The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMT - Why Is Right-Wing Cable News Successful In The US But Not in Canada or the UK?

Episode Date: May 25, 2022

Bruce Anderson brings the SMT take to the Bridge's latest discussion about the media and journalism.  Britain has only recently started a right-wing brand of cable TV News, but it's not working so far.  Just like it didn't work in Canada. So why does it work in the US?  

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Wednesday. It's Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth with Bruce Anderson. And he's back. He's back. You know, he was going to be back from Scotland, but I got him to stay because I wanted to talk about something that involves the UK in comparison with North America, Canada included. And so we've got him to stay an extra week before he comes home. You know, Peter, it's been hard, too, because every day after you left, as you know, I would get up. I would go downtown in downtown, beautiful downtown Dornick, which, you know, people might want to know is like fourteen hundred people. It's not very big, but everybody knows everybody there. And everybody would come up to me and they say, well, where's the other guy?

Where is the other guy? Where is the other guy? Where is that other guy? Where's your kind of older brother, uncle, whatever. Like, where is he gone? Is he coming back? Is he, does he, is he missing us? And so I've had those conversations that's been hard for me. I, and, but they're looking forward to you coming back sometime. I'll be back. I'll be back. I'll be back. I'll be back in the summer for a little bit. You know, I'll be sharing my summer as I like to do.

And as you like to do a little bit of Scotland, a little bit of Gadno Hills, north of Ottawa, a little bit of traveling in our great nation. Yeah. And then slip back to Scotland for some, uh, can I go to the, the open?

So long though, I go to the open at St. Andrews. Can I go to the open? So long that I wanted to, to encourage you not to say, and Bruce is still in Scotland because I've been feeling a little guilty about, you know,

I was posting nice pictures of scott in the first couple of weeks that we were here and then i started to slow the roll with the posting of the picture so that people didn't get like i've had enough of this guy the life that he's living right now and i don't want to see any more of it and so there's only been a few pictures and there'll only be a few more before we're back next week. But it's been a great trip. And as you know, I'm coming up to one of those milestone birthdays next week. And it was a really important thing for me to do to get away after the pandemic with my wife and just spend some time kind of doing different things and thinking about the next several years and, and how I want to spend them. So thanks for indulging me and the bad sound occasionally.

And let's, let's talk about what you want to talk about. Well, you know, you're not supposed to say milestone anymore, right? No, I didn't know that. I knew there were lots of things you're not supposed to say, but I didn't know about that one. Well, it's, it's, you know, we went metric about 30 years ago or whenever it was so it's a kilometer stone now you sound like that guy who said people them or people kind or something like that i don't think you want that

on the record something they got they they tried to get me this was a long time ago it actually happened they tried to get me to change my you know some guy or some i think it was a woman actually it was a ran a special kind of language usage department or something at the cbc and said you can't you've got to change from man's bridge to person's bridge person's bridge and i thought it was a joke right but they actually they were actually serious no they can't they can't be serious. Oh, yeah, they were. They were. You're going to get mail now.

I am going to get mail. And, you know, probably from her. She's going to say, you never did it. You never changed your name, and you should have. Well, that's still time. That is not what we were gathered here for today. Here's what I'd like to talk about and get your sense from. People tend to forget, but it's been a dozen years since in Canada they tried out

a right-wing television news network. It was called Sun TV. Remember? I think Quebec owned it. And they started it it lasted almost four years until 2015 but it never took off it just there there was not an audience for it i mean the other cable news channels uh on the english side anywhere on a a national basis, were CBC News Network and CTV's News Network. And they kind of had the majority of the audience between the two of them. Not a big audience for either one of them,

but nevertheless, they had an audience. But Sun TV just couldn't get in there and they had you know they had a tiny audience somewhere you know at times like six or seven thousand viewers nationally that was it anyway they went for four years almost a full four years reportedly reportedly lost $50 million, and they shut her down. They finally said, okay, uncle, we can't do this anymore. This is just a license to lose money. And we were wrong. We thought it would work in Canada.

It works in the States, Fox News. In fact, Fox News is the number one cable news networks and at times the number one network overall for certain big things that are happening anyway didn't work in Canada so I think most of us would have thought oh well there must be a long history of you know kind of right-wing television networks in the United Kingdom, in Britain. But in fact, there hasn't been until the last year or so, when two have started. GB News, and they had a big kind of launch because they got Andrew Neal, who used to be at the BBC, he is a great presenter, great interviewer.

