I will host The Michael Coren Show on CTS for the last time on Thursday, June 30th. From July 4th I join Sun News TV, where from August I will host the prime time show Coren Tonight. It will air at 7pm, repeated later in the evening. I won numerous awards, both in Canada and the US, with my TV show, have hosted more than 3000 episodes and was also its producer for the past year. This opportunity, however, was too good to decline. The show will stress international coverage – particularly the Middle East, the US and Europe – but also take on social, moral, and religious issues and Canadian life and politics. Some of the best guests from the Michael Coren Show, both left and right and those who agree and disagree with the host, will be joining me on Coren Tonight.
Coren’s Comment
Coren is replacing Theo Caldwell who ‘parted ways‘ with Sun News. In March CTS bumped Coren’s show to the 11 pm slot, just a few weeks before Sun News launched.
Only a few weeks to go before the launch of Sun News. I’ve received several hundred e-mails asking whether I’m going to leave CTS and join Sun. No and yes. I declined a very generous offer to host a show on Sun because I can’t leave my programme at CTS. The ratings are better than ever now we’ve moved to 11pm – we’re getting tens of thousands of viewings on the CTS website alone – and now I’m producer as well as host it would have been the wrong decision. What I have contractually agreed with the guys at Sun News, however, is to appear at least three times a week as a commentator, and to write two instead of my current one column a week for the newspaper group. The best of both worlds, and I’m extremely grateful to both networks for this.
Every day we hear of another star name coming to Sun News. Theo Caldwell, for example, is in the afternoons. Theo is a good friend and a great broadcaster. You’re going to love him.
I can’t quite believe Coren’s statement from above:
. . . .we’re getting tens of thousands of viewings on the CTS website alone . . . .
I’m not an expert on computers but I don’t think CTS will provide a viewer count on their website.
Coren is known to exaggerate and outright lie. He can take his self-aggrandisement,
vanity and conceit to the Sun channel but one fact remains. His sphere of
influence is diminishing not increasing. The Sun newspaper chain has been losing
readers, employees and credibility since the Quebecor takeover. All those other
papers he “written” for are, by and large, occasional contributions. The CTS show
was always hard to place and suffered at the dinner hour time slot, probably enraged enough viewers at 8 pm as to cause them to turn off the TV and miss 100 Huntley Street which followed. The 11 pm slot goes against most stations’ newscasts.
His claim of hundreds of thousands of viewers probably includes the hits he gets on YouTube. He can take his embellishments elsewhere and good luck to him but
CFRB won’t have him back and neither will most of the Toronto media. Where he
is now headed is of his own making. Ever diminishing circles of influence.
As I said to a friend, ” he’s Coren–not [Steve] Paikin.
I can’t wait for the day Michael Coren appears on an infomercial peddling crap.
The reality of the 6 p.m. time slot is that most networks with more than one station will place really crappy non-news shows at that time. Networks like boosting their news audience. This is especially true in the Eastern time zone. When Coren moved from 8 p.m. to 6 p.m., he probably lost news viewers. When he went to 11 p.m., that was like being place next to the door.
Yeah, the 11 pm slot was not a vote of confidence by CTS.
Even though web traffic is up a bit for a Crossroads program, on Alexa they rank 58,016 (Canada) and traffic is dismal in the US. The small upward trend is for 100 Huntley Street.
CTS ranks 35,362 in Canada, the global rank is 1,027,823 with a downward trend. Coren’s show was the fourth most queried search for CTS behind Jack Van Impe.
Coren’s three month trend was up 800%, (his personal site) he trended upward when Sun News went online. I guess people were waiting for the inevitable announcement. And maybe the 11 pm slot wasn’t the kiss of death for him – he got a significant number of queries from China. The China traffic spike seems to have died down mid June.
His Canadian ranking (his personal site) isn’t available, his global rank is 735,715 which is better than CTS.
By comparison BDBO is in a 3 month downward trend with a global rank of 844,958; I’m not trying to get traffic.
Any insights on why Caldwell left Sun News? He was excellent, and a breath of fresh air in Canadian media.