing actually where someone hijacks the booth has happened before in Canada more than once (I can personally think of at least a half dozen times times, all but one at campus stations), and it never goes on this long even if this were some understaffed campus station let alone a corporate one owned by Rogers which this is because it simply would not happen.
I looked into this and and the story about Rogers laying off the "entire staff" is wrong. They did layoff two hosts of a morning show but not everybody and again there were clearly hosts in there taking calls. Both former hosts have since posted on Twitter with anodyne "looking forward to new projects" type posts with no sign of any protests. In fact the real story appears to be that the station, which has had a soft rock & pop hits format, is changing to a Rock Alternative format and by this morning (after thirty hours) they had indeed pulled down their original page and live feed and replaced it with a new one in which they have rebranded themselves as “Sonic; The New Alternative” with the new website obviously ready to go along with new social media pages. Note that regardless of the classic episode of the beloved “WKRP”, stations in Canada at least can not just abruptly change formats without informing the CRTC (our equivalent of the FCC) although for their purposes this would be considered a minor change, so this has been in the works for weeks if not months.
Finally I listened in and it's revealing that the version of "Killing In The Name Of" which they were playing was the censored radio-friendly no profanity version. A real protest would proudly play the "Fuck You I Won't Do What You Tell Me" version. A corporate PR stunt that didn't want to piss-off the CRTC would not.
This is what is known as "stunting". It's not a cool protest giving the finger to our corporate bosses. I truly wish it was, seriously, that would fucking rule. But it's actually a PR stunt FROM our corporate masters. Sorry, really, but it isn't just Rage that's getting played, you are.
It's schadenfreude time as SUN TV shut down for good this past Friday morning at 5 AM when the screen suddenly went dark and was then replaced with the Sun logo and the caption "Sun News Network is no longer available, at the discretion of the programmer. We apologize for any inconvenience and hope you will continue to value all the channels included in your package." The station's website has also been replaced with the Sun logo and the links are broken. There was no public warning that this shutdown was imminent, some Sun staff actually found out by news reports from other networks, some of whom couldn't resist a few tactful choruses of "I told you so".
LAST MINUTES OF SUN NEWS;
(NOTE; This was probably a prerecorded segment as it makes no mention of their impending death knell and even has promos to two shows which will never see the light of day)
Setting aside old enemies like the CBC and the Toronto Star, even the conservative leaning press were not terribly sympathetic. The Globe & Mail piled on with "Five fatal flaws that led to the Sun News Network's demise" and The National Post's Jonathan Kay chipped in with "Why Sun News never had a fighting chance". Kay blamed the network's out-of-touch far-right demagoguery and did not offer many excuses for their failure but did ask for sympathy for the staff, but more on that later. First the facts ma'am;
SUN News started up in April 2011 with the stated intent of offering a right-wing "alternative" to the supposedly "liberal media bias" with "hard hitting commentary", (a.k.a. "bloviating, blowhard assholes") like Ezra Levant, Micheal Coren and Krista Erikson. The network quickly attracted plenty of attention with their often wildly, and at times comically, slanted reporting and the hysterical and paranoid race-baiting, from Ezra Levant in particular, as well as for the Network's never ending jihad against the CBC and arts funding in general. SUN News quickly earned itself the derisive name FOX North. However while SUN TV got plenty of attention one thing they did not get was viewers. The ratings ranged from the embarrassingly anemic to the laughably pathetic, averaging a mere few thousand a day, even during prime-time. That's less than a decent Campus/Community radio station (as long as it's not run by Ryerson University). Literally the only two shows they ever had that got decent ratings was a celebrity boxing match wherein an audience of horrified Conservatives watched as Justin Trudeau pounded the snot out of Conservative bully boy (and future probable felon) Senator Patrick Brazeau and the abortive Ford Brothers Show which was cancelled after one episode. No viewers means no advertisers which means no money and SUN TV reported (according to CRTC documents), loses of $17 million in 2012 and $14.8 million in 2013.
Right from the start there were problems. To begin with the whole thing just looked ugly. The studio was a garishly eye assaulting blast of neon and dayglo, like an episode of a "Sports Center" shot from the flight deck of the Starship Enterprise in a 1970's casino slot-machine floor. Harsh lighting made everybody look like mannequins in a Young Conservatives K-Mart store. They managed to achieve the look of a student amateur production with none of the charm.
The ugliness of SUN TV's very appearance was nothing compared to the ugliness of it's content. All of their onair talent was at best made up of smug blowhards reciting boilerplate right wing talking points, like FOX News's Sean Hannity in a cheap suit. But the need for SUN News to get attention by saying outrageous things or to create a "star" to be Canada's Rush Limbaugh, Bill O Reilly, Glen Beck or Anne Coulter led the likes of Krista Erikson to make a complete fool of herself with that infamous Margie Gillis ambush interview. Worse it led to the misguided attempt to build their foundation on the reckless, cynical, hateful, narcissistic pile of rancid trollshit that is Ezra Levant. SUN TV clearly counted on him being their marquee name but he was so over-the-top offensive and repellent that he quickly became more trouble than he was worth. His increasingly nasty rantings led to numerous complaints to the CRTC and Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (two of which SUN lost), a libel suit (which he again lost), and even a police investigation for hate crimes, which, rightwing paranoia notwithstanding, is quite rare. That one forced Levant to issue a reluctant apology after first bravely vowing he would never back down. In 2013 Levant aired a report (one of many) attacking Native protesters including some by name who turned to not even be in Canada at the time. Once again he refused to back down until losing yet another CSBC complaint. This past fall Levant did a typically unhinged personal attack on Justin Trudeau and his family which provoked a full Liberal Party boycott of the network until SUN News did a humiliating backpeddle and issued another apology. Levant topped himself after fatal the Lac Megantique train crash when he blamed "Native or Environmental Protesters" for derailing the train and committing mass murder. And what was the source of this gripping news flash? The shit between his ears. Most recently Levant followed that up with a rant claiming that Muslim students were boycotting Remembrance Day cuz they hate Canada and Freedom based on a memo (sent by one of his patriotic "sources") from a school board in Essex County. This memo actually tried to deal with parent's concerns about safety after the Ottawa attack and had nothing to do with any Muslim boycott. That led to yet another CSBC complaint that SUN would have most certainly lost if it had been heard before they went belly up.
To make things worse SUN lost it's free over-the-air signal within a year when it turned out they hadn't properly applied for such a signal in the first place. That was entertaining. That also left them relying purely on cable access.
So what do you do if you are a rabidly right-wing corporation who is morally opposed to "big government picking winners and losers" or "bailouts"? Why; blame the CRTC of course and demand a bailout for themselves. Duh.
Accordingly in 2013 SUN TV shocked many of their ideological soulmates when they applied to the CRTC to demand "mandatory carriage", a complicated scheme whereby all cable subscribers would be forced to buy (and pay for) SUN TV whether they wanted to or not. "Mandatory Carriage" is usually given to channels that serve a public interest such as the Weather Channel or described video for the blind, or for channels that reach under-served communities like aboriginal, multi-cultural or francophones. Most people who are not right wing assholes have no problem with this. But it certainly was never intended to bailout a for-profit corporation. And that's not even taking into account the embarrassing fact that SUN News had a loud and well documented history of opposing the very idea of "mandatory carriage" from their very inception. In fact during their initial license application process SUN News had explicitly denied that they ever had any intention of applying for such a socialist program. SUN TV head Kory Tenekye went so far as to state that any suggestions to the contrary were "slanderous lies". Once SUN TV had gotten it's license they went on a slash-and-burn campaign against such subsidies and arts funding, notably with ambush interviews such as Ezra Levant inviting an obscure indie band called Living With Lions only to browbeat them for accepting a small arts grant. The shell-shocked teens sheepishly returned the grant, so score one victory for "The Little Guys" I guess. This led Krista Erikson to up the ante by inviting on award winning modern dancer Margie Gillis on the pretext of discussing her work only to harangue her about arts funding (an issue Gillis is not an authority on, much less in charge of) in a bullying interview full of ad-homminum attacks and right-wing soundbites. That one so disgusted people that they filed a record number of complaints to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. After these appetizers SUN TV upped the ante and went on the warpath against their real enemy; the CBC, in a series of attacks on the CBC's funding. This even leading to Teneyke testifying in government hearings on the CBC. Finally having enough of these attacks the CBC responded with an expose of it's own on the fact that SUN News through it's parent company Quebecor was the beneficiary of millions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies every year, far in excess of the penny-ante grants given to the hated artists SUN TV targeted. That one hurt SUN News where it would hurt any media organization; attacking their basic integrity and honesty. Kory Tenekye reacted with outrage, threatening a lawsuit, but then quietly backed down. By that time he must have known that SUN would be applying to the CRTC for mandatory carriage and this would not be good time to be having that particular fight, especially since they would lose. Rather than spend more time on this here you can read the article I wrote at the time here and here and here. (My; I have bashed them a lot haven't I? I am a terrible person. More on that later)
Speaking of jihads against big government boogie men; there was their crusade against the CRTC itself. "Big Government Overeach" doncha know. All good conservative regularly rail against CRTC regs in general so when the CRTC finally pulled the plug on the notoriously inept Ryerson station CKLN in 2011, Ezra Levant took the opportunity to attack the CRTC with a laughably slanted and blatantly dishonest report that claimed that CKLN was shut down for "playing too much hip-hop" and slyly playing the race card. It was the kind of snide hatchet job only a professional activist could like. Accordingly in an example of breath-taking cynicsm the sneeringly far-left marxist CKLN spokesman Andrew Lehrer who would normally be reduced to posting smirking tweets calling Levant a racist (which he is) gleefully tweeted and re-posted Levant's article like garlic to ward off the CRTC during CKLN's predictably fruitless appeal. When it comes to politics weasels of a feather flock together. Naturally when SUN TV discovered they would need to suck up to the very same CRTC in 2013 this principled campaign suddenly dropped out of sight.