He was going to be their number one figure. He ended up quitting like two months in because he just said it was a gong show, the way they were running it. And then there's Talk TV with Piers Morgan, who has kind of a worldwide reputation, not necessarily a good one, but he's had big audiences when he was at the private channels in in Britain and he was came over the states he he did some tv and in the states I think he worked for CNN wasn't he the replacement for Larry King anyway it didn't work yeah didn't work he He goes, and he starts this after leaving whatever it was, ITV or BBC,

or he was on the morning show after he kind of dumped on Meghan Markle. And so there was a dispute, and he quit. He ends up joining Talk TV as the big name. Started off a couple of months ago he had an audience 300 000 which isn't great in britain but nevertheless it was it was a start but it wasn't it was a start that plummeted then and now it's kind of under 100 000 and gets terrible reviews. So the question becomes, you know, obviously I was wrong in thinking that Britain was fertile ground for that kind of thing, given its, you know, newspaper history

and its flamboyant characters within the media. I thought it was fertile ground for a television of that kind. But so far far at least it hasn't been so what is the lesson in all this after that long introduction what do you make of all this well i don't think that we'll know uh for some time exactly what's happening because the media landscape is so much one of transition that how differently people will use different platforms is part of the mix not just what kind of content will they consume so with that caveat what are some things that occur to me first of all is the question of scale

a canadian experiment with sun tv suffered from many problems, but one of which was the size of the Canadian marketplace is just not all that big. I mean, there's 37 million adults, I guess, and how many of them would have a cable subscription and be interested in watching that gets you down to a number that's relatively small relatively quickly, especially when you compare it to the U.S. Second thing about the U.S. conservative market, we can leave aside the MSNBC version on the left for a moment. But American politics is so dominated by the rule of money. Candidates raise a ton of money. Advertisers use platforms aimed at conservative and liberal politicians to try to get their attention.

And so there's a big advertiser market that supports that kind of platform in America. And there's a bigger consumer market of people that are interested in that kind of content just by virtue of the size of the U.S. population. The U.K. market, of course, is kind of in the middle, but towards the Canadian side in terms of the size of the marketplace. And so it's a question of can they get to scale? Are there competing sources of information or news that are harder to push out in order to kind of replace them and to win that share. I think those are important dynamics here. But the two most interesting questions for me are in the UK specifically,

are people not interested in that kind of right-wing, would call it pseudo journalism the journalism that's not really about reporting the news but really opining about current events and um the you know the answer to that question i guess is that he's still waiting to be told i mean we know that conservative owners of the media that's not a problem in the uk some 75 percent of america british newspapers are owned by conservative billionaires basically um and so um the idea of conservative media or conservative owned or tilted media isn't necessarily anathema to that british public on the other hand we do see there's a very strong kind of labor vote in the UK. Every time there's a strong kind of push by the right wing in the UK, there's a pretty strong push by the left.

And so I don't know whether or not we're going to see a competing version. It looks to me like the business model hasn't proven out. So I don't think we're going to see the left money rushing in to compete in that kind of talk radio, talk TV scenario. But I guess I also wonder whether or not the Yelly aspect of that kind of speech, talk, talk, radio, radio talk tv whatever you want to call it whether that really appeals in the uk i don't think it really appeals in canada very much i think that the question of how much it appeals in the u.s is maybe more a question of is their

culture a little bit more interested in it is it more of a kind of a sporting event with the addition of you know these are the biggest kind of ideological factions that you can find anywhere in kind of modern democracy whereas i think in canada where we see a little bit of that kind of pugilism and we don't like it very much and maybe in the UK it's the same thing that you can read stories written for conservative newspapers but watching people yell and do the things on camera that a Piers Morgan does you know a little bit of it goes a long way so that's my feeling is that right now the question of what kind of entertainment value it is and do people want that sort of entertainment is a bigger question than whether they'll hear or read right-wing positions and takes on the news. I find that argument, it's the word I always use with you, I find that argument interesting.

And I want to think about it for a little while. I mean, I guess one of the reasons I was surprised was, if you take the last 40 years, which is basically the 40 years you're talking about in the way the media landscape is transitioning, if you take those last 40 years in Britain, it's been mostly conservative governments, right? Start with Thatcher and those who followed Thatcher after she was dumped, and then you've got Tony Blair

for not a short time, a considerable amount of time, but that was it for Labour. And since then, it's been Conservatives. One coalition government, but not with Labour. So you've had a lot of those on the right calling the shots in terms of government. Not the, you know, not the yelling right, although some of them clearly are.

