Angry in the Great White North

Just how bad is it for CNN?

FOX News is completely destroying the competition. In fact, some of the numbers are pretty laughable (ergo, put your drinking vessels away!):

Despite FNC's declines, it still beat CNN handily in primetime, averaging 1.5 million viewers to CNN's 864,000; CNN still has a long way to go before it can be considered a serious ratings challenger.

FNC won every hour of each day over CNN for the 55th straight month. It was the No. 5-rated cable network in June, behind USA, TNT, TBS and Lifetime. CNN came in 24th, MSNBC 36th.

That deserves closer examination, doesn't it? Fox has beaten CNN every hour of every day for 55 straight months?!?

Sounds like FOX News is the way to go for American cable news. So why am I watching CNN? Currently I have Bell ExpressVu satellite TV, but I used to have StarChoice satellite, and before that, Rogers Digital Cable.

Here is how Bell ExpressVu packages the news channels:

New & Learning 1
CNN
CNBC
TLC
Discovery
BBC Canada
CTS
History Television
CP24
ROB
CNN Headline News
CLT
CJAD Montreal
680 News

News & Learning 2
FOX News
Book Television
Biography
CBC News Plus
National Geographic
Court Canada
TGTechTV
Discovery Civilization
ichannel

I found this interesting. The main News Package for Canada's Bell ExpressVu is headlined by languishing CNN. It is packaged with such powehouse favourites as Discovery and TLC. For people in the Greater Toronto Area, you'll have to get this package to get the popular CP24 (a 24-hour news, sports, and weather channel centered on Toronto).

And FOX News? Well, there it is on the second package, along with Book Television and ichannel. Echh.

Consider this. If you have only five packages to pick from, the likelihood is that you'll just take one of the two news packages (you want to keep room for a sports package and a kids package and so forth). News Package 1 is better value for the money for the sheer number of channels, as well as for popular content. So for most households serviced by Bell ExpressVu, CNN is the American cable news channel being watched.

StarChoice? A bit better:

Real Life
500 CNN
502 Headline News
504 CNBC
505 Discovery Channel
506 History Television
507 Canadian Learning TV
508 ROB TV

FYI
501 BBC World News
503 FOX News
509 CP24
510 Bloomberg
512 Country Canada
513 Documentary Channel
514 G4techTV
515 Biography Channel
566 MTV

FOX News is packaged with CP24. And the FYI package is bigger than Real Life, though less focused. But here, what if you wanted Report on Business (ROB TV), and wanted FOX News to go with it? A typical combo for most leaders in business, I think. You have to get both packages just to combine those channels.

And Rogers?

News
Bloomberg
Deutsche Welle
EuroNews
FOX News**
ichannel
MSNBC

Where's CNN? It is automatically combined in the various packages. For instance, the Ultimate TV Pak is a popular grouping, selecting the most popular channels covering a wide variety of interests.

Well, unless you are interested in American cable news. Then you've got the unpopular CNN. Popular FOX News is not in the package.

Can you add it separately? Good question. Look at the Rogers News package again. Notice the two asterisks by FOX News? Every channel in the package can be ordered separately at about a dollar a month, and added to the Ultimate TV Pak, except FOX News. The only way to get FOX News added is to add the entire News package at about seven dollars a month. Don't want EuroNews and German News? Too bad. You'll get them and you'll pay for them, or forgo FOX News altogether.

How many people serviced by Rogers ended up not getting FOX News because of the price and packaging restrictions?

By the way, StarChoice and Bell ExpressVu have the same restriction against ordering FOX News by itself.

So FOX News has the deck stacked against it in Canada. Some of it is for historical reasons. The CRTC took forever to allow FOX News to come to Canada. CNN was long established here, and the cable and satellite packages were entrenched. When the government decided that Canadians could be exposed to FOX News (after Al Jazeera was allowed to broadcast in Canada, by the way, though to be fair Al Jazeera never actually broadcast anything because of CRTC conditions on content), FOX News got assigned to new packages along with other Johnny-came-latelies.

To be fair to the CRTC, there was a lot of resistance to allowing FOX News on Canadian transmission systems. FOX News refused to create a Canadianized version of itself the way MSNBC did, which cost them potential allies. The Canadian Association of Broadcasters was absolutely against FOX News coming to Canada. Twenty-six different groups all argued that FOX News was as bad, if not worse, than Al Jazeera, and so needed to be subjected to the same censorship restrictions. Thirty-five comments were received that FOX News could not be allowed in Canada under any conditions because it was conservative in opinion. That's it -- just conservative. The CRTC was being asked to make sure Canadians could not see anything conservative. Fortunately the CRTC did not listen.

But why not package CNN and FOX News together? I'm not sure, but I think it's because of the rules for packaging set by the CRTC. It's probably not allowed, just as getting FOX News separately (and so cheaply) is not allowed.

Ironically, the CRTC recognized the overwhelming popularity of FOX News in 2004. A main reason the CRTC used to justify letting us watch FOX News despite the resistance was that FOX News would be a useful a tool for increasing digital TV penetration in the Canadian marketplace, limiting the appeal of black market American satellite dishes. I suppose FOX News ought to be flattered, but it still means that, by default, most Canadians are watching the increasingly irrelevant CNN.

I think FOX News would be just as helpful in getting Canadians to go digital if it was made into the default American cable news network. But the FOX-News-is-worse-than-Al-Jazeera crowd would go ballistic, so the CRTC is leaving well enough alone. The CRTC is supposed to serve the interests of all Canadians, though, not just the cultural Luddites and the far-left letter-writing busybodies who think they know best what I should be watching. Shouldn't Canadians choosing to watch American cable news see what most Americans see, to get a sense of how Americans see the world? Especially given that there is such a clear favourite?

Well, there's always FOX News online.