OTTAWA—The fate of the conservative-minded Sun News Network is up in the air after the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission rejected its bid to get a guaranteed spot on basic cable and satellite services.

The CRTC nonetheless acknowledged there are significant obstacles facing newly launched ventures like Sun News Network and proposed changes to the way all national news specialty services in the same category — including competitors CBC News Network and CTV News Channel — are treated in order to protect and promote a diverse range of opinions.

“These barriers constitute a significant obstacle to the exchange of ideas on matters of public concern and the overall democratic dialogue in Canada, principles that the Canadian broadcasting system has a duty to facilitate,” the CRTC wrote as it asked Canadians for their views on suggested changes.

Related: Memorable moments from Sun News Network

Sun News Network, owned by Quebecor, had been asking for mandatory-carriage status, which would force cable and satellite companies to include the channel in all basic digital and analog services.

Sun News Network executive Kory Teneycke said Thursday that while he was disappointed with the decision, he was pleased with the plan to revamp the framework for channels in its category.

“I think what the CRTC is saying is this is a much broader problem and they want to look at solutions that apply to all players in the market, not just one player,” Teneycke, a former director of communications to Prime Minister Stephen Harper who helped launch the network, said in an interview.

Teneycke also said the station would continue to operate during the policy review and that the network did not intend to appeal to the federal cabinet to intervene in the decision.

The CRTC granted mandatory-carriage distribution to only three of the 16 channels that did not already have it when they asked for it, also denying the status to Starlight: The Canadian Movie Channel.

Sun News Network had said mandatory-carriage status would provide it with 18 cents per month from every English-language household subscribing to basic services, and nine cents per month from subscribers in the francophone market.

It also said it was struggling under current distribution agreements — allowing the channel to be offered in only 40 per cent of Canadian homes — and said they are affecting their ability to raise advertising revenues.

The network asked for mandatory-carriage distribution until 2017 and better channel placement to help build its audience, something Quebecor argued had been provided to its main Canadian competitors — the 24-hour news networks operated by CBC and CTV — for many years.

In rejecting the bid in a decision released Thursday, the CRTC argued Sun News Network knew what it was getting into when it decided to go ahead without mandatory-carriage status, noting that it would not have even been able to consider launching if the CRTC had not opened up the category of national news to competition five years ago.

“Sun News opted to launch its service as a competitive Category C service without carriage rights. As such, the commission is of the view that the applicant accepted the potential business risk associated with choosing to launch an unprotected and unsubsidized service whose genre had only recently been opened to competition,” the CRTC wrote in its decision.

Still, the CRTC said it was sympathetic to some of the complaints Sun News Network had regarding the barriers it faces as compared with other news services in its category, including the fact that it receives lower per-subscriber fees from distributors.

The CRTC noted even non-Canadian news services often receive higher fees than Sun News Network, which lost $17 million last year, a situation which it said “is of concern.”

The CRTC is therefore proposing a number of policy changes, including a requirement for distributors to offer all Canadian national news services, both as a package and on a stand-alone basis, to their customers, although this does not necessarily mean they would be offered as part of basic services.

Another proposed change would have all national news services placed in proximity to each other in the lineup of channels, which would help ensure Canadians see them together when they surf for the news.

Christopher Waddell, director of the School of Journalism and Communication program at Carleton University, said these are good ideas in theory.

“It comes down to the more difficult question, which is what they are going to be priced at and what people will pay,” Waddell said.

Waddell also suggested Sun News Network would likely oppose plans to allow customers to select which specialty news services they want to subscribe to instead of allowing them only to buy a bundle of news channels at the same time.

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Teneycke said Sun News Network plans to provide a detailed to response to individual measures in its response to the CRTC as part of the public consultation process.

The deadline to submit comments on the proposed changes is Sept. 9.

With files from The Canadian Press

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