On temporary victories

I'll second pogge's reminder that Kory Teneycke's abrupt departure is far from the last word on Fox News North. But it's worth taking a closer look at what it does figure to mean for both the network and Teneycke personally - and the end result is that this is only the beginning of the battle for media space.

Let's start with Sun Media, where the conclusion looks to be fairly obvious: there's no apparent reason to think that Teneycke's departure will radically affect its overall plans. It's still cleared out its reporting ranks in favour of a group seen as friendly to the Cons; it's still going to be fronted by a Con insider such as to raise obvious concerns about the connection between the Harper government and the network; it's still pushing forward with the same apparent scheme to strongarm the CRTC into getting its way no matter how much political interference that requires.

The only missing piece will be the deliberately inflammatory face of the network thus far. And while it's a plus that Teneycke's ignorant and offensive persona has come to be seen as a negative even by the network which was set up to promote it, it's not hard to see Sun Media simply following the same progression as the political movement that offered Teneycke his past experience, shedding some of its more radical beginnings in favour of a longer-term plan to incrementally move the media toward its preferred format. (Indeed, one could see Teneycke as having shifted the Overton window as to what type of behaviour is acceptable in a big-name media operator - making it more likely that an only slightly less over-the-top replacement will have a better chance of winning approval than would have been the case if he'd never put on his show of buffoonery.)

As for Teneycke himself, there are a couple of readily-apparent possibilities (assuming Harper won't want to put him back on the federal payroll immediately). If he's determined to stay involved with Sun Media, then a Ryan Sparrow-style timeout would seem to be the likeliest course of action: a couple of months out of the limelight, followed by a rehiring into a role slightly less public than the one that's made him a laughingstock.

But at least since his hiring by the CBC (which he's apparently written out of his own resume), Teneycke has been less than shy about building his own profile even if that can only be done by making a show of cutting any ties with reality. And his resignation would figure to offer him the opportunity to go much further along that same path without the burden of being attached to a network that has to deal with public-interest standards and other similarly inconvenient limitations.

Wherever Teneycke ends up, though, it's worth keeping in mind that on the right, catastrophic failure and utter embarrassment are far from being career-limiting moves. Indeed, they can even serve as major boosts to anybody who's more interested in trading on the devoted beliefs of cultists than being seen as sane by upwards of half of the population.

As a result, this figures to be far from the last we'll hear from both Fox News North and its first pitchman. And while Avaaz and other can take credit for a noteworthy achievement, there's far more to be done to try to shift Canada's media scene from its various shades of corporatism toward something that actually speaks to and for the public.