When SUN TV made their CRTC application for "mandatory carriage" they sound found out that karma's a bitch when even most conservative pundits reacted with open disdain. To say nothing of the legions of enemies SUN had been busy making since going on air; Muslims, Aboriginals, Gays, Francophones, Roma, Greens, Unions, feminists, atheists, artists, all the groups SUN TV had targeted for insult and abuse for the past three years pounced on SUN like a pack of jackals on a wounded wildebeest in an blizzard of letters to the CRTC opposing the application. I actually fired off one myself and wrote a blog urging others to do the same which some did. It turned out the CRTC probably didn't need much of a push, the SUN's application was pretty flimsy on it's face, even setting aside it's blatant hypocrisy. During the hearings SUN executives got a rough ride with Kory Tenyeke reduced to saying that SUN TV would be forced out of business without the subsidy. The CRTC was not sympathetic; pointing out that when SUN had applied for the license in the first place they had swore they would not need such subsidies and it was not the CRTC's job to bail them out now. The answer was no. However the CRTC did allow that there might be a need to reassess some of their policies around the bundling and placement of news channels. Leading to another round of hearings last year.
Looking to slap lipstick on a pig SUN TV grabbed at this like a drowning man and pushed their way into the hearings to urge some sort of bundling arrangement that might force cable companies to carry SUN in a solid bundle of news channels thus once again forcing at least some customers to buy the wretched channel. I considered writing again but after carefully reading the CRTC's terms of reference for the considered revisions I decided against it. The suggested changes seemed reasonable enough and certainly not worth opposing just to torment SUN News some more. Besides I also couldn't see anything that would actually save SUN TV anyway despite their whistling-past-the-graveyard bravado.
It turned out that the CRTC did indeed make several changes to their rules which would incidentally lead to including SUN TV in more packages, and group the Canadian news channels together to make them easier to find. It would also make SUN TV available in areas where it had not been. Much of this was pretty obvious stuff but that didn't stop SUN TV from doing a victory lap. However my reaction was a shrug. Making your product more available is irrelevant if you have a shitty product that nobody wants. You would think that rabid free enterprise capitalists would get that. As for the areas of the country that SUN was previously unavailable; that was mostly in areas where SUN TV's patented blend of rightwing paranoia, race-baiting, war mongering and oil company worship would be least likely to find a friendly audience; Quebec, The Martimes and the Far North. SUN TV's problem was never that people couldn't find it, it was that they didn't want it.
Accordingly SUN TV's ratings did not improve but then things got more complicated when the owner of Quebecor, SUN News's parent company, Pierre Karl Paladeau announced he was going into politics as a high profile candidate then leader of the separatist Parti Quebecois. That was weird. One of the defining characteristics of the SUN Newspaper and TV empire was it's strident federalism and disdain for Quebec nationalists so the revelation that Paladeau was a separatist all along came as quite a shocker showing just how cynical the whole enterprise was. The damage that might have caused to to the credibility of SUN News was somewhat lessened by the fact that Paladeau would have to divest himself of his business holdings. Accordingly an offer came from Post Media (who own conservative news paper The National Post) to buy out SUN Media. However after SUN TV lost their bid for mandatory carriage Post Media took a look at the numbers and decided SUN TV wasn't worth the trouble. Post Media would buy the publishing arm of SUN but left SUN TV out of the deal. Then stepped up radio exec Moses Znaimer, founder and former owner of Much Music, Bravo, CITY TV, CHUM and current owner of ZOOMER Radio to make a bid for the channel and save the day. Znaimer has a successful record in TV and might have been able to save the floundering network somehow. Ezra Levant certainly thought so and issued an asskissing statement welcoming his new master, although I suspect that if he had bought SUN TV one of Znaimer's first jobs in re-branding would have been to fire Ezra Levant. As it turned out the deal fell through when Levant's current bosses demanded too much of a cash payout in severance. That's right; in a fine example of twenty-first century capitalism the thoroughly inept management of SUN News, after losing millions of dollars, demanded so much money to fuck off that they ended up sinking the whole deal. Next to these clowns the idiots behind Target Canada look like Andrew Freaking Carnegie.
There would be no other suitors and so this Friday SUN TV put up the white flag. In a masterpiece of understatement Julie Tremblay, president and CEO of Media Group and Sun Media Corporation. Said; “This is an unfortunate outcome; shutting down Sun News was certainly not our goal.” No Shit, Captain Obvious. They naturally took absolutely no responsibility for their own failure. Of course.
Besides the earlier mentioned articles from The Post and Globe listing some reasons for the spectacular crash and burn of SUN TV and with which I have no dissent I'd like to add a few more;
BAD PRODUCT + POOR PLANNING = INCOMPETENT MANAGEMENT;
As I've already detailed SUN News was a truly crappy "News" channel. It looked ugly and it acted worse. Canadians simply didn't want it. Being fervent "free market capitalists" the management of SUN News should have taken steps to improve their product. That's the way business is supposed to work right? However Kory Tenekye (unlike Moses Znaimer) is not an experienced TV or radio exec, he was a Conservative Party political hack and clearly out of his depth.
(as an aside I can't resist pointing out; I've noticed that most of the most strident "free market" crusaders have no actual business experience; Stephen Harper, Mike Harris, Paul Ryan, Preston Manning, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Ezra Levant, Kory Teneyke, Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, have spent their entire lives in right wing politics, think-tanks or media. Rather like how most of the most bellicose warhawks have no military experience)
I'm not suggesting that SUN TV would drop their conservative slant, distasteful though I find it. Their reason for existence was to promote the Conservative Party after all and The National Post was also started by Conrad Black for the express purpose of defeating the Liberals and electing a Conservative government. However the Post was able to look and act like a real newspaper and keep professional standards. But SUN's focus was so narrow, strident and mean-spirited that even many conservatives found them unwatchable, let alone having any crossover potential. However instead of making any changes to either the look or content of the channel, they stubbornly kept trying to push that boulder up the hill of indifference and hostility, with predictable results. SUN TV started out shabby and nasty, and they went out the same way.
TWO WORDS; EZRA LEVANT;
Nothing better illustrates the utter failure of SUN News management than their decision to build their brand around the dubious charms of Ezra Levant. Clearly they thought he was going to be their star as Canada's version of Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck. Clearly Levant thought so too, but then Ezra Levant has never suffered from a lack narcissistic self-regard. However setting aside that Levant is a terrible person, he is also a terrible broadcaster. With his flat, nasally sneer and smug smirk that just begs to be punched, Levant is truly obnoxious in any context, even if he hadn't made a career of being a total asshole, which he has. Although SUN TV had some other "names" like Micheal Coren, Charles Adler, Brian Lilly, Pat Boland and Krista Erikson (until she quit), it was Levant who got top billing, as "Canada's Freedom Fighter" no less. With all the focus on Levant it's worth noting that he actually had little practical broadcast experience. Coren, Adler, Lilly, Boland and Erikson all have had extensive careers, mostly in talk radio, but Levant had not. His prior experience was as a right wing newspaper columnist, where people wouldn't have to actually see or hear him, and where he wouldn't have to hold anyone's attention for longer than a half dozen paragraphs once a week. As for his rather short political career Levant showed a consistent inability to be a team player. His vicious personal attacks and careless disregard for the facts led to many Conservatives to distance themselves and at least one embarrassing back-down after a lawsuit threat. The biggest fiasco came when Levant decided to run for office, in the same riding Stephen Harper had chosen for himself. This led to an embarrassing showdown until party power brokers convinced Levant to pull his head out of his ass long enough to step aside with all the transparently fake humility he could muster. The notoriously touchy Harper was not amused and Levant's brief, if entertaining, political career was over. So all the warning signs were there. Nothing that happened after that should have come as a surprise.
The grind of a daily show was simply to much for Levant's meager talents which is one reason why he spent so much time in the same unhinged hysterical tirades about the various brown people who are ruining civilization. It's also a reason why he did not bother to research or fact check before going on the air with his latest easily debunked anti-muslim rant. Levant's cartoonish behavior quickly went from being hateful to farcical. Much as SUN TV saw itself as FOX North I seriously doubt that Roger Ailes would have given Ezra Levant a show of his own, much less built his network's reputation on such shaky foundations. True, Ailes did briefly give a show to Glen Beck, but dumped him as he became an embarrassment and Rush Limbaugh has been kept at arm's length. Even FOX has some standards, or at least a sense of self-preservation, but not SUN TV. I can easily see FOX hiring Krista Erikson, they always have a gaggle of bottle blonde harpies and Erikson couldn't possibly be any dumber than Elizabeth Hassleback or Gretchen Carlson. But not Levant. But Hiring Levant was one thing. We'll call that a gamble. But keeping him is inexcusable. After it became obvious that Levant was only generating complaints and the occasional lawsuit while picking stupid fights with the regulators that SUN needed to work with, but not getting ratings, he should have fired. Keep in mind other networks cancel shows and fire hosts for far less reason all the time. Political activists may see such stubborn refusal to admit a mistake as admirable courage and steadfast leadership, but for alleged businessmen it's just pig-headed stupidity. Rather like if during the Ford Edsel or New Coke fiasco those companies had responded to their miscalculations by saying "Fuck it; We spent a lot of money on promoting this lemon so you commie are going to buy it and like it".
FAILURE TO UNDERSTAND THE MARKET PLACE;
When SUN set out to be FOX North they never stopped to consider that Canada and America are in fact completely different nations with different cultures. FOX works in America because of historical demographic trends in racial politics, urban vs. suburban conflicts, regional rivalries, cold war disputes, religious extremism, a corporate media environment, and celebrity worship. Not mention slavery and a civil war. There is obviously a sizable built-in audience of resentful, older, poorly educated, whites who live in small towns and suburbs ready to believe in the conspiracy to take their hard earned tax dollars and give it to lazy black and brown people, gays, rude teenagers, uppity women, union thugs and greedy teachers while "surrendering to terrorists". Not that we don't have some Tea Party types here of course, Hell I assume even Iceland has their share. However much of what passes for political discourse in America is viewed by most Canadians as outlandish, bizarre, distasteful or downright offensive. A TV network dedicated to shrill rants about the dangers of big government, union thugs, environmental fascists, feminazi's, multiculturalism, creeping sharia law, lazy Indians, greedy gypsies, and parasitic artists, was never going to find much of an audience here.