But it has been basically a country as opposed to canada which is we know our history i mean it's mostly liberal governments have dominated in canada over the 155 whatever number of years um but i guess that that surprised me a little bit. I mean, I was almost shocked when I read these stories. I agree with you that it may be too early to make a determination because a lot of money backing these things, and they're not going to throw in the towel yet. But I was more than surprised when I see these numbers about a very low audience rating.

Now, one of the arguments, aside from the political one that they put out there, let me do this first. Let me take a quick break. We'll come back and I'll play this argument because I think it's a good one and one that you'd like to work on in terms of discussions about the media as you've done in the past. So let me bring that. But first of all, this quick break. And welcome back.

Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario. Bruce Anderson in Dornick, Scotland. For his last appearance for this actual time period from Scotland. You're listening to The Bridge, Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth, the Wednesday episode with Bruce. And you're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167 Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. And we welcome you from wherever you may be listening from. Okay, here's the other argument that I've seen as to why this is not, this is kind of right-wing talk television in the in the UK is not going over well with,

and in spite of kind of two channels, one, one clearly set to be right wing, the other sort of center, right? The argument is this, it's based on the kind of history that the, the,

the Brits have with the BBC. And in spite of, you know, arguments about the future of the CBC, or the BBC, Freudian slip there, the future of the BBC and how much it's costing the nation and whether or not that should be pulled back.

In spite of all those things, the BBC has a pretty good history in that country. And there's an affection for the BBC that kind of crosses a lot of political boundaries. And so the argument

that's being placed is that the BBC had earned a reputation, not by everybody, but a general reputation as a fact-based news organization, as opposed to an opinion-based news organization. And that still exists today. And that's the reason why Brits are not flocking to these new methods of news distribution and discussion,

but are kind of staying with the older versions. And there's, you know, it's not just the BBC, the Sky News. I mean, there are other news organizations who deal in news all the time, but from a fact-based area. Yeah, look, I think the question for me, Peter, comes down to the appetite for sensationalism and whether or not it transfers the same way from print. And we know that there are sensational tabloid media in the uk that are

extraordinarily successful and they've built their entire business model on putting things on the front page that shock and uh sometimes appall but are controversial that's basically what they're doing is trying to find the most controversial thing that they could put in front of people in order to sell newspapers. And it's been a very successful business model for companies here for some time. I don't know whether or not shock radio has had the success in the UK that it's had in the US. From what I could tell in the amount of time that i've had to kind of research this a little bit i would say it hasn't and shock tv which is the sibling uh also is what looks like it's not working here um and i don't know whether or not it's because people

just never got accustomed to uh kind of tuning into that kind of thing because it wasn't really available in the same way that it was in the U.S. or whether this is a different kind of culture or latitude. But I can't come to the conclusion that the version of irate and annoying which is typically the you know what happens when you put a piers morgan um on you're basically betting on irate and annoying is going to you know draw people to the channel to the program over and over and over again they're gonna he's gonna be irate and uh maybe he's gonna annoy you or you're irate and uh and you want to kind of share your annoyance with him in terms of watching this uh this programming together but it's it's all about that kind of chemistry that is so often

imbued in the host and the relationship between the host and the audience and so i don't know if pierce morgan is a good um test case i know that he was very controversial with the remarks that he made about megan markle and the and you know basically got him well he marched himself off the set of the last tv program that he was on before this and you know has doubled down on those comments since and and i don't know whether or not he doubles down on them because he really believes in them or whether or not he just knows that that was really good for the pierce morgan brand because all of a sudden everybody was talking about him again uh in many parts of the world but the format format for him and the format that MSNBC used,

in part, thanks to Donald Trump, was really more akin to reality TV. It was creating something where the viewer understood that the unexpected might happen, the shocking might happen, that somebody was going to say something that you never thought anybody would say on a formal media platform like that. And I think there's a huge market, obviously, in that for the U.S., continues to be, and the ratings kind of soften when the shock aspect of it goes away and when Donald Trump isn't as prominent, for example, or there isn't somebody. And when Donald Trump isn't as prominent, for example, or there isn't somebody as shocking as Donald Trump, hard to imagine that there are many that could fit that

