Sun News Network to CRTC: Give us revenue-producing mandatory carriage or we’ll close up shop

I guess we shouldn't be surprised that an organization known for taking things to extremes would put a gun to its own head, hoping to get its way.

Sun News Network is warning federal regulators that it will have to close its doors unless it gets a guaranteed spot on the most broadly available tier of TV channels, The Canadian Press reports.

The network, owned by media giant Quebecor, had its final appearance Thursday before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) on its application for mandatory carriage.

Sun News is one of almost two dozen new and existing applicants that want the CRTC to require cable and satellite providers to put them in the basic tier of channels, which helps guarantee a larger revenue stream regardless of audience size.

But its bid by far has garnered the most attention because of the right-leaning network's resolutely free-enterprise point of view. The irony that it's now asking the broadcast regulator to compel viewers to pay for the channel in their monthly bills, whether or not they watch it, is not lost on Sun News' many critics.

National Post columnist Andrew Coyne called the demand "infinite humbug ... demanding what is in effect a tax on cable subscribers even as it rails against the tax-funded CBC."

Network vice-president Kory Teneycke told the hearing a so-called "must-offer" licence, where providers are only required to make the channel available but leave it up to customers to subscribe or not, would be unsatisfactory, The Canadian Press reported.

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“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,” Teneycke said.

“Let me repeat: a ’must-offer’ licence would be a death sentence.”

Launched in 2011 as a kind of Fox News North, Sun News Network has struggled to attract eyeballs. Data from the BBM Canada ratings agency in 2012 put it's viewership at 0.1 per cent, compared with 1.4 per cent for CBC News Network (formerly Newsworld) and 0.8 per cent for CTV News Channel, The Canadian Press said in a story last year.

Viewers who tuned in hoping to see something similar to Fox News instead were treated to low-rent sets and amateurish presentation.

Then there were the gaffes, such as the bogus citizenship ceremony it hosted in the fall of 2011, the bullying of a guest by host Krista Erickson that drew the ire of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, and most recently commentator Ezra Levant's apology for calling Roma people (also known as gypsies) "a culture synonymous with swindlers."

The problem, Teneycke seemed to suggest, was not that at any given time of day, Sun News' average audience of of 16,400 (according to documents filed with the CRTC) wouldn't fill an NHL arena. It's about access; if more people could get it, they'd watch.

Teneycke has argued Sun News should get the same privilege extended to CBC's all-news channel, Newsworld, when it launched in 1987. It was on a lower tier of basic cable channels but has since lost that position, The Globe and Mail noted in a January article.

[ Related: New documents regarding Sun News ‘citizenship ceremony’ suggest Tories playing favourites with media ]

“This is live or die for us,” Teneycke told the Globe. “Like all news, our audience skews older and male and in the case of our viewers more middle-to-lower income. They’re most likely to be on basic cable services.”

Mandatory carriage would cost subscribing households 18 cents a month — just over two dollars a year — but the projected revenues would help offset losses ($17 million last year) that Quebecor considers unsustainable, The Canadian Press reported.

“Our plan would allow Sun News to establish an audience under similar rules and regulations to those afforded CBC Newsworld and CTV News Channel for 21 and 13 years respectively,” Quebecor said in its filings to the CRTC, according to The Canadian Press.