But then again most if not all Conservatives and Libertarians in Canada worship America and secretly (or not so secretly) despise Canadians as weaklings, enfeebled by decades of big government Liberalism and Socialism, held back by Quebec, Multiculturalism and the lack of recent military glory. They also deeply believe that Canadians, at least the white, anglo variety, secretly want their very own Thatcher to subject them to a tight-fisted rule of austerity, tax-cuts, law & order and and a good shooting war, preferably against some dirty Muslims. They saw the victories of Stephen Harper and Rob Ford not as odd aberrations caused by specific events but permanent majorities and as confirmation that their time had come, in spite of the fact that public opinion polls consistently show otherwise. SUN News bought into this self-delusion harder than most. To admit mistake would call into question their entire reason for existence so they continued to live in their right-wing fantasy world. It's one thing for politicians to live this way, but not supposedly hard-headed businessmen are supposed to be able to distance themselves from personal emotions and change course when their product isn't connecting. SUN TV was selling a product that even if it had been of a higher quality, would have had little demand. Once again SUN News execs showed they had no business running a business.
FAILURE TO UNDERSTAND THEIR OWN AUDIENCE;
Levant may have embarrassed most respectable conservatives but the campaign for mandatory carriage showed that SUN TV was out of touch even with much of their own obvious audience. Even many conservatives were disgusted with such blatant hypocrisy and said so publicly. Most conservatives were happy to applaud SUN TV's attacks on arts subsidies, "tax payer bailouts", the CBC and mandatory carriage, so asking them, no begging them, to help SUN TV get the very same subsidies was a bridge too far. Rather like when a family values crusader gets caught with underage prostitutes. Even conservative politicians and pundits have some standards. At least in public. Not many mind you, but a few. Hatred in right wing circles for arts subsidies of any kind is deep, for SUN TV to cross that line, after spending so much effort in stirring up those very resentments was just too much for many self-respecting conservatives to hide their disgust. In America, where politics is more tribal and the pundit class more shameless they might have gotten away with this. But not here. SUN ended up having to play up a crude politics of tribal, us-vs-them, resentment against the "liberal elites" that were conspiring against them because SUN TV "Stands Up For The Little Guy". Rob Ford built a career around such rhetoric but a corporation can't really pull that off. Especially since they aren't promising to build a free subway to your front door.
In the end the only real base audience they had was made up of a fringe of poorly educated, paranoid, angry, older, white, English speaking bigots, conspiracy theorists, Islamophobics, and xenophobes. Not enough to build a respectable nation-wide brand on. At least not here. Yea team!
FAILURE TO WORK WITH REGULATORS;
Like all good far-right conservatives the execs at SUN TV held regulators like the CRTC, CSBC, Industry Canada in contempt. But they forgot they have to actually work with these people, and in the end they fundamentally did not understand the CRTC's role. As I pointed out during the CKLN fiasco; They are a regulatory agency, they are there to make sure to make sure everybody follows the rules. They are not there to bail you out of your own stupidity. When SUN TV first applied for a license they promised that they would never need mandatory carriage and submitted a business plan that they swore would work. The CRTC takes these promises seriously even if SUN TV did not. For SUN to come back just a few years later and basically say; "Remember all that bullshit we shoveled last time? Um..Yeah; Fuck that." showed a complete misreading of the CRTC's likely response. Then there's the issue of the numerous complaints to the CSBC.
A word of explanation here; contrary to what many people believe, the CRTC and CSBC (Canadian Broadcast Standards Council) are completely unrelated. In fact the CSBC is not even a government agency, it is a industry run watchdog to deal with complaints so the CRTC doesn't have to micro-manage them. However the CRTC certainly keeps track of serious complaints and serial offenders and takes that into account when license renewal time comes around. With it's record number of serious complaints and their dismissive attitude towards them SUN was not helping themselves. To have any hope of getting mandatory carriage SUN would have to argue that they were offering a service important enough to subsidize. A history of open hate-mongering, race-baiting, lying and slander hardly qualifies.
Once they belatedly realized they would have to crawl back to the CRTC to beg for their largess SUN TV execs acted like the political hacks they were by looking for a Conservative bagman to lobby the CRTC for them. Enter Mike Duffy, Canada's current favorite cartoon villain, who got into the act by getting caught lobbying the CRTC on SUN's behalf. The usefulness of this was somewhat compromised when everybody found out what a corrupt lying sleazebag Duffy The Hutt is. Leading to SUN News desperately firing off a press release that basically said "We did not have sexual relations with that corrupt Senator". You may have even caught some mention of this on by watching SUN NEWS, in between the never-ending, panting plugs for SUN NEWS. The CRTC must have been so pleased to find themselves dragged into a corruption scandal that had nothing to do with them. It also once again called into question SUN TV's basic competence not to mention their integrity.
DUFFY THE HUTT & KRISTA ERICSON;
As an additional CRTC related fuckup was the comical spectacle of SUN News initially going on the air with an over-the-air signal that they did not realize required a separate license. Leading a no doubt annoyed CRTC to issue an order to shut down which they did with amusing suddenness. There was little advance warning and with Ezra Levant literally in mid-rant. To quote William Hurt in "A History Of Violence"; "How do you fuck that up?!".
Another word of explanation. An application would have to first go to Industry Canada to check on the viability of the proposed signal and to make sure it doesn't interfere with any existing signals as well as to confirm the corporation is legally registered. Next it goes to the CRTC for a more in depth review of the programming and business plan. I have no idea where SUN fucked up but there's no excuse for this. It's worth remembering that rinky-dink community stations manage to get this right the first time so what's SUN's excuse? Too many Muslims in the way? Later SUN were reportedly planning to reapply for an over-the-air signal but apparently hadn't gotten around to doing so. I haven't seen such jaw-dropping incompetence since the good old days of CKLN circa 2010, but while CKLN's management were arrogant idiots, at least they were amateur idiots. SUN TV were high priced professional idiots.
MANAGEMENT GREED;
Just to recap something already mentioned, but it bears repeating. There were two offers on the table to rescue SUN TV; once when Post Media bought out the entire SUN Newspaper chain and again when that deal excluded SUN TV Moses Znaimer offered to buy the network itself. That deal fell through specifically because of the greed of SUN News execs who demanded such a rich payout that Znaimer walked away and no other offers came. Znaimer may be a egomaniac but he's not a fool. If he thought the license had some value and he could make a news network succeed he probably had good reason to give it a shot, and unlike the SUN TV execs he has the track record to make that plausible. With his breezy style and eye for talent Znaimer would have no doubt re-branded as "Zoomer News", aimed at seniors (like his current radio station) with lot's of friendly life style news and some commentary. I could see him keeping Charles Adler, business editor Pat Boland and his old-timey handlebar mustache and possibly even Coren. But definitely not Levant. He would be toast. Of course the first thing Znaimer would want to do is fire all the old, inept management and put in his own team. Hence the need for a payout. Not surprisingly they got greedy enough to scuttle the whole deal. Not surprising that is in an economic system where even the most corrupt or stupid executives are expected to get bonuses no matter how much money they loose or how much damage they cause to their own company.
A few, probably well meaning people, like Jonathan Kay, have expressed sympathy for those staff who are now unemployed, with Kay saying if you gloat over their job losses "You are a bad person".
I don't think so. These "talented young news staffers" (as some have put it) were perfectly happy to be working for a hateful propaganda machine that regularly targeted marginalized groups like Muslims, Roma and Natives who could not fight back. They happily used sleazy ambush interviews, often on the the flimsiest pretexts, sometimes on obscure figures who have no media experience on subjects they had little knowledge. They were quite prepared to broadcast blatant lies without bothering to do basic fact checking, and when they got caught they simply brushed it off until they were forced to back down in the face of a CBSC complaint or lawsuit. They regularly used ugly graphics showing blood or bombs over Muslim faces. They learned that it's OK to use vicious personal attacks, race-baiting, lying and slander as long as it suits your political agenda. If you think that's OK then you are a terrible person and a worse journalist and you are no loss to the profession. I know you would argue they were just following orders but I wouldn't go there if I were you. The best you can say about these people is that they were collateral damage and I notice that conservatives have no problem brushing off collateral damage in any other context so I'll not shed any crocodile tears over them.
As a final tribute I scanned through a few remarks in the comments section of one of the news stories about the crash and burn of SUN TV. Most were of the "good riddance to bad rubbish" variety but there were a couple Ezra Levant fans out there to send SUN off with a touch of class.
One read "This is a great victory for radical Islam" (yeah those damn Muslims over at the CRTC) and another more hopeful stating; "Wouldn't it be great if this freed up Ezra to run for Prime Minister or Premier of Ontario?"
Back in 2008, when I was working at CKLN, the former radio station based at (but not owned by) Ryerson University, was a time of unbelievable turmoil as a group of far left activists backed by the Ryerson Student Unions (The RSU and CESAR) engaged in a prolonged campaign to seize control of the station. This led to more than a year of organized harrassment, threats and intimidation, I myself was personally pushed, shoved and spat on by swarms of demonstrators. The public excuse for this thugish behavior was to stop CKLN management's supposed "Corporate Agenda". Exhibit number one of this mythical agenda was the decision to end CKLN's so-called "Tax Trustee Status".
This will require some explanation; CKLN, like all community stations, relied on fundraising campaigns, however CKLN (unlike the U of T station CIUT) was not a registered charity and so could not issue tax receipts in exchange for donations. Since applying for charitable status would have required making their books public CKLN decided to take a short-cut. Thus a decade or so ago CKLN entered into an elaborate scheme with a charity called "Tractors For Our Daily Bread" by which CKLN would do it's annual funding drive, then give the money to "Tractors" who would then take ten percent and return the rest with tax receipts under their name. Thereby CKLN could pretend to be a charity and use these tax receipts as fundraiser incentives. From the beginning there were questions raised about the legality of this arrangement and a few actual complaints. Typically at CKLN these were dismissed as coming from "The Right Wing" but around the early 2000's Ryerson University and RSU were concerned enough to insist that all mention of this scheme were to be removed from the website, which at that time was shared with RSU. That should have been a warning sign, but CKLN continued to issue these bogus tax receipts and Ryerson and RSU looked the other way.
