Fox North update: Did Kory Teneycke Punish Greg Weston For Telling Truth?

As you may know, Sun columnist Greg Weston has written several excellent pieces re government over-spending on the upcoming G-8/G-20. As you may also know, Kory Teneycke, the former Stephen Harper spokesperson and man behind Fox News North, is now Greg's boss over at Quebecor. Yesterday, a rumour circulated to the effect that Greg was in the dog-house with his new chief over the excessive truth content in his recent columns:

There was concern in the Parliamentary Press Gallery last week that the sudden appointment of Kory Teneycke, Mr. Harper's former communications director, to oversee journalists at the Quebecor Media Inc. Parliament Hill bureau, may have been related to controversial stories about the summit spending. Several of the most controversial reports were broken by a member of the bureau, Sun Media columnist Greg Weston.

It appears something happened. One source said Mr. Weston's column "is gone," and there were possible talks about a position in Washington, D.C.

A bit obscure, perhaps. But the folks at the Toronto Sun Family Blog are on the case:

A check by TSF revealed Greg's recent summit cost columns are archived under his name at torontosun.com, but there are no Weston column links on Sun Media's Eye on the Hill site.

Meanwhile, as we wait for Kory et al to launch their media Titanic, here's Bill Brioux dumping on the venture in a most entertaining manner:

It is interesting that CNN is proportionally way more popular in Canada than it is in the States, where ratings have dropped off to historic lows. To be fair, part of that can be attributed to an uneven playing field. Canadians have had 20 years to get used to CNN at channel 33 (as it is on Rogers Toronto). Fox News is buried way up the dial and off most cable plus packages.Which is presumably where the new Quebecor news channel will land.

[...]

Quebecor has a ways to go to prove it can compete in English Canadian TV. When they took over Toronto1, for example, competing ad sales guys started calling it Toronto zero-point-one to help illustrate its hold on the ratings.

While Canadian viewers have always had a sizable news appetite, not so much these days (check the latest CBC National News numbers) and especially not so much for for specialty news channels. CNN does draw more than the CBC or CTV news networks in Canada but it really is a race among turtles compared to overall viewing. Canadians tend to like their network newscasts to be dull and predictable, with CTV's Lloyd Robertson the big draw at 11 ever since he was pulled off pyramid duty.