Bell Pulls Fox News North Off Satellite TV Service

TORONTO – In a surprise move, Fox News North has pulled itself off the nationwide Bell TV satellite service amid an on-going carriage fee dispute.

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  Bell TV on Tuesday morning from 10 a.m. replaced the Sun News Network with text on a bare screen indicating the upstart conservative all-news TV channel “has been taken down at the request of the owners of Sun News.”

  That demand came from Quebecor Media, which launched Sun News last month as a TV network modeled on the U.S.-based Fox News Channel, and then pulled the service from Bell TV the morning after Canada’s federal election on May 2.

  “Sun News has withdrawn its signal from Bell Satellite TV as we do not have an agreement with Quebecor to carry it,” a spokesman for Bell, the Canadian phone giant that also operates a conventional TV network and Internet services domestically, said Tuesday.

  Sun News Network is still being carried on rival Canadian cable and satellite TV carriers.

  And Bell continues to the fledging channel on its Fibe TV service in Toronto as it operates as a must-carry over-the-air local station.

  At the same time, Sun News Network on the Bell TV satellite service has been left in limbo as The CRTC, the country's TV regulator, earlier denied the right-wing all-news network a "must-carry" broadcast license.

  Quebecor instead has had to convince cable and satellite TV operators to carry the English-language channel.

  Quebecor failed with its original proposal to convert Sun TV, its former Toronto over-the-air TV station, into the all-news channel to receive mandatory carriage in Canadian homes.