By 2007 there had been a change in management and the new CKLN management (and our lawyer) took a look at this arrangement and decided it was basically an illegal money-laundering scheme and announced that it would be immediately cancelled. This was to be done quietly to avoid attracting attention to the fact that CKLN had been issuing these bogus tax receipts for a decade. That's when the shit hit the fan. A group of leftist activists had been stirring up trouble for awhile. They were largely organized by CKLN's paid staff who were in contact negotiations and looking for raises and were therefore hoping to replace CKLN management with one of their own choosing who would then hand them the raises and benefits that they were demanding. The ending of CKLN's "Charitable Tax Trustee Status" (as they called it) was to be the rallying point for various left wing activists which would include RSU. According to their conspiracy theroy the ending of CKLN's "Charitable Tax Trustee Status" was part of a larger "Corporate Agenda" that would force CKLN to "sell-out" to corporate sponsors and advertisers. You would think this sort of nonsense would be easy to dismiss but you should never understand the willingness of activists (whatever their ideology) to live in a paranoid fantasy world of all-encompassing conspiracies.
When CKLN's annual funding drive came up in October 2007 CKLN's paid staff and many of the volunteer hosts flat-out refused to follow the decision to stop issuing the tax receipts and promised them anyway. On the air and online. During one of many hostile staff meetings the Funding Co-ordinator, Daniel Vandervoort (who also happened to be the Treasurer and Board member of Ryerson's other student union, CESAR) produced a copy of the contact, signed by himself, between CKLN and Tractors and used it to to claim that CKLN was legally bound and would be sued by Tractors if we pulled out of it. This turned out to be a mistake since a quick glance showed that the contract had a cancellation clause, but there were bigger issues which I spotted right away;
a) The central clause stated that the funds raised would be used to finance "The charitable activities of CKLN Radio Inc." which was a serious problem since CKLN had no charitable activities at all. All the funds would go right back to CKLN, mostly to pay staff, which was fraud on it's face. When this arrangement was set up there were in fact some vague ideas for CKLN to find some sort of somewhat chartiable activities to sponsor such as benefit shows etc. and a "CKLN Foundation" was set up to manage this. Naturally nothing much ever happended and no money went out. As mentioned charities must open their books to Revenue Canada to prove they are using the money raised properly and CKLN could clearly not do so.
b) It turned out that there were problems with "Tractors For Our Daily Bread" as well. Firstly it was no longer listed as a legal charity in Canada, although it had been earlier and a seperate branch did exist in America. The stated pupose of "Tractors", with it's unwieldy name, was to raise money to buy tractors in Canada, then refurbish them and send them to Africa to be used there. This sounds fine but it would seem that only a small number of tractors actually got sent to Africa which is not a good sign. I also noticed that "Tractors" was not only a charity, but a Christian Ministry which along with the tractors was also sending bibles to Africa. Just because they were a Christian Ministry does not mean they were not a charity of course and this would not be a problem for them per-se but it would be a big problem for CKLN who was not disclosing this religious aspect to their donors. Much of CKLN's left-wing membership was made up of atheists, gays, Wiccans, Muslims and the occasional Satanist and it is safe to say they would have objected to the discovery that ten percent of the money raised was going to covert the heathens in Africa. CKLN had an absolute responsibilty to disclose this both to their membersip and to donors and their failure to do so was another legal timebomb waiting to go off.
c) Vandervoort did not have legal signing authority to sign a contact of this nature anyway. Even better was my jawdropping discovery that Vandervoort and Tractors CEO Eto Ekpenyong Eto had actually acted as witnesses to each other's signatures which was blatantly, even laughably illegal.
We had actually been searching for a copy of this contact for months only to be met with obstruction by CKLN's paid staff and prior management who claimed all copies had been lost, so it's sudden appearence came as a surprise and he tried to take back all copies before anyone could get to close a look. Luckily I saved a copy and sent it to CKLN's lawyer who took one look and insisted that it be cancelled immediately. When this was explained to CKLN staff one replied with the profound comment that "This is why we don't consult with lawyers". Other volunteers insisted that such money laundering schemes were common practice in small non-profits.
The response from the various activist groups was even less measured. During the actual funding drive some hosts, especially the hosts of "OCAP Radio" went on air and promised tax receipts. Then afterwards used these promises to insist that CKLN was thereby legally bound to issue them. The Funding Co-ordinator was then caught trying to mail out thousands of reminder letters promising tax receipts. By the end of 2008 there was a petition drive (supported by RSU) to "impeach" CKLN's management and one of prime reasons listed was the "Ending of CKLN's Charitable Tax Trustee Status" in favour of "Corporate Advertsing". That party line became and remains an article of faith amongst the far left activists associated with CKLN.
Throughout 2008 these activist types escalated their activities in to daily picketting, on-air rants, and vitriolic on-line posts while staff meetings degenerated into screaming matches. I was personally shoved and spat as well as being targetted with a frivolous nuisance suit which I got dismissed. All of this was openly supported by Ryerson's Student Unions who refused security coverage, siezed the station's assets and by Feb. 2009 changed the locks and pulled the station off the air for nine months until eventually they could get the loyal leftist management they wanted. All of this was given favourable coverage by the Ryerson student press in the name of fight "The Corporate Agenda" of course. By the time they got back onair in October 2009 the CRTC had gotten fed up and hauled them up for hearings in 2010 which resulted in CKLN having it's license revoked and pulled off the air for good. I testified at those hearings. Which were hilarious. Good times.
Anyway the point of this background info is to bring us back to Eto Ekpenyong Eto, Tractors For Our Daily Bread and their "Charitable Tax Trustee Status" scheme. The one that we said was probably illegal and the one that the RSU and the OCAP posse swore was "standard practice". This month this little noticed news item came out from Revenue Canada;
"January 14, 2014 14:05 ET
Tax Preparer and Charity Director Convicted of Fraud
BRAMPTON, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Jan. 14, 2014) - The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) announced today that, on January 10, 2014, David Ajise, a former tax preparer operating in Toronto, Ontario, was sentenced in the Ontario Court of Justice in Brampton, to a 30 month jail term for fraud over $5,000. On July 22, 2013, Eto Ekpenyong Eto was also sentenced to a conditional sentence of two years less a day for fraud over $5,000 for the same case. Appearing at the Ontario Court of Justice in Brampton, Ajise was found guilty of one count of fraud over $5,000 under the Criminal Code of Canada on June 14, 2013, while Eto pleaded guilty to the same charge on May 23, 2013.
Ajise is the former proprietor of Datronix Solutions, a Toronto-based tax preparation service. A CRA investigation revealed that, Ajise and Eto participated in a scheme which generated $5,023,456 in fraudulent charitable donations for the 2003 to 2005 tax years. In addition to a fee of $30 to $50 for tax return preparation, Ajise charged his clients 10% of the face value of the fraudulent charitable donation receipts he provided. The fraudulent receipts were claimed by Ajise's clients on 623 income tax returns and resulted in taxes evaded of $1,413,166.
Eto, in his role as a director of the Tractors for Our Daily Bread Canada charity, provided charitable donation receipts for amounts larger than the donor's actual contribution. Although Eto himself did not personally gain from his participation in the fraudulent charitable donation scheme, his actions assisted in the fraud.
The preceding information was obtained from the court records.
"Our taxes pay for the high level of government services that Canadians count on," said Darrell Mahoney, Assistant Commissioner of the Ontario Region of the Canada Revenue Agency. "When someone tries to evade taxes, it affects all Canadians."
Taxpayers who have not filed returns for previous years, or who have not reported all of their income, can still voluntarily correct their tax affairs. They may not be penalized or prosecuted if they make a valid disclosure before they become aware of any compliance action being initiated by the CRA against them. These taxpayers may only have to pay the taxes owing, plus interest. More information on the Voluntary Disclosures Program (VDP) can be found on the CRA's Web site at;
www.cra.gc.ca/voluntarydisclosures.
Further information on convictions can also be found in the Media Room on the CRA website at www.cra.gc.ca/convictions.
Contact Information;
Sam Papadopoulos
Manager, Communications
So not only were they charged but also convicted and sentenced to jail. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch. Too bad CKLN isn't around anymore to go down with them.
I know it's bad form to say "I told you so" but you have to admit; we did.
And furthermore....BWAAA-HAAA-HAAA!!!! VICTORY IS MINE!!!
Apparently the SUN still hasn't quite set yet. According to SUN News anyway. Last May the SUN News Network applied to the CRTC to ask for "Mandatory Carriage", which would mean that every cable subscriber would be forced to pay for SUN News whether they wanted it or not. Seeing as how SUN News had specifically promised never to apply for any such subsidy and has long been engaged in a jihad on behalf of the sainted taxpayers against the CBC and any artist who got any arts grant, people were not exactly supportive.
After hearings in May SUN's application got shot down. But putting on a brave face SUN boss Kory Tenycke swore he saw a silver lining in the black cloud over the SUN. In announcing their rejection of SUN's application the CRTC also announced that they would be taking a look at how news channels were delivered on cable carriers.
SUN News saw this as lifeline and grabbed it desperately with both hands, making a submission calling for better placement for Canadian news channels (which basically means themselves since there aren't any others, at least right now) in cable packages.
All those news channels must now be offered both as part of a bundle – the “best available discretionary package” – and a la carte, while fees paid to the news networks by television providers must be “fair and commercially reasonable,” the CRTC said. Ultimately, the CRTC has the power to resolve any disputes.
The rule changes will force Telus and MTS – the only providers not offering Sun News – to begin carrying it by March 19. Those deals could then influence new contract terms with providers already carrying the network.
"Canadian news services are an important part of our democracy," CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais said in a statement Thursday. "With the rules we are announcing today, Canadians, as citizens, will have access to the news services that are of interest to them and will therefore have an opportunity to be exposed to a variety of opinions on matters of public concern."