bill. I don't know if Nigel Farage here fits that bill. It doesn't seem to me as though he's that vividly and constantly entertaining. And the last thing i was reading this morning about this i'd be interested in your take on this is that the theory that people have been through a rough patch and they see a lot of problems they see climate change they see the war in ukraine they see the pandemic they see problems in the economy inflation is going up food prices and gas prices and it's not a time for circus like entertainment it's a time for gutting it out um it's a time for just give me the news don't um don't don't try to torture me into consuming your political entertainment if i can put it that way that that that market does better when

everybody is relatively comfortable and well off and not that worried about just getting through, but worried about the ideology that isn't mine is getting ahead of the ideology that is mine. I don't know whether that's really a factor. I can see that it could be for some people that their tolerance for stress is down because the amount of stress in their lives is better. I think I mentioned to you the other day that my wife and I, for the first time, are having trouble agreeing on what to watch on Netflix or Amazon prime or any of these services, because in the post pandemic world, she's like,

I don't want to watch anything that's stressful. That's got violence in it. That's it's going to scare me. And I'm thinking, wow, you know, it's too bad that Amazon and Netflix and everybody didn't know the pandemic was coming because it feels like they ordered $70 billion worth of dystopian drama.

And it just all started arriving right when we didn't really want to consume it. So anyway, that's the last theory that I read that I was interested in. I wonder what you think about that. I think that makes a lot of sense um the canadian angle to it though seems a little different than you know the the discussion here i i think you're right i think you've got something here the the what people seem to be interested in is not the reality tv aspect of news um it's this you know a serious discussion about options and solutions and reasons uh that sometimes lead themselves from the serious to the conspiracy uh theorist argument but they're all kind of lumped in and in in a way that's not the reality sense, the screaming and yelling and the performance fashion for some hosts.

I mean, you mentioned Farage, Nigel Farage, who was one of the leaders of the Brexit movement, in fact, an early leader, until Boris Johnson johnson and others decided hey he's got something there and it's working and let's get in there and get it but he's still around and he is he's a trumpian type figure right i mean he's a pal of trump's he goes back and forth to the states to see trump he's being brought in to try and salvage the GB News channel. But how well that'll do, I'm not sure. But I think Canada's different right now because there is this whole issue and argument surrounding conspiracy theories, whether it's about vaccines, whether it's about the government, whether it's about the use of emergency powers,

whether it's all of this stuff that is, you know, partly conspiracy theories, partly just a belief that, you know, they went too far. And in that argument, which needs the media to push it out in different ways, that argument seems to actually be taking hold a little more than we might have thought it was a month or two months ago. I mean, you see it more often. You see it now surrounding the, when are these mandates ever going to end? You know, forget about the argument about mandates from three months ago. What about now?

Like why are we still doing all the things we do on airplanes? Why is there such chaos in the airports? Because, you know, they, they're short staffed or they laid off people and never got them back. And it's, you know, I, short-staffed or they laid off people and never got them back. And, you know, I mean, I look forward to what your experience is going to be when you come home in the next few days.

Because there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people at major airports in Canada who can't even get their bags. Right? I mean, it's just, it's a mess. And the government's saying, yeah, it's going to be a mess for for a while and people don't get it. They don't understand it. And they're demanding real answers, not not reality TV on their news channels. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that there's a practicality to a lot of issues now that lends itself not to people just adopting these kind of personas, these characters and kind of duking it out for the performative value of it, but actually what is it going to take to make those airports work efficiently? What do we need to know, if anything, about monkeypox?

What is the next step with respect to vaccination of kids? Where are we going on our relationship with Russia? I found myself listening to the conversation that we had about Huawei last Friday. And we were talking about the nature of the decision and what went into it and why it took longer than some people thought it would. And even as I reflected on it after, I thought, and this is really just, I guess, a function of the fact that I spent years

in the polling business, that most people would be completely disinterested in that conversation. Okay, you made a decision. You explained why. Move on. What's next? What do you need my attention for, if anything?

And if you don't need it for something really important, let me focus on my stuff, on my life, on my kids, on my family, on my job, whatever it is that I'm focused on. So I don't think this is as good a time for the performative, annoying, irate, gesticulating, Piers Morgan, Donald Trump type figures. Because I do think people look at it and say, at the end of the day, much of it is just a form of entertainment. People trying to make money by making you kind of hysterical or uh offended or uh energized and i don't think that the

