Look, I know lots of folks will be positively giddy that Sun News Network, along with some other applicants, didn’t get “mandatory carriage.” Some will be celebrating its imminent demise. (Some of them will even be journalists, which is a bit jarring: I mean, these days, what sane journalist derives any pleasure from the death of yet another media organization? But I digress.)

Here’s the thing, fellow progressives: sorry, but Sun News isn’t going to die. The CRTC decision – and I can’t believe I’m going to say this about the CRTC – has released a nuanced and, dare I say it, devilishly clever decision. You should actually read it, here. (Or read one of the bestest/fairest reporters in Canada, the Globe’s Steve Ladurantaye, here.) And when you do, you’ll agree with me: Sun News isn’t going to die at all. It in fact has been given everything it wanted.

More than anything else, Sun News wanted parity, placement and (for lack of a better alliterative word) a bit of patriotism. Its argument was that you obviously can’t attract eyeballs when your destiny is determined by a multinational who happens to own your competitor, and who sticks you up on channel 496 (or not at all). It also argued that you can’t attract sufficient revenue when your main competitors get “mandatory carriage” on cable, and you don’t.  It argued that foreign media multinationals were getting a better deal than Canadian outfits.

And it got what it wanted. Here’s three reasons why:

1. The CRTC decision will ultimately create a new category of licences for Canadian all-news channels, like the ones found on CTV and CBC as well as SNN.  It’s asking for public comment on all that, sure.  But the CRTC decision will force cable companies to offer all Canadian national news services, including SNN.  That’s parity.
2. The CRTC’s clever plan will put all these news services in close proximity on your TV dial.  It will also put all national news services – CTV and CBC included – in a package.  And it’ll force cable companies to offer it.  That’s placement.
3. The CRTC will put Canadian news channels – you know, Sun News, CTV News Channel and CBC News Network – on a higher priority footing than foreign-owned news channels, like CNN or Al Jazeera.  That’s the patriotism part: it’s dumb to give more to foreign-owned networks than all-Canadian ones.  So the CRTC’s changing that.

The Sun-haters won’t be deterred, of course.  They’ll say  that the public consultation hasn’t been held yet, and none of these things have come to pass, blah blah blah.

That’s true, I guess.  But the fact (a) the CRTC is setting a land-speed record in holding a “consultation” in the dead of Summer and (b) the fact that its conclusions are identical to SNN’s submissions – ie., there is a problem that is “large” and “systemic” with respect to “the distribution of new and existing Canadian national news services on fair and commercially reasonable terms,” and there are “barriers [that] constitute a significant obstacle to the exchange of ideas on matters of public concern and the overall democratic dialogue in Canada, principles that the Canadian broadcasting system has a duty to facilitate” – strongly suggest, ahem, what the outcome will be.

When the CRTC says that you haven’t been treated in a “fair and commercially reasonable way” – when they say that democracy itself is hurt when there isn’t a full “exchange of ideas” – then, well, you know what that means.

It means that Sun News has gotten everything it wanted, and then some.

Just watch.

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One take is found here. It’s well done, but I think it misses the key point.

And I say this as (a) someone who ran and (b) someone whose writings figured in my loss: writers and journalists and commentators make for lousy candidates because they have left a written record that can be used against them.

One sunny day in the Summer of 2009, I stood in the boardroom in room 409-S on Parliament Hill, which – until Ignatieff came along – had always been occupied by Liberals or Conservatives, but never New Democrats. He approached me, and we chit-chatted.

The $4 million “Just Visiting” barrage hadn’t started yet, and Ignatieff was in a voluble mood. I wasn’t. He asked me what I was worried about. I pointed through the window of 409-S at the hulk of PMO’s Langevin, across the street.

“See there?” I said. “There’s a hundred little Tory bastards in there who have digitized and catalogued every single thing that you ever wrote or said on the BBC or anywhere else. And they’re getting ready to use it against you, and I don’t even know what they’ve got.”

Ignatieff was unconvinced. There’s a statute of limitations on such things, he suggested. “Some of that stuff is twenty years old!” he said.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “A good war room will take something that happened twenty years ago and make it look like it was said yesterday.”

And so they did. They took old Iggy statements and destroyed him with them. There is, as I later told disbelieving Liberals, no statute of limitations on “fucking stupidity.”

And that’s why writers/authors/journalists/commentators make lousy candidates: they have a past, they have a record, and it’s more easily-accessible than ever before. In order to be any good in the media game, of course, they have to say something that is controversial, at some point. And that’s where guys like me get them: we dig it up, drop it in someone’s lap, and their former colleagues/best buddies will go at it like sharks to chum dropped off the side of a boat. Guaranteed.

Wanna be a perfect candidate in the modern age? Don’t ever write or say anything.

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From just now:

Two people have been arrested in connection with the Rehtaeh Parsons case.

Police arrested the two at 8 a.m. at their respective homes following an investigation by the RCMP/Halifax Regional Police Criminal Investigation Division.

The ages of the two males arrested have not been released.

The two remain in police custody and are being questioned.

We don’t know who they are or what they did, at this point. But we do know is any action by the Dexter government as well as the police has taken far, far too long.

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It’s the Invasion of the Tribbles! Eeeeeaaaargh! Ein zwei drei vier!

Britain’s best band, and an old fart from Calgary’s first punk combo, onstage at the Echoplex in Los Angeles on August 6, 2013. Shot by Lala. A great time was had by all. Just wish Ras Pierre had been there, too.

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Heading back to Tee Dot shortly. Can’t load the Palma Violets/Hot Nasties video. Until I figure out how to do so, this snapshot will have to suffice.

Who’s the old guy onstage with the Palma Violets for their encore?

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Our view of Palma Violets, right now. This one is already epic.

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See this?

This is the scene outside our hotel, the Andaz, a.k.a. The Riot Hyatt. Where Keith Richards threw a TV set out of his room window. Where Jim Morrison was evicted for hanging off a balcony. Where Led Zeppelin stayed, and conducted…experiments.

This is the scene now, at this fabled rock and roll hotel. The British boy band, One Direction, has attracted scores of prepubescent girls, who shriek and gawk and take pictures at all times of day and night. They’ve been here for days.

I hate them.

One Direction, that is. I wish they would go away, and take their retinue of sidewalk-squatting fans with them. The ghosts of Richards, Morrison and Bonham deserve to be respected.

Not treated to this Hellish scene.

(Us, too.)

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So we go to the Target at Santa Monica and La Brea. While there, my daughter calls me. I always stop what I’m doing when my kids call. So the small thing of sunblock gets dropped, too: into my cargo pants side pocket.

I get back to the Riot Hyatt and see it. I am horrified. I HAVE NEVER STOLEN ANYTHING IN MY LIFE. EVER. Even when I was a kid.

So I make Lala take me back. She is amused. At Target guest services, they are in shock. “Thank you for being so honest, sir.”

And $2.17 later, my soul is repaired.

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The above gig was to have featured a Hot Nasties reunion. First time together in more than thirty years. Onstage with the Palma Violets.

It was not to be. Ras Pierre couldn’t get away from work stuff in Calgary. So the reunion will just feature me, in front of a sold-out Los Angeles crowd who don’t know what a Hot Nasty is.

Oh well. Would’ve been a gig for the ages. Maybe one day.

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I bet I am the only guy here in his fifties wearing a Minor Threat T-shirt.

Actually, I may be the only guy in his fifties wearing a Minor Threat T-shirt.

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