The decision does not mean that all cable and satellite subscribers will automatically get every Canadian news channel in their basic package. Still, it does mean that Canadians will at least have the option to subscribe to them - a choice many Canadians have not yet been able to make with Sun News since it wasn't being carried by Telus and MTS. This is called a "Must Offer".
The regulator says distributors don't have to group Canadian news channels together, but if they do decide to create such a group, they won't be able to include some channels and leave others out.
And the CRTC also says all Canadian news channels must be available to customers either as part of a package or as a standalone channel.
SUN News was quick to claim victory;
“It means we are now operating with the same rules as everyone else, in practical terms,” Sun News spokesman Kory Teneycke said, adding Thursday’s changes “absolutely” bolster the network’s business case.
“It puts everyone, in practical terms, operating under the same rules, which was not the case before. It forces cable companies to come to an agreement with us, and forces them to come to a reasonable agreement,” he said."
"For a lot of people who don't have access to Sun News today as part of their cable, they will have it in the future," Teneycke said. "We can no longer be locked off the airwaves."
The article in the SUN newspapers began triumphantly;
"The CRTC is shaking up the broadcasting landscape, with a major decision that will make more news channels available to Canadians."
However this is still positively muted compared with the over-the-top hyperbole and non-stop boosterism that SUN News is best known for. After all the CRTC's changes, while still helpful to SUN News, are exactly what the very same Kory Teneycke rejected at the previous hearings. At the time some commissioners had suggested that a "Must offer" designation would be a suitable compromise solution. Teneycke was quick to dismiss this out of hand;
>
“Let us be very clear: a ‘must-offer’ licence would not have a meaningful impact on the current trajectory of Sun News and would inevitably lead to the closure of the station, Let me repeat: a ‘must-offer’ licence would be a death sentence.”
That's right he said "A death sentence". That sure doesn't sound good. Now they are claiming this ruling as "shaking up the broadcasting landscape", although but the standards of SUN News that's pretty restrained self-praise.
A Canadian Press report dryly commented "It is not clear if the network still holds that view. A Quebecor spokesperson was not immediately available for comment."
A report in The Star was more sober than The Sun's usual crowing;
"Gregory Taylor, an expert on broadcasting policy at Toronto’s Ryerson University, did not anticipate the change affecting consumers’ pocketbooks unless they wanted to sign up for additional news services.
Rather, he saw it as “lifeline” for Sun News that will buy it some time as it tries to build up a subscriber base.
Michael Geist, an expert on broadcasting policy and regulations at the University of Ottawa, said the change will also be an opportunity for Sun News to actually prove Canadians are interested in what it has to offer — if that is indeed the case."
Did I mention the SUN's dismal ratings lately? While SUN News has been complaining that they are currently only available in 40 percent of Canadian homes that still means potentially several million subscribers. Yet they only manage several thousand. If people weren't interested in their crappy product before why would that change now? Especially since amongst those places in Canada that haven't actually seen SUN News in all it's tacky glory yet are in Quebec, The Maritimes and the Far North, exactly the places where SUN's patented brand of right-wing extremism, plutocrat ass-kissing, partisan Tory hackery, race-bating, conspiracy theories, pro-war worship of Israel and shameless self-puffery are least likely to find a receptive audience.
Reverting to form, Teneycke's also took the opportunity to paint himself as Captain Canada;
“This was never just about Sun News, it was always about putting Canadian TV first,” Teneycke said.
Yeah right; this would explain why SUN has always been supportive of Canadian media and culture wouldn't it? Oh wait...they aren't.
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford (along with his equally lunkheaded City Councillor brother Doug) is literally the most famous Mayor in the world. The Council session that began the process of stripping the Mayor of most of his powers was actually broadcast live to the entire world on CNN, which has to be the first time a city council session anywhere received that kind of coverage. Can New York, Chicago or London say that? We're number one!! So there, take that all you cities with reasonably competent governance. Even San Diego's incredibly disgusting serial sexual predator Mayor Bob Filner didn't get this much press. So after getting a chance to see and hear Ford's bizarre and wildly incoherent ranting talking points first hand the question that most non-Torontonians ask is; "How the Hell did nice polite Toronto elect such an obvious jackass?"
Well, glad you asked. Actually that's kind of a complicated question, not to mention an incredibly frustrating one for those of us who predicted that the Ford Brothers were the barbarians at the gates. I could point out the simple fact that since Toronto was forcibly amalgamated with four suburban cities (plus East York which was not really a suburb) the suburban vote has outnumbered the downtown and East York vote, and Ford's core message of snarling resentment at the "Late' Sipping, Granola Eating, Bike Riding, Corrupt, Socialist, Tax & Spend, Probably Gay, Downtown Elites" plus free subways in the suburbs was a powerful, if sleazy, vote getter. The Fords are the rampaging id of the suburbs come to power. It's a cult of personality not a coherent ideology.
The Fords claim to be fiscal conservatives but the numbers and outrageous and hyperbolic claims they make are almost all easily debunk-able lies. To-wit;
"Rob Ford single-handedly saved Toronto from bankruptcy." ~ False; Toronto was never bankrupt and our bond rating was an excellent A++
"Rob Ford is the first Mayor to balance the budget." ~ False; All Mayors in Ontario must balance the budget by law and they always have.
"Before Ford Toronto had the highest taxes in North America now we have the lowest." ~ False and false. Toronto actually had the lowest property taxes in the region. Former Tory Ontario Premier Mike Harris used to make the same bullshit claim BTW.
"Rob Ford has cut spending more than any other Mayor in history." ~ False, spending is actually slightly up, and this was before his absurd billion dollar subway boondoggle.
"There is a billion dollars in taxpayer waste and I will root it out and stop the gravy train" ~ False; Ford even hired corporate accounting firm KPMG to search for this mythical billion dollars. They didn't find much and instead ended up calling for calling for cutting such waste as libraries, zoo's, museums, housing, and my favorite, the Christmas Fund for disadvantaged kids.
"If we don't get a billion dollars in cuts we will have to raise taxes 30%" ~ They didn't get most of their cuts and taxes did not go up 30% or even 3%
"The plastic bag recycling fee costs families a thousand dollars a month" ~ For a five cent fee? That's about 20,000 shopping bags a month! Just how much frickin' shopping does that guy do? Talk about the munchies.
"I saved taxpayers a billion dollars" ~ Ford's never been able to quantify this claim and it has been debunked in great detail a number of times.
"I won the biggest mandate in Canadian history" ~ Not even the biggest mandate in Toronto history, the two previous mayors, David Miller and Mel Lastman won more than Ford's 47% in their re-elections.
"I promised subways, subways, subways and I delivered" ~ Actually he promised that those subways were going to be free, paid for by private investors that he swore were "lined up" outside his office just waiting for the green light to start digging. Turns out they don't exist so now we are on the hook for a subway vanity project that will cost more than double the previous transit plan, cover half the distance and take twice as long to build and which will only serve areas in the suburbs with population density too low to actually break even. Because you know; "Respect for Taxpayers".
"LRT's are streetcars (or even "trolleys")" ~ No they aren't damn it! They are LIGHT RAIL TRAINS. Just like subways except they are above ground for much (although not all) of their route. Do you hear me? NOT STREETCARS!! They are no more affected by the snow than the those parts of the existing subway network that are above ground, like the entire route from Victoria Park and Warden Woods (where I grew up BTW), and how often are they shut down for snow? Almost ever; that's how often. Unless the power cuts out, and that can, and has, happened even with the those nice shiny subways. Oh and by the way you know those street car-like things you see in San Francisco? Those are trolleys. Are we clear on this?
"But subways last for a hundred years" ~ This is both simplistic and irrelevant. The tunnels last for a hundred years (assuming they are maintained, which isn't free BTW) but the tracks and rolling stock still need to be replace every twenty years or so, which also isn't free. Incidentally if we are going to get hung up on this hundred year mark you may want to recall that most of the above ground rail lines that run through the city are actually more than a hundred years old.
"I'm he best Mayor Toronto's ever had" ~ Good Lord.
So the Fords have always been hucksters who pretend to preach fiscal responsibility when they actually market petty suburban resentment. We have a Mayor who openly sneers that subways will only be build in the suburbs, regardless of population density because the downtown core "has too much". We have a Mayor who complains that the downtown core has too many museums, theatres and zoos. We have a Mayor who vowed to rip up the bike lanes and streetcar tracks downtown to make room for more cars. We have a Mayor who, along with his idiotic brother actually complained (and I swear I'm not making this up) that Toronto has more libraries than doughnut shops. Needless to say this absurd claim is laughably untrue, or at least it should go without saying. None of this nonsense can in any way be considered "fiscally conservative" or even responsible. It is however the sort of boiler-plate petty jealousy you hear from ignorant douchebags in Etobicoke. Like the Fords.
The eminent political scientist Dr. Stephen Colbert coined the term "Truthiness" for "facts" that feel as if they should be true even if they aren't and Rob Ford is the master of suburban truthiness. For some reason suburbanites are particularly eager to believe that there is a vast mountain of cash hidden somewhere in the budget that those "downtown elites" have been wasting and if only Rob Ford can find it he can balance the budget, cut taxes and build free subways. It's utter simplistic bullshit of course but that message still sells. At least from the Fords, provincial Tory leader Tim Hudak has been slavishly pedaling the same talking points and slogans with fiendish single-mindedness with notable lack of success.
So Ford was always a big fat fucking liar even before we knew he he was lying about his rampant drug and alcohol abuse. So how did he get away with this? Well one factor is the media support from right wing cheerleaders like The Toronto Sun, SUN News TV and talk radio where Ford has always been a regular guest. Once he became Mayor radio station Newstalk 1010 even gave the Fords their own radio show after cancelling the previous municipal affairs show hosted by centrist Councillor Josh Matlow who had committed the cardinal sin of being far too staid, sober and even-handed. What an amateur. That's not how you do News. The Fords sure didn't make that mistake. Their weekly show became a byword for shameless pandering, lying, bragging, name calling, childish insults, threats of retaliation against political foes, simplistic talking points, bizzare digressions, inarticulate attempts at humour, and lots of football talk. Seasoned with occasional call-ins from Ford's legions of pre-screened worshipful dittoheads who sometimes actually made Ford sound somewhat reasonable by comparison. No matter what a laughing stock the show was for many people, Ford Nation (trademark no doubt pending) ate it up and the show got decent ratings.