you know that may come back i mean there was a reason why it was a big thing it has been a big thing and to some parts of the world it still is a big thing but this feels like a gutted out year or two uh with inflation and interest rates going up and with the economy in some question and um and with politics global politics geopolitics kind of less certain that said that 20 or so and we'll have more data to report on this in the next week or two, Peter, I've done a really interesting bunch of work with David Coletto over the weekend. We've been exploring how many people in Canada believe things like the royal family killed Princess Diana, that 9-11 was an inside job, that Bill Gates is putting chips in people to monitor and affect their behavior that um well i think we did 12 different of the most popularly talked about conspiracy theories there's a market for that that is sizable enough to support some in quotation marks air quotes news organizations but it's not that big it's certainly

not that big in Canada and and hopefully it doesn't get big well I don't know why you have to ask those questions the answer is yes on all of them obviously we didn't ask the Elvis one but we asked you know you're going to be surprised. Elvis is still alive. He lives in Tweed, Ontario. He's pretty old, Peter. He is old. He's pretty old. He is.

Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan turned 81 yesterday, I think. He was either 81 or 80. That's neither here nor there. But let me ask you this question about this because i can't wait to actually hear those answers and see see what what what's the range is it sort of like 20 20 to 25 percent which is probably kind of the guess or is it higher is it higher and if it is higher what the hell's that say um here's a here's kind of a related question have we has the canadian media ever had or in recent times has it had that kind of figure that kind of figure who has this

kind of attraction in terms of the way she or he delivers their opinion or their shows on the news front. I mean, I was trying to think, like, how far back does one have to go to have captured something like that? I remember thinking that, you know, and this goes way back, and there have probably been better examples since, and maybe our listeners will write with them, i remember jack webster being one of those figures as a canadian broadcaster and even in ottawa there was a guy named lowell green who became quite you know popular had a big audience that would tune in for and he was a little, you know, these weren't shock jocks in the Howard Stern, Joe Rogan mode, but they're similar DNA. You know, you can see a through line from that. I don't know that there's ever been, I mean, setting aside the Sun TV experiment, which you and i remember and probably watched

more than anybody listening to us right um there were some very colorful characters on that and some of which colorful is the politest word that i would use i mean ezra klein was a big part of not ezra klein uh ezra levant was a big part of that piece of work called Sun TV. But I don't remember any others. You? I don't. You know, I was thinking right back into the 60s and whether, you know, this hour has seven days with L'Oreal up here and Patrick Watson had any kind of. Patrick Watson, yeah. I mean, they weren't right-wingers, but they were controversial in their day.

There's no question about that. And it was much watched. They most watched television, right? And now there's Rex Murphy, who I saw every Thursday night, as you did, for a long time. He seemed like a fairly middle-of-the-road guy. He's always been sort of center-right anyway. But he had a support team around him. And he was very good and very popular on Thursday nights,

as was a package. It was at issue and wrecked, so you got them both. And if you wanted to watch them both, great. If you only wanted to watch one, you had to watch them both to see one. It worked really well. But he wasn't the flaming right winger that he seems to be now. Whether he's a flaming right winger or just a flaming Andy Trudeau, I, you know, I, I, like Rex is a friend. And, you know, it was obviously when we worked together, you know,

at work, we were, we were much closer than we are today, but he's a very talented guy whose talent seems to have gone in one direction in the, in the last couple of years. And it's, it's mostly about trying to, you know, in one direction in the last couple of years. And it's mostly about trying to stick a fork in Justin Trudeau. He has a lot to say about Indigenous people and climate change too, but that's a conversation for another day. And I hear what you're saying.

Yeah. Okay. Well, look, I'm glad we had this discussion because i i find it interesting i know that i know that our listeners are going to do so as well and i know i'm going to hear a lot from from some of them about their feelings on this issue not in terms of personalities as such but on just the the bigger issue issue of how we're different. You know, we're considerably different. We know we are from the Americans. I thought the Brits would be closer in line with what's happening

with the Americans. So that surprised me a bit, and I'll be interested to see what people say about that. But listen, thanks for doing this. Safe travels home. I can just see the image of you in the Pearson Airport or the Ottawa Airport or wherever you're going to be, you know, looking for your bags, along with the other hundreds, if not thousands, of other people

who are wondering where their bags ended up. It is, they've got to get a handle on the situation. It's a mess. Excuse me, I got the violent case of the hiccups here. Anyway, we'll leave it at that for now. It's been great to talk to you. We will talk to you on Friday, just before you leave, as you'll be part of a good talk, as always,

with Chantel and Bruce on Fridays. So thank you, my friend. Take care. Enjoy your last few days. You bet, Peter. Take care. I'll talk to you soon. And that's it for Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth for this Wednesday.

I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.