- Some months ago, I received a call from a producer for
the Fox News Network, the Rupert Murdoch-owned, right-wing favourite, all-news
service that is now ahead of CNN in the ratings.
-
- "We want to know why we're banned in Canada,'' she
said, inviting me to come on and defend our policy of keeping U.S. domination
of our airwaves to a bare maximum of 80 per cent or so.
-
- "Sure," I said, visions of beating up on star
anchor Bill O'Reilly getting busy in my head.
-
- He's the guy who is called "Bill O'Lie-lly"
÷ for how he has fudged his political affiliations and personal
past ÷ in satirist Al Franken's already best-selling new book, Lies,
And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair And Balanced Look At The Right.
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- Let me tell you, O'Reilly is some piece of work, as I
saw two summers ago when he had a show on the regular Fox network, Buffalo's
Channel 29.
-
- This is the fine American who, while interviewing Jeremy
Glick, the son of a New York Port Authority worker who died in the World
Trade Center, broke into a profane and abusive tirade. Why? Because Glick
opposed the attack on Iraq.
-
 Claiming that Glick was
offending the memory of his father by criticizing the Bush administration,
he accused him of "mouthing ... a marginal position in this society.''
When Glick tried to get a word in edgewise to say even his father would
have agreed with his anti-war stance, O'Reilly erupted: "You keep
your mouth shut when you sit here exploiting those people...
-
- "Get out of my studio before I tear you to f------g
pieces!"
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- Nice.
-
- Which is why, when that producer called me to debate
on Fox, I did jump ÷ but not before urging her to phone the Canadian
Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to confirm that
the channel was not "banned'' in Canada, not even close.
-
- Indeed, the way it works is, cable and/or satellite companies
that wish to carry foreign signals here must apply to do so ÷ and,
at that point, none had applied to import Fox News.
-
- What's more, as of November 2000, CanWest Global has
held the licence for Fox News Canada. That would be a digital hybrid along
the lines of the Rogers and Shaw Cable-owned MSNBC here, which carries
mostly U.S. content with some recycled CPAC programming in the off-hours.
-
- Why Global hasn't launched Fox News Canada is a mystery.
Last week, company spokesperson Geoffrey Elliott said he was "not
in a position to comment'' on the matter. My guess, and it's pure speculation,
is that CanWest has too much debt to deal with such an endeavour. That
said, last week it did announce it will launch CoolTV, a digi-net devoted
to jazz.
-
- But those of you who want Fox ÷ and aren't willing
to risk going the illegal satellite dish route ÷ need not despair.
That's because, in June, the Canadian Cable Television Association (CCTA)
applied to the CRTC to add Fox News to the list of non-Canadian channels
eligible for digital carriage here. The CCTA also wants to import HBO,
Showtime and other popular U.S. cable services, mostly to hang on to customers
who are hooking up to those black market dishes.
-
- Meanwhile, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB),
whose members include CanWest Global, is fighting the CCTA application
because it cuts into its business. (For example, why go to Chum's Bravo
for Sex And The City when you can get it off HBO directly?)
-
- Note that the CCTA and CAB have jointly ÷ oh what
a complex and incestuous web our broadcast industry be! ÷ waged
all-out war on illegal dishes, as evidenced by their anti-satellite theft
TV ad campaign. Last Friday, they won a major victory when the federal
government suggested it would amend the law to combat "signal piracy.''
-
- Which leads to an utterly ridiculous piece of tripe in
the reactionary online rag The American Enterprise last week, "If
You Like Fox News, You'll Hate Canada.''
-
- Penned by Marni Soupcoff, a very nice girl who personally
strikes me as a Linda Frum-in-an-intellectual-training-bra, it's an error-filled,
myth-ridden diatribe, apparently inspired by the fact that the very same
cable companies who want to bring in Fox News also want to import the Arab
all-news service Al Jazeera.
-
- Claiming that Canadians have no access to such U.S. programs
as The Sopranos ÷ hello? CTV runs it uncut on free TV!! ÷
Soupcoff ignores the CCTA application for Fox, as well as the facts, and
instead fulminates:
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- "So, we Canadians find ourselves in the absurd position
of potentially being able to tune into the latest news on the jihad against
the imperialist, murderous, blood-sucking Jewish Zionist conspiracy, but
unable to catch an episode of (Fox's) Hannity And Colmes because a bureaucrat
at the CRTC has decided the former is more culturally acceptable than the
latter.''
-
- Soupcoff's rant mirrors many letters I have received
in the past week, with readers demanding to know why I support the introduction
of Al Jazeera into Canada but not of Fox.
-
- Hey, who said I was against freedom of expression? As
long as they don't violate any hate laws, from the right or the left, let
a thousand voices ring out.
-
- I say, let Fox among the Canadian chickens, eh? I don't
think it will get much of an audience here but that's not my problem.
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- Oh and by the way, I never did go on the network, as
much as I wanted to. That's because the CRTC and I satisfied the Fox producer
that the channel wasn't "banned'' here.
-
- Perhaps if its many Canadian fans actually followed Canadian
news sources, they would know that too.
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- http://www.torontostar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_
Type1&c=Article&cid=1062845376126&call_pageid=970599109774
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