It also gave the Ford's a platform from which to campaign for re-election (even though the 2014 campaign doesn't officially start until the end of January) that his potential opponents don't have. Ford wasn't shy about using it of course. When Scarbourgh Councillor Paul Ainsley, a former Ford ally, decided he could not support Ford's Scarbough subway boondoggle and voted against it Ford wasted little time attacking him on air. Ford also fired off a series of insulting robo-calls to Ainsley's riding. These sort of nasty attacks may be fairly common in America but they are still a little shocking in Canada, especially since the election is a full year away. It just isn't done.
Incidental aside I couldn't figure out where else to put; The producer for the Ford's radio playhouse was one Dan Jacobs whose previous job was as manager of a company that produces bedbug spray. Not sure why I pointed that out but he is now the Mayor's Chief of Staff. That's the third one since he took office. Chief of Staffs I mean, not bug spray makers. As far as I know anyway. Back to our rant already in progress.
Paul Ainsley, never thought of as a high profile Councillor, didn't take this lying down though. He fired off a complaint to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CSBC) making an argument that others had been pondering but not acting on. Namely that Ford and Newstalk 1010 were acting improperly and in violation of the Broadcast Standards Act barring political candidates from hosting their own shows while campaigning, since this gives them an unfair advantage. Since Ford had repeatedly boasted he was "absolutely" going to be on the ballot in 2014 and was clearly using his show to campaign, Ainsley claimed that Ford was therefore required to take a leave of absence until after the election as previous Conservative candidates Peter Kent and Karleen Nation had done in the past. (An aside here, if the media is so liberal why do so many of them become Tory candidates? The names Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin come to mind as well)
Ainsley's complaint to the CBSC was not a serious threat to Newstalk 1010 since the CBSC is a toothless body that does not have the power to actually cancel a show. They can only issue a ruling to require the offending station to issue an apology and air the final ruling. However it was an embarrassment to Newstalk since they still pretend to be a legitimate news body. It would have been a bigger embarrassment if the CBSC had actually ruled in favour of the complaint, which there was no guarantee of since the election campaign doesn't officially start until next January. A copy of Ainsley's well written complaint is below;
It turns out the complaint will be moot since after the Ford Circus Geekshow became too much of an embarrassment for Newstalk 1010, good ratings or not. After a week in which Ford admitted to smoking crack, being a heavy binge drinker (to say the least) and drunk driving, after lying about this on air for months and calling the media "maggots" for bugging him about it. And after brother Doug Ford issued a blustery demand that the Police Chief and a Police Board Member step down or be investigated for unspecified improper acts. And after both Fords made veiled threats to out other Councillors and media for their alleged drug use. Newstalk finally decided enough was enough and cancelled the show. Of course they didn't say it that way, instead they issued a press release which blandly stated that Newstalk and the Fords had "mutually agreed" to abruptly end the show with less than a week's warning. Sort of like how Charlie Sheen and Chuck Lorre mutually decided that Sheen would rather hangout with skanks than be on Lorre's hit TV show.
So Newstalk decided, however belatedly, that having the bloviating buffoon show that is The Ford Follies was not up to their journalistic standards. But it turns out that there is somebody with much, much lower standards than even talk radio. Cue SUN News.
SUN News (aka FOX North), shameless in it's role as Pravda for the Conservative Party and a stubborn cheerleader/enabler for Ford, wasn't going to let this opportunity slide, no siree. Less than a week after Newstalk pulled the plug on Ford's radio show Sun News announced that they would be giving the Fords their own TV show to be called, wait for it, "Ford Nation". This did not come as a total surprise of course.
SUN News has become increasingly desperate in it's attempt to secure itself as Canada's version of the powerful FOX News in America. Since going on the air during the last federal election the station has been a ratings disaster, averaging a pathetic 20,000 viewers at peak times, and less than half that at off peak times, and those figures are actually nationwide. That is literally less than a local community radio station. They lost their over-the-air free TV signal soon after starting up when it was discovered that they hadn't waited to get permission from the CRTC before rushing to air (they are apparently applying again for that signal). A flailing SUN News ended up crawling back to the CRTC and demanding "mandatory cable carriage", a system that would have forced all cable subscribers to pay for the channel whether they wanted to or not.
Of course SUN News had spent the previous years viciously attacking artists and musicians who get art grants and waging a jihad against the CBC for it's taxpayer subsidy so more than a few people were more than a little outraged at the blatant hypocrisy of SUN News' attempt to mooch off their cable bills. Thousands of them wrote to the CRTC to tell them so and SUN News had their application shot down.
SUN News originally swore they would be forced out of business without mandatory carriage but months later they are still around, not that anybody watches of course, and desperate for a right wing media hero, so lo and behold The Worlds Most Famous Mayor is suddenly available. Newstalk 1010 may have discovered a few journalistic scruples but the deep thinkers at SUN News know that scruples and integrity are for for pussies. So this last Monday the Fords took their traveling freak-show to it's new home in the SUN.
So how'd it go? For two hours the Fords, along with smug and smarmy SUN News host Ezra Levant brought their greatest hits;
The media are persecuting him, again. Especially the Toronto Star who are worse than the paparazzi who killed Princess Di.
Ford has saved a billion dollars and "the left" are out to get him for it because, just cuz.
He's quit drinking so there, back off.
Rob Ford brags he spends two hours in the gym every day, which seems a little unlikely unless Jim is the name of his crack dealer.
Jack Layton hung around with hookers and Justin Trudeau is a pothead. So there. Doug Ford calls for mandatory drug tests for all government officials. Because you know, "smaller government". Rob Ford offers to take one anytime. I'm picturing a TV set with a giant monitor showing the results after a drumroll. We could have a pool, like the Lotto.
Ford is the only honest politician in Canada. I bet his Tory friends Harper and Hudak love hearing that BTW.
Ford brags that he has never missed a day in council which is of course not true.
Ford whines that he lost his football coaching job (that he regularly skipped out of meetings for) because of "politics", because everybody knows that alcoholic, rage choked, crack heads make the best coaches.
Ford brags that he's saved more taxpayer money than "any Mayor in history" but as usual he of course can't explain how. Probably because it's total bullshit.
Ford claims that those dastardly leftists of council are spending $500,000 on studying bike-lanes which is another lie but who's counting?
Certainly not the Fords, or anyone else at SUN News, which is supposed to be in theory a NEWS organization.
Ford boasts that he has "built subways" even though a single shovel hasn't been in the ground yet. He doesn't point out that he promised numerous times that these subways would be built for free. They are actually going to be at least a billion dollars more than the previous mixed use plan and will cover half the distance and will take twice as long to build. Granted I am no accountant but I am pretty sure that a "billion dollars" is a tad more expensive than "free".
The Fords complain that the Police wasted tax dollars investigating the Mayor of Toronto for petty things like; smoking crack, buying crack, driving drunk, hanging out with drug dealing scumbags, paying the utilities on a crack-house, using said crack-house to make campaign phone-calls, using his tax payer funded staff to run the simplest of house-hold errands, loitering about in gas stations and school parking lots where he exchanged brown envelopes with a known drug dealer, employing said known drug dealer as a driver, apparently employing said known drug dealer to obtain that crack video (this is sometimes known as "extortion" and "obstruction of justice"), assaulting other staff members, urinating in a school parking lot and a bunch of other activities that normally belong on "Cops". Because you know; "Respect for Taxpayers"! Remember when Conservatives used to be all about "Law and Order" and "Personal Responsibility"? Me neither.
It's nothing we haven't heard a thousand times before. And as always delivered with that grating, hesitant monotone and the vague glassy eyed stare that shows that Rob Ford ain't no elitist like those commie fags Trudeau and Miller. Appalling as it was, it was also of course a huge ratings success, getting a reported five times larger audience than SUN News ever gets for any other show. "Ford Nation" was the “biggest night ever for Sun News, by a country mile,” according to SUN News president Kory Teneycke. The show's ratings attracted "155,000 viewers for its first airing, 45,000 more during a Western Canadian repeat and was downloaded an additional 65,000 times from the network’s website", he said. These are by far the biggest SUN News has ever gotten. So naturally SUN News announced the two days later that they were cancelling the show.
Wait; What, You ask? Did SUN News suddenly discover that allowing an admitted crack smoking, drunk driver and liar to use the airways to lie and hurl insults while running for Mayor might be considered unethical, not to mention undignified? Ha Ha; You're funny.
This is SUN News after all, the proud home of "Freedom Fighter" (seriously, they actually bill him that way) Ezra Levant and his race-baiting smear campaigns against Roma and Aboriginals. The equally proud home of the Holy Taxpayer jihads against the CRTC, the CBC and arts groups. Notwithstanding their own history or getting millions of dollars every year from the same sacred Taxpayers in the form of government subsidies. Not so proud that they actually want you to see any of this of course, if you try to search Youtube for back episodes of Levant's jawdropping racist attacks on the Roma. The Police actually investigated that one for Hate Speech and SUN News had to belatedly put out a half assed apology, months later, as they were going in front of the CTRC. Or try and search for Krista Ericson's insane ambush of award winning dancer Margie Gillis in which she demanded, on behalf of the Sacred Taxpayers and The Troops, that Gillis return Arts Grant money she had gotten. That one generated the highest number of CBSC complaints in history. Or Ezra Levant's previous ambush of some indie band who also got a grant which resulted in the shell-shocked band's grovelling apology and actually returning the few thousand dollars, just in time for SUN News, through their parent company QMI, to get their annual multi-million dollar taxpayer subsidy. You can try and find these clips but you won't since whenever anyone tries to post them on Youtube SUN News, a "crusading" media organization dedicated to accountability for Unions, Native Councils Arts Groups and non-Tory governments, has their lawyers file bullshit copyright complaints to have them pulled. When the CBC reported on the millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies the anti-subsidy SUN News gets each year, SUN News threatened to sue for libel, but then didn't actually file any suit. (The Fords have done the same thing several times BTW). So while they are not quite proud enough to have their sleazy "reporting" scrutinized, they were certainly proud enough to air it in the first place. Especially if it gets ratings, which the Fords clearly got. The network’s previous record was 100,000 viewers, achieved when the network had the exclusive rights to the charity boxing match between future Liberal leader Justin Trudeau and soon-to-be-disgraced Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau in which Trudeau pounded the living snot out of the arrogant Brazeau much to the horror of the assembled Tories.
