Last week, it was announced that Toronto’s embattled, powerless, p*ssy eating mayor Rob Ford and his brother Doug would be getting their own show on Sun News so they could directly respond to their H8TERZ. The Rob and Doug Ford Show finally debuted last night and it was an instant ratings bonanza for Sun News, as people from Swansea to Corktown* tuned in to see what these outlandish political brothers would say and, more likely, if they’d smoke any illegal drugs on the air.
So with the most-watched show in the network’s history, the Ford brothers’ show is here to stay, eh? Nay. After just one episode, Sun News has pulled the plug. But don’t get too excited, it has nothing to do with scruples or morals. It’s just too damned expensive to make. I’m looking at you, craft services.
While Ford Nation pulled about 155,000 viewers, according to overnight ratings, it is a victim of the brutal economics of cable TV and the Fords’ relative inexperience with the medium: Monday’s episode took five hours to record, and another eight hours to edit, making it an unusually expensive endeavour for a niche network that is in only about 40 per cent of Canadian households.
“It’s by far the most successful thing, from an audience perspective, the network has ever done,” said Kory Teneycke, the vice president of Sun News. But the program would not be produced again.
“For the Ford brothers, we welcome them back on our network, as we do all newsmakers, to be part of our programming as a guest on another show.” (Via Globe and Mail)
Does Sun News have a show where people sit in a dark room for the next five years and don’t say a word at all until we completely forget about them? Because that would be a pretty good show for Rob and Doug to appear on.
*I have no clue where these neighborhoods are in relation to each other. I just wanted to sound like I knew about Toronto.
(Banner via Getty, GIF via)
