Fiktiv Canada - Postmedia - Sun News

Sun News Network (commonly shortened to Sun News) is a Canadian English language Category C news channel owned by Postmedia following its acquisition of Sun Media in 2015.

Sun News is available on a handful of cable and satellite systems across Canada. The channel was previously simulcast on the former CKXT-DT, an over-the-air station based in Toronto (with repeaters in Southern and Eastern Ontario) that aired general entertainment under the "Sun TV" name before simulcasting Sun News from the network's launch date until Fall 2011, when Quebecor surrendered the CKXT licence. The existence of Sun TV prior to Sun News (and the fact a similar on-screen logo was used for the CKXT venture) has resulted in Sun News sometimes being erroneously referred to as "Sun TV".

From the start of its licensing attempts for Sun News, Quebecor intended for the network to replace the company's existing licence for general entertainment independent station CKXT-TV (branded as "Sun TV"), which was available at the time over-the-air in Toronto and through relayed through rebroadcasters in Hamilton, London and Ottawa. In its initial submission to the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) in the spring of 2010, Quebecor requested that Sun News be awarded a Category 1 digital specialty channel licence that would have reverted to Category 2 status after three years. The Category 1 status, if the CRTC had approved it, would have given Sun News the same status as CTV News Channel and CBC News Network, in that it would have required all Canadian digital television providers (both cable and direct broadcast satellite) to carry and offer Sun News to their customers should those carriers have the capability to do so. However, unlike CTV News Channel and CBC News Network, carriers would not have had the ability to distribute Sun News via analogue cable, only through their digital service (a Category 1 status would not have made the channel a compulsory part of every customer's basic digital package; however, it could be placed in digital basic packages subject to negotiations between Sun News and individual television providers).

Quebecor initially requested Category 1 status for Sun News on the basis that the channel's combination of news, analysis and opinion programming would create "a completely new [TV] genre" different from the other all-news channels in Canada. The CRTC disagreed, however, and turned down the application in a July 5, 2010 letter to Quebecor. In its letter, the CRTC noted that Sun News was being promoted in part as a news channel, and suggested that "news and analysis are sub-categories of the information programming category," which therefore would not, in the CRTC's eyes, make Sun News unique. Additionally, the CRTC had stated earlier in 2010 that it was not planning to entertain any new applications for Category 1 licences until at least October 2011. International activist organization Avaaz.org and other organizations filed petitions containing over 21,000 signatures to the CRTC to have the channel denied its Category 1 status application and its abolition under "breach of trust allegations" and "diminished news information integrity".

After the CRTC declined the Category 1 application, an online petition titled "Stop Fox News North" was established. The petition claimed that Prime Minister Stephen Harper sought to "push American-style hate media onto [Canadian] airwaves" with Sun News, and that the network would be "funded with money from our cable TV fees" (in contradiction to the "mandatory access" request in Quebecor's second CRTC application); the petition also cited Martin's column as evidence that CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein was the "one man" standing in the way of Sun News getting a preferential licence. Author Margaret Atwood was among the petition signatories, revealing she signed it not as a criticism of Sun News' possible right-wing agenda but as a criticism of Harper's style of government, particularly perceived attempts by his government to expedite Sun News' licence approval.

Quebecor resubmitted its Sun News application under Category 2 status. Though Category 2 is not mandatory (cable and satellite carriers are not compelled to carry such channels), Quebecor included in its resubmission a request for a Category 1-style "mandatory access" period of no more than three years, insisting that the network would need that period of time "to effectively expose and promote its programming to viewers across Canada" without obliging cable and satellite customers to add it to their package; without mandatory access, Quebecor added, cable and satellite carriers could choose not to offer Sun News to their customers, which could lead to Quebecor pulling the plug on the project.

On October 5, 2010, Quebecor announced that it was withdrawing its mandatory access request and applied for a normal Category 2 status without any special exceptions or carriage conditions. The move was widely considered an easier avenue for Sun News' licence approval (Category 2 licences are routinely granted by the CRTC unless it is for a format considered a protected genre, of which national news channels are not included). The CRTC granted Quebecor a five-year Category 2 licence for Sun News on November 26, 2010; the network's status was changed to a Category C service on September 1, 2011, as part of an overall restructuring of broadcasting regulations during Canada's transition to digital television broadcasting.

After a planned launch on January 1, 2011, was pushed back because of start-up and staffing challenges, Sun News launched on April 18, 2011, with a ten-hour countdown clock that ended when regular programming began at 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time. O Canada was played before a half-hour launch preview special hosted by Canada Live journalist and host Krista Erickson (who served as the Sun newspapers' "Sunshine Girl" for the day). The special was followed by the premiere of The Source with Ezra Levant, and the remainder of the network's prime-time talk programming. Daytime news programs debuted the following day on April 19.

Following the acquisition of the Sun News Network by PostMedia in 2015, it was announced that the journalists from other Postmedia newspapers will make frequent appearances on Sun News Network programming.

Sun News is based in studios in Toronto, with additional studios located in Ottawa, Winnipeg, Vancouver, and Calgary. Sun News has news bureaus in Edmonton, Moncton, Montreal, Regina, Saskatoon, Sudbury, North Bay, Windsor, Kenora, Kingston and Washington, D.C.

Sun News' daily schedule features news reportage during the daytime hours (6 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET) and personality-driven analysis and commentary programmes in the evening hours (5 p.m. ET onwards). The network's general on-air attitude, its founding executives have claimed, is lively, "unapologetically patriotic", and "less politically correct" in comparison to the well-established English-language national news networks in Canada, CTV News Channel and CBC News Network, which the management have claimed are "uninspiring" and leading Canadian TV viewers to turn to U.S. networks for news.

Sun News takes a populist, conservative-leaning approach that mirrors the namesake Sun chain of Postmedia-owned tabloid newspapers; that, and its employment of conservative commentators and operatives in key on-air and off-air positions, led media reports, pundits, and critics to colloquially bill the network as "Fox News North." Sun News management has openly bristled at the comparisons to Fox News, saying that they only intend Sun News to mimic the Sun chain's “irreverent” and “provocative” approach, and that though some conservative voices would be prominent, a "range of [political] opinion" would be offered.