But it turns out that The Fords are truly incompetent at being media pundits. I don't mean because they are shameless liars, that's not an impediment to be a pundit of course, especially on SUN News. No it turns out that even after a few years of radio experience they are so inept that according to Kory Teneycke "taping the two-hour show took five hours, and it required another eight hours to edit". That's less time than it takes to do the "Tonight Show". So if you were wondering just how much editing it takes to make Rob Ford sound like somewhat less like a drunken, babbling idiot now you know. According to Tenyecke 'The Fords are “great TV but not necessarily great TV hosts”. Well he's certainly right about the second part anyway. Even some at SUN News couldn't resist taking shots at The Ford's wooden and glassy eyed performance with Sun News anchor Sneha Kulkarni writing in a Monday night Tweet, “Rob Ford really needs to stop looking at the table…”
Unfortunately spending an entire day on a single show means that SUN News, already a huge money loser, would end up losing even more money on the show no matter what the ratings were. This problem was exacerbated by the reluctance of some advertisers to associate with "Ford Nation". Canadian Tire for one publically insisted that their ads be pulled and the Ford Motor Company, Iceberg Vodka and even his beloved Toronto Argonauts has been particularly vocal about not wanting to have anything to do with "Ford Nation". Even actor Harrison Ford took pains to clarify that he is not in fact related to Ford Nation.
Keeping up a brave face Kory Tenyecke blithely denied that skittish advertisers had anything to do with the show's cancellation and even seemed to deny that the show was actually cancelled at all saying; "I’ve been clear both with them and the media, our commitment was for one show and then we’d see how it’d all come together.” If he means by being "clear" that he never publicly said anything like this beforehand, then yes that was perfectly clear. He also said that the Fords would definately be back as occasional pundity commentators.
Losing their radio and TV shows now denies the Fords the ability to go over the heads of the "Liberal Media" which is a real problem for their political futures. They have been all over the American media lately but they will inevitably get bored with our freak-show and move on to one of their own.
This triumphant one episode run has been lauded by some as the "shortest TV series ever" which is not technically true. For the record that honour is actually held by a late 1960's comedy show called "Turn On" which was so odd, scatter-shot and offensive to some that in some markets it was actually cancelled in mid show. Just thought you'd like to know.
UPDATE:
After this was originally written Rob Ford went on a TV on the cable access Vision TV Chanel show hosted by former Media Baron and convicted fraudster Conrad Black for a fawning interview. Vision TV incidentally was also recently turned down for the same "mandatory carriage" package that SUN NEWS got shot down for, and has a not unrelated need for ratings. Anyway during the mutual right-wing persecution makeout session Ford snickeringly implied that Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale was a pedophile. Dale quickly threatened a lawsuit for libel and the Fords just as quickly doubled down and insisted that Mayor MacCheese would "stand by everything he said. Since Ford has regularly threatened critics, especially The Star, with lawsuits and then backed down he probably thought Dale was bluffing. Bad move. Dale has since filed a libel suit against Ford and Vision TV (but not Black). Ford would later offer a half assed apology in which he blamed others for misleading him, blamed the media for "taking my remarks out of context" and denied implying what he clearly implied. Dale refused to accept this non-apology apology and is continuing the suit. The usually not controversial Vision has wisely kept quiet but not our intrepid "Freedom Fighters" at SUN NEWS. Naturally the Toronto SUN immediately published an editorial by Fordista Joe Warmington in which he expressed his opinion that Ford had nothing to apologize for and blamed Dale and The Star for "Piling on". He ended on a triumphant note stating that since Ford was the real victim he could play this for sympathy and get re-elected. Stay classy SUN News. Stay classy.
POST UPDATE UPDATE:
Two days later Ford (who had always insisted he would "stand by every word") made a more explicit apology and retraction to Dale who then immediately accepted it and announced he would drop the lawsuit against Ford. However the lawsuit remains in place against Vision TV.
POST-POST UPDATE UPDATE;
Yes I realize that the Youtube clips of the Ford Show no longer work. That's because once again SUN News (supposedly a media organization with a "fierce commitment to free speech" filed yet another one of their bullshit copyright claims and had them pulled. As they do with any embarrassing footage, of which there is no shortage. I know I could simply delete the now blank screens but I figured I would leave them there as a memorial to, you know, Free Speech.
This past September the Conservative federal government, when it wasn't busy trying to explain it's way out of various ethical scandals, shilling for oil companies, throwing a hissy fit over Justin Trudeau's smoking pot a few times, throwing tax dollars at Rob Ford or strutting about like General Patton braying for war against Syria; quietly announced something that music fans might actually give a damn about.
They announced a new tax on international acts performing at small venues in Canada. Henceforth all acts would have to pay a fee of $275 per member, this would include not only each member of a band but also each member of their crew including drivers, merch girls, sound guys, road crew, road managers etc. Wait there's more; this tax would not be a one time entry fee that could be spread across a few promoters at a number of gigs in a multi city tour. No, this tax would be FOR EACH GIG! And one more thing, the tax would be non-refundable so that if any gigs were cancelled the promoters would still be on the hook for the tax regardless.
So let's do the math here. Take a band, like say The Replacements, Black Flag, or Social Distortion, (who were all here in the summer) were to have four members, plus a sound guy, a merch guy, a driver and a road manager, which would not be an unreasonable crew size, the tax would be $2,200 PER GIG. If you add to this the band's guarantee which would certainly be no less than four or five grand per show you're looking at a least eight to ten grand per gig. This does not of course include the venue's own costs for staff etc. There is just no way it would be economically feasible to bring international acts to Canada anymore except for the biggest stars with a guaranteed draw who can fill large venues, which by the way are exempt from this new tax.
Oh wait; did I not mention that earlier? Yep, in their wisdom the Tories offered an exemption for the very venues that could actually afford to pay for this lunk-headed tax grab, namely large concert halls as well as symphonies, operas, ballets and theatres. This tax would therefore explicitly target the smaller clubs where most serious music fans actually see touring bands. For example I can actually count on both hands the number of large venue shows I have seen over the past twenty years.
Every other of the thousands of gigs I've seen was at a small venue or club. Many of these were of international acts and it's a safe bet that most of these bands would have never came to town under this regime. Over the years I have also put on dozens of shows myself at various clubs.
It's worth noting that while this tax mostly targets music venues it would also affect small touring theatre groups as well as comedy and magic clubs and spoken word readings, although these would be affected less since those artists usually tour solo.
A "FOREIGN WORKER" TAKING AWAY CANADIAN JOBS;
So what possible reason would the Tories, who can usually be counted on to self-righteously proclaim their self-proclaimed role as earnest "Tax Fighters" at any possible platform, give for dumping this shamelessly unfair and onerous tax grab on the "small businesses" they claim to represent?
Quite a few other people have had the same question and from the defensive and not terribly coherent answers we've gotten back it seems that the Tories have gotten it into their thick heads that international touring bands are "foreign workers" who are taking jobs away from good hard working Canadians. That's right according to our leaders if you are not allowed to see The Replacements, Black Flag, or Social Distortion you will have no choice but to go see some local band. Because as we all know Canadian bands are not good enough to compete with foreigners with their crafty Gibsons, Les Paul's, Marshall's and stuff.
An irony here is that Conservatives are free traders who have always ridiculed the 30% Cancon rules on radio by making the exact same argument that I just made. Now apparently they've decided we need protecting from those big bad American bands.
So what's behind the big change? As you might expect it's a combination of appalling ignorance about the music sector and crass political grandstanding, along with a typically Tory arrogant refusal to admit they came up with this half-assed policy without getting their facts straight.
First the grandstanding; Since Tories are always loud free traders who have absolutely no problem with jobs being outsourced to some low-wage, non-union, no environmental regulation place in the third world, they occasionally feel a need to prove their love for the working man by picking on an easy target close to home; the dastardly foreign worker taking away your job. In the last Provincial election in Ontario the Tory leader Tim Hudak attacked a Liberal plan to allow a fairly small group of landed immigrants with skilled labour to upgrade those skills to Ontario standards as a plan for "Foreign Workers" to take your jobs. That was a blatant lie but the right-wing media naturally ran with it using all the usual faux outrage.
More recently the banks were caught using actual foreign workers which the Tories were fine with, until the there was a less than amused public reaction which led to an empty Tory promise to get tough on the "foreign worker" scourge. Which brings to this farce.
"FOREIGN WORKER":
The Tory position, ludicrous as it seems to anyone who knows anything at all about how the live music scene works, is that anytime Black Flag comes to town for example, they are taking jobs away from some Canadian band who would otherwise be headlining, cuz that's how we decide what to see. If there's nothing playing we actually want we'll settle for the local bar band. Perhaps they'll even play some Black Flag songs. That will be even better than the real thing.
At the risk of stating the obvious to these idiots; ALL BANDS ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE! People want to see the originals regardless of where they came from. And I guarantee you that this includes every single musician I have ever met, which is more than the entire Tory caucus. Musicians have a myriad of influences and they feed those influences by being able to see their heroes in the flesh. Something your cynical, asinine tax is designed to stop. Good musicians do not simply listen to their friend's bands, which is all this narrow-mined plan allows. Plus all Canadian bands got their start building their audiences by sharing a bill with a better known international band, thus reaching a larger following then they could have built by staying insular and isolated. In this huge country even bands which have a local buzz may be completely unknown elsewhere and unable to get a gig on their own. In a country as hard to tour as Canada this is a major issue. This is something this tax grab actively discourages. The very club scene which allows Canadian bands to tour outside their town is subsidized by having a variety of bands constantly playing both Canadian and international. This tax is a direct attack on this foundation. Furthermore Canadian bands make international contacts by playing with those bands here which can lead to tours together in the USA or Europe, how exactly do the Tories think this whole system works anyway?
