I have avoided commenting on my friend Kory Teneycke's new media empire over at Quebecor. To date I have found the media's reaction absolutely riveting. At a time when newsrooms everywhere are either cutting back or closing down, here is a company investing (reportedly) $100-million over five years to grow and expand. Make it stop! How dare they! They are destroying our country!
This is clearly the devil's network (when are they going to offer me some of the devil's gold).
I don't watch Fox News at home or when I'm travelling. Not surprisingly, I find their hosts to be nauseating. That said, I get why they're kicking CNN's butt in the ratings. It has nothing to do with right versus left and everything to do with interesting versus boring.
Time will tell whether the new network works or not, but my gut is whether it thrives or fails will have everything to do with the interesting-versus-boring dichotomy rather than where on the political spectrum its hosts happen to fall.
For all the Liberals and progressive shaking back and forth in the fetal position that the coming devil network will mean the end of all we hold dear, I say relax. First off, if you don't like the new network, don't watch it. More importantly, ignore it. The free publicity Teneycke has been getting from people who think his network is evil is priceless to him but self-defeating to the critics.
Us Liberals need to get better at getting our message out in a compelling, interesting way. We will either do that or we will lose. If Teneycke's network forces us to pick up our game a notch or two, then this may be a catalysing event the same way the rise of Fox was to progressives in the U.S.
One last point: While I am no slave to political correctness, Jane Taber's description of
Now, if Taber describes the next male that Teneycke hires as "bald, fat and celibate for the last three years," then I take this all back.