Sun TV’s “spiritual leader” Kory Teneycke is back

After a high-profile exit, Kory Teneycke is coming back to Sun TV. And Ezra Levant couldn’t be happier.

Teneycke left the right-leaning network in mid-September, telling reporters that he worried that the increasingly bitter public backlash over the former Tory spin doctor’s lead role might jeopardize the network’s broadcasting licence application.

His announcement came the day after “Toronto lawyer Clayton Ruby asked the RCMP and Ottawa police to investigate tampering with an online petition against Sun TV News organized by global activist group Avaaz.org,” The Globe and Mail reports.

Now that Sun TV has been granted a spot on the dial — albeit as a Category 2 licence, not the coveted Category 1 spot it had originally campaigned for — Teneycke is back, starting sometime next week, the Globe reports, adding that he “will likely give Sun TV News the sharp edge and taste for controversy that was intended when he helped to conceive the idea for the network.”

The network — expected to start broadcasting in March — features the likes of right-wing blogger Ezra Levant and columnist and self-described “Liberal spin doctor” Warren Kinsella.

Levant told the Globe he was glad to have Teneycke back at Sun TV:

“He’s the spiritual leader, so to speak. He’s the one who has the grand plan and created this thing from a spark. He’s our Roger Ailes,” Levant said. (Ailes is a Republican campaign staffer who founded Fox News.)

Globe reporter Steven Chase writes:

“In the months leading up to his departure from Sun TV News last September, Mr. Teneycke had deliberately courted controversy to publicize his new venture. These actions, he acknowledged upon leaving, had ‘contributed to the debasing of [the] debate’ over Sun TV News.”

“Mr. Teneycke’s formula for generating buzz about the venture included a no-holds-barred approach to rivals and naysayers. He publicly derided other news outlets as the “lame-stream media” and lashed out at Sun TV News critics, calling veteran TV journalist Don Newman “the Helen Thomas of Canada.” That was a reference to the disgraced White House reporter who recently resigned after saying Israelis should ‘get the hell out of Palestine’ and ‘go home’ to places such as Germany.”