"FOREIGN WORKERS" TAKING AWAY CANADIAN JOBS:
Incidentally you might ask why, if it's so important to support Canadian artists they gave an exemption for symphonies, and operas? Is it because the Tories think Canadian classical music is so robust that it doesn't need any help? Or is it that this is the type of music that Tories might actually listen to and therefore worth giving a favour to?
It's entirely possible that the Tories came up with this idiotic monstrosity without thinking it through, but now we have the next problem; getting this government known for being arrogant, cynical, overly partisan control freaks, to admit they fucked up and back down. So far they've shown no willingness to do so and are instead wrapping themselves in the flag, which has been called the last refuge of the scoundrel, except when it's the first.
L'ETRANGER ~ "ONE PEOPLE";
Thankfully the opposition has a better idea of how stupid and destructive this tax grab is, in particular NDP Multicultural critic Andrew Cash who used to be an actual musician back in the 1980's along with fellow NDP MP Chuck Angus in their respected post punk band Le'Tranger. Therefore we can assume they know first hand how the music business actually works.
1983 NEW MUSIC INTERVIEW WITH L'ETRANGER WITH LIVE FOOTAGE;
On the other hand the Tories' International Trade Minister. Ed Fast, was actually a musician as well. That's right; he had a Christian Pop group with his daughters called, appropriately if unimaginatively, "Father's Daughter", who toured and recorded professionally so he should know better. So what's his excuse for going along with this nonsense? As Trade Minister he must have been consulted on this so he has no excuse for not speaking up.
FATHER'S DAUGHTER ~ I STAND REDEEMED;
This past week I did an interview with NDP MP and Multi-Cultural Affairs Critic Andrew Cash who has been sounding the alarm to those in the arts sector over this issue. Stating that;
“This extra fee is the difference between local promoters making a profit and closing up shop,” said NDP Multiculturalism critic Andrew Cash (Davenport). “This is really an attack on small businesses, and will impact not only the local live music scene but our multicultural communities who often bring international touring acts to Canada as well.”
He reiterated the basic belief that the Tories put forward this policy too quickly without considering the effects it would have on the arts sector which he points out could be easily fixed without junking the entire law as it affects the economy as a whole by simply adding in an exemption for the arts as a whole. Especially since, as has been pointed out, they already gave such an exemption to the big ticket stadium shows and "High Art" shows like symphonies, ballets and operas. In other words; those who could actually afford to pay it.
However that might mean having to admit that they made an eensy weensy mistake and we know that Stephen Harper doesn't make mistakes. So this response from Multi-Culturalism Minister Jason Kenny's office was predictable;
“The vast majority of Canadians don't like the idea of foreign workers being subsidized.”
Nice to see he's really on top of things. Personally I don't much care for the millions of tax-payer subsidies that professional sports teams have always been able to extort. And then there's the millions in tax dollars that go quietly every year to QMI; the parent company that owns Sun News, the propaganda arm of the Conservative Parties, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for the Tories to stop that one.
At any rate in what universe are the sacred tax-payers "subsidizing" touring musicians and artists? They already have to pay an entrance and filing fees. And if this is such a burden then why an exemption for the very stadium acts and symphonies that are best able to pay?
According to a report in the Calgary Herald;
"Spencer Brown, the longtime booker for downtown venue The Palomino — which hosts a mix of local, national and out-of-country acts — was surprised by the changes, saying there was “no consultation, no warning, nothing of the sort,” and only learned of them when an agency he works with “called him in a panic” at the beginning of the month in regards to an upcoming show.
He calls the new regulations, which Minister of Employment, Social Development & Multiculturalism Jason Kenney announced on Aug. 7, “anti arts and culture” and “anti small business.”
“If I have a one four-member American band at the Palomino, I’m looking at $1,700 Canadian just to get them on the bill — and that’s on top of paying out a sound tech, paying for posters, gear rental, paying the other bands, staffing,” Brown says, explaining there have been tweaks to the LMO in the past, but nothing this drastic or, in his eyes, damaging.
“Concert promotion at this level is, in itself, a high-risk occupation. So this has just put it through the roof. There’s no way to start already $1,700 in the hole and break even. It’s impossible.”
“I don’t know if they think small venues are raking in the cash putting on bands that not a lot of people have heard of or they’re trying to keep small-time foreign bands out of the country for whatever reason,” he says, disregarding Citizenship and Immigration’s assertions that the new rules were designed, in part, “to ensure that owners and managers of those types of establishments look to hire Canadians first before hiring temporary foreign workers.”
“Me bringing in (American act) Redd Kross (Aug. 31) is not going to devastate Calgary’s garage rock scene. It’s not going to put anyone out of work. It’s going to inspire people to pick up a guitar and put out an album. The same thing when we bring in Orange Goblin from the U.K. in October, it’s not going to destroy the city’s stoner metal scene.”
In fact, argues Leanne Harrison, owner of locally based artist management and booking company SIN Agency, the opposite just might be true. As she sees it, the previous, more liberal LMO was actually a benefit to the indie artists of the country, providing them opportunities for greater exposure by performing as an opening act for mid-range international bands.
“It’s going to impact us in a lot of different ways,” says Harrison, who found out about the changes from another popular Calgary venue that will be adversely affected, Dickens Pub.
“Bigger agencies are now going to stack their tours even more with their own artists and there will be less and less opportunities for young up-and-coming bands to get what we call resume builder gigs. . . . It’s an opportunity to say, ‘We shared the stage with.’ They get in front of a bigger crowd, they can build new fans that way, they get their name out there that way.”
She also notes that if other nations follow Canada’s lead, this country’s music scene would suffer even further.
“I have bands that tour the U.S all the time,” she says. “If the U.S. started doing that to us, they’d never cross the border.”
Which, ultimately, may not only harm the artist but also those who support and appreciate live music, no matter the origin of the performer.
Harrison says that because of the new fees and regulations, she’s already seen the brakes put on one proposed western Canadian tour, that by veteran Las Vegas hard rock band Hemlock, due to the fact that some of those fall dates were in non-exempt venues. It’s hoped that it will be rescheduled for the New Year, but that would be, presumably, using only exempt rooms, if they can be found and booked at a price that makes sense to the venue, agent, artist and fan.
“There’s only so many Canadian artists, you can only tour your country so often,” she says. “If you’re limiting the international artists that we can bring in, well, to me, music is global. It shouldn’t have those kinds of doors on them.”
Remember when the Tories were the party of strident free trade? No big government barriers or interference? Me neither.
At this time their is a petition which Andrew Cash will be presenting to Parliament when ever the Tories get spare moment from ducking questions about whatever the latest scandals might be taking up all the attention.
It's at;
https://www.change.org/en-CA/petitions/canadian-government-don-t-ruin-live-music-with-425-00-charge-per-international-artist-per-performance-in-canada
And/Or you could fire off a letter of your own to Jason Kenny such as the one longtime Toronto promoter Richard Flohill did;
Re: New fees on foreign musicians performing in Canada
Dear Minister Kenney,
Briefly, sir, what WERE you thinking?
These unreasonable, punitive, excessive fees, instituted without any consultation with the music industry, rob Canadian audiences of the opportunity to hear, meet, and be influenced by creative musicians from neighbouring countries.
The following questions — which your aide said would be answered, but I have grave doubts that this will be the case — arise:
1) Why were these fees instituted in the first place?
2) Did you, in fact, consult anyone in the music industry before making the decision to impose these fees?
3) If you did, just which individuals and/or organizations did you consult with?
4) Do you seriously think more Canadian musicians will be employed as a result of effectively banishing low- and middle-range American artists from performing in Canada?
5) Was there consultation with Heritage Canada, and did you consider that the American authorities (who already think Canadian musicians are terrorists!) would match these fees, and thus end any reasonable cultural exchange possibilities in the popular music field? And, of course, ending the possibility that low- and mid-level Canadian artists can take their music into the United States.
6) Can these new fees be re-examined and rescinded? If not, why not?
I await your response, Minister, with bated breath. I am not, however, optimistic that a reasoned response to these questions is likely.
Richard Flohil
Personally I wouldn't wait up.
For the record I have always supported Radio Cancon and I would say that this is totally different because;
a) The airwaves in Canada are supposed to be public and since we grant licenses to radio stations for free to operate for profit it is not unreasonable to ask for something in return, like showing support for the communities whose airwaves are being used.
b) There is a limit to the number of radio frequencies in a given town and if you factor out those news/talk and sports stations there are even fewer to go around so setting some aside for a few 100% Canadian stations isn't really feasible.
c) Canadian record labels would not have survived without some radio support.
d) When radio stations were asked nicely back in the 1960's to play more Canadian artists they scornfully refused so fuck'em.
None of this applies in any way to the live music scene in Canada, as anyone with even a nodding acquaintance with music would know.
In the last few weeks I saw Pere Ubu, Big Country, Rayburn Anthony and had Robyn Hitchcock down to record at CIUT. I had no idea I was undermining Canadian music, sorry about that. But that gives me an idea for a couple of questions for our Dear Leaders.
First of all to Prime Minster Harper who famously enjoyed a high profile fundraiser where he played piano with Yo Yo Ma, and another where he warbled an off key version of a Beatles song;
STEPHEN HARPER BUTCHERS A BEATLES SONG;
Mr. Prime Minister why were you sharing a stage with a "foreign Worker"? Why couldn't you find a good hard working Canadian artist to feature? Like Ashley MacIssac say? And why are you always playing songs written by "foreign workers"? Aren't Canadian songs good enough for you? What's wrong with "American Woman".
STEPHEN HARPER REALLY BUTCHERS A JOHN LENNON SONG;
As for you Minister Fast; those years when you were touring in the USA with your group, The Fast Family, did you consider yourself a "foreign worker" taking jobs away from good hard working Americans? Hmmmmm?
STEPHEN HARPER ACTUALLY SINGS A CANADIAN SONG, AND COMPLETELY MISSES THE IRONY OF "SHARE THE LAND" WHILE SNUBBING NATIVE LEADERS;
