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CityTv, Not CTV Poll On Same-Sex 'Marriage' No Joke But Was for Only 20 Minutes

Daily CityTv poll no longer functioning because of on-going marriage question response

TORONTO, December 20, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Last Thursday, LifeSiteNews.com reported that the flurry of emails being passed around the Canadian Internet about a CTV television telephone poll on same-sex 'marriage' was a hoax, according to readers who checked with CTV and were told the network was not conducting any such poll.

More readers have since contacted us and, lo and behold, informed LifeSiteNews.com that there actually was an early December telephone poll but it was conducted at the time on behalf of Toronto's CityTv, not the national CTV television network, as many emails promoting the poll stated. The emails also did not indicate any time frame for the poll but simply encouraged people to call and register their vote.

However, there is more to the story of this poll that got away from everyone and developed a life of its own that is still going on, and has made some CityTv staff very unhappy in the process.

LifeSiteNews.com today contacted CHUM Television, which owns CityTv. A spokeswoman with the company explained that the City Pulse at Noon program, which was responsible for the same-sex 'marriage' question, announces a different polling question at the end of its program every day at 12:30 p.m. City OnLine conducts the telephone poll on behalf of City Pulse at Noon and the results are announced on CityTv 20 minutes later at 12:55 p.m. That's it. It's over after 20 minutes.

But this one kept going and going. The obviously frustrated spokeswoman complained that "religious people" went too far in promoting the NO number and generating the huge, on-going response to the same-sex 'marriage' question. The station has been getting telephone enquiries every day since and is asking that people stop calling the NO number and stop enquiring about the poll.

The daily polling uses the same two numbers each day for people to answer yes or no. So, on that one afternoon, calling the NO number automatically resulted in a NO being registered against same-sex 'marriage'. The next day, or prior to that, dialing the same number would have registered a NO to a question about an entirely different issue, and so on.

Unfortunately for City Pulse at Noon it was overwhelmed by a far greater than normal response to its question on the same-sex 'marriage' issue, and it still hasn't stopped. The station's staff had totally underestimated interest in the issue and seem to be under the impression, as indicated in interviews with LifeSiteNews.com, that it is just "biased", "religious" people who are so adamantly opposed to same-sex 'marriage' that they would make such a big issue of the question.

One LifeSiteNews.com reader reported she was told by the producer in charge of the telephone line that the poll gets an average of 2000 replies. This one got over 30,000 calls and jammed the two lines and the computer system. The results were not reported as usual.

The spokeswoman LifeSiteNews.com first talked to stated she would have another person call back shortly to answer additional questions. After a call-back was not received, LifeSiteNews.com called again and talked to Ramneek, assistant to News V.P. Steve Hurlbut. Ramneek stated that the daily polling has not resumed since the early December same-sex 'marriage' poll.

However, Ramneek refused to answer more than the one question, including even what the actual date of the poll was, stating that the company "cannot release any information" on the matter. She also stated that she visited the LifeSiteNews.com website and said "you are biased". When asked if that is how she wanted to end the interview, she hung up on the LifeSiteNews.com reporter.

CHUM television and its divisions are well-known for airing raunchy, sexually very explicit programs and movies. Among it many productions are Sex TV and the often sexually charged, MTV Canada and Much Music which are directed at youth.

Sj

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