Rob Ford has lost a lot in the past 24 hours: He was stripped of basically all of his mayoral powers, America found its own drug-abusing politician, and now his cable news show Ford Nation has been canceled after one episode. Weirdly, Sun News isn’t scrapping the show due to lack of ratings (or, as was more likely, Ford doing something humiliating). The show pulled 155,000 viewers Monday night, making it “by far the most successful thing, from an audience perspective, the network has ever done,” Kory Teneycke, the network’s vice-president, told The Globe and Mail.
The problem is the Fox News of the North just can’t afford to keep the show going. Somehow, it took five hours to record and eight to edit, though the show consisted largely of the Toronto mayor reiterating his defense, suggesting he who has not tried crack while in a drunken stupor should cast the first stone. Teneycke said, “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.” So if the mayor in name only feels the urge to make another outrageous, ratings-grabbing declaration about his drug use or sexual proclivities, he should feel free to stop by.
