It wasn’t bound to last — between the “two hours a day” Rob spends at the gym, his $170,000/year job as mayor, his battle with Toronto’s city council, a possible future battle in court, campaigning laws that would require him to leave the show should he run for office again, and the fact that he’s got only so many talking point — but Ford Nation has been cancelled sooner than anyone expected. Hosted on Canada’s Sun News Network, Canada’s hokey and low-rent counterpart to FOX News, Ford Nation was the television answer to The City, the recently-cancelled talk radio show featuring Toronto’s Peter Griffin-esque mayor Rob Ford and his brother and city councillor Doug Ford, who fancies himself the co-mayor of Toronto.
Simon Houpt from The Globe and Mail writes:
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 probably the highest-rated show ever to appear on Sun News. In reports filed with the CRTC, Sun News reported a viewership of 16,400 in an average minute; their best-performing shows never broke 100,000 viewers in 2012. Still, The Brothers Ford have only so many talking points, election campaign rules will eventually require them to leave the show, and in the long run, those two jokers might be pure poison with advertisers.
“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.”
For those of you who missed last night’s broadcast, George Jessup captured it and posted it on YouTube:
Don’t have time for the full episode? Here’s his highlight reel:
Don’t have time for the highlight reel? How about just the “urinating in public” bit?
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you may want to look at my Rob Ford Buffoon graphic, based on the Obama "Hope" poster. The image is here: http://m-design.ca/?portfolio=rob-ford-buffoon-poster and t-shirts are available here: http://www.cafepress.ca/mf/76584153/rob-ford_tshirt.