Found this story in the Toronto Globe and Mail and thought I'd pass it on for our good friends in the Great White North. ESPN might have been looking to add a Canadian channel to it's repotoire, but it looks like the possibility of it happening is slim to none....

Despite pressure from cable companies to open up the Canadian market to more foreign content, the likelihood of ESPN coming into the country is virtually zero, executives said yesterday.

"We've said let in the American channels unless they threaten the economic viability of the Canadian channel," he said. "If they could put a Canadian channel under and drive them out of business, then we would say don't let them in."

ESPN would represent competition to Canadian sports channels, including Rogers-owned Sportsnet. TSN would be most severely hit by ESPN's entry into the market. They're both national services that carry a wide selection of high-end programming, some of it the same.