TORONTO – At 5 a.m. this morning, Sun News was closed by Quebecor Media.
“After attempting to establish Sun News as a viable news channel in the Canadian broadcasting landscape and encountering a series of barriers to carriage, Sun Media Corporation regrets to announce today that it is closing the station. At the time of this release, Sun News Network is already off the air,” reads a release issued right after a repeat showing of Byline with Brian Lilley was the final program to air.
Cartt.ca was the first to report the station would close today after Quebecor could find no buyer for the channel. ZoomerMedia was interested in taking on the station, but ultimately, no agreement could be reached.
"This is an unfortunate outcome; shutting down Sun News was certainly not our goal," said Julie Tremblay, president and CEO of Media Group and Sun Media Corporation, in the release. "Over the past four years, we tried everything we could to achieve sufficient market penetration to generate the profits needed to operate a national news channel. Sadly, the numerous obstacles to carriage that we encountered spelled the end of this venture."
The channel lost tens of millions of dollars over its 10 years of existence as a broadcast station and later, a news and opinion specialty service. Millions more prior to that were lost under former owners, Winnipeg's Craig family, who originally launched the station in 2003 as a conventional channel called Toronto 1. Quebecor would later turn it from an over-the-air station to a news specialty channel. It was in front of the CRTC often as it tried to gain carriage – and the subscriber fees which come with it. The losses were just too great, however, and with the sale of the rest of Quebecor's English language media proceeding apace (the Sun Newspaper Group has been sold to PostMedia, pending Competition Bureau approval), owning a single English TV station made little sense for the company.
Sun Media Corporation spent months actively seeking a potential buyer but no party capable of taking over the channel was found, confirmed the release.
"Over the past few years, every possible effort was made to achieve sufficient market penetration to generate the profits needed to operate a national news channel. Unfortunately, those efforts did not bear fruit because of the numerous roadblocks to carriage that we encountered," wrote Sun News VP Kory Teneycke in his final letter to staff on Friday (the first time most staff had heard from him in months, some of those employees told us)
"Since that time, we have worked hard to find a buyer for Sun News Network. Those efforts have ultimately not been successful. The result is our closure today," he added.
"The closure is regrettable for the Canadian broadcasting system, which is losing a distinctively Canadian voice in the national news space, and also, most importantly, for all the Sun News employees who are losing their jobs. We thank all employees for their daily efforts and the talent they have contributed to the channel. We wish them all the best in their future endeavours," added Tremblay in the release.
The closure affects about 100 full time jobs.
