Monthly Archives: April 2024

Rogers sells off Monday Night Hockey to Amazon

Rogers announced Thursday it has sold off the exclusive rights to Monday Night Hockey to Amazon, meaning for the next two seasons, national Monday night games during the regular season will be exclusive to Amazon Prime subscribers.

Rogers talks about how “thrilled” it is with the announcement, but this deal doesn’t help Sportsnet with audiences, it’s about whatever money Amazon is paying Rogers for these rights.

Rogers famously spent $5.2 billion for the national rights to NHL games for 12 years (2014-2026), and has since learned it overpaid for those rights. It gets some money back from sublicensing French rights to TVA Sports, and now it’s getting more back from Amazon with this deal.

With Mondays exclusive to Amazon, Rogers retains exclusive national windows on Wednesday nights and Saturday nights, as well as all NHL playoff games. Regional rights are unaffected.

There aren’t many details on what Amazon NHL games will look like, except that they won’t be Sportsnet productions and will have new broadcast teams.

This is the first time a streaming service has acquired exclusive broadcast rights to NHL games in Canada, and in that sense Rogers is right in calling it a “milestone” rights deal. Amazon hopes to use Monday night games involving Canadian teams to push hockey fans to become Amazon Prime Video subscribers.

The deal could be a bit of a boost for TVA Sports, whose rights aren’t covered in the agreement. If the network airs Canadian NHL games on Monday nights, it could see some tuning from anglophone NHL fans who don’t want to subscribe to Amazon.

For reference, last season Sportsnet had a total of 27 national Monday night hockey games. Here were the number for each Canadian team during the 2023-24 season:

  • Toronto Maple Leafs: 7 games
  • Montreal Canadiens: 5 games
  • Winnipeg Jets: 5 games
  • Ottawa Senators: 4 games
  • Vancouver Canucks: 3 games
  • Calgary Flames: 2 games
  • Edmonton Oilers: 2 games

The Globe and Mail reports Amazon will get 26 games per season as part of the deal.

The rumour of Rogers selling rights to Amazon was first reported by YYZ Sports Media on April 1.

New steamy Netflix drama to follow will-they-or-won’t-they story of Cogeco launching a wireless service

“I long for you. I radiate for you. You ping me.”

Those are some of the loin-melting sentences spoken in a new Netflix drama that follows the building textual tension between Cogeco and a wireless service it says it is oh so tantalizingly close to deciding to launch.

“Much like the Rogers story was the Canadian version of Succession, we think this new series ‘It’s Gonna Be Epico’ will be the next Bridgerton,” said Netflix head of Canadian programming Sue Kerr.

The new docudrama series, in which everyone is dressed up in 18th-century formal attire and speaks with a British accent for some reason, promises endless scenes in which Cogeco and a wireless service end up alone together and inch closer together, their hearts racing as they are swept away in their desires for each other, only to be interrupted at the moment they were totally about the seal the deal.

The first season will feature an intriguing story about the leader Philippe negotiating with the Great Powers when suddenly he’s replaced by the young Frédéric. Was there a coup? A love triangle? A kidnapping? You’ll have to tune in to find out.

Totally legit 10,000-channel IPTV streaming services expand into original programming

A consortium of services offering every TV channel in the universe for only $5 a month announced today they are upping the offer even more by creating original series, greenlighting two new dramas and a comedy series.

“To stay competitive in this environment, we have to do more than offer every TV channel plus all Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ programs for only $5 a month,” said Fu Ludyu, CEO of KoolTVBox. “Our subscribers are demanding even more value, and we believe these new projects will help us offer that.”

Ludyu said the new series will be exclusive to the network of small IPTV streaming services, and they will aggressively protect their copyrighted material. “While we are not responsible for the copyright status of programming from our independent offshore contractors, our team of lawyers will go after Netflix and YouTube hard if we see our content on their services,” he said.

Pierre Karl Péladeau to be next CBC president

Saying he has always been committed to public broadcasting, Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Péladeau said Monday he is thrilled to have been appointed the new president of CBC/Radio-Canada for a five-year term.

He succeeds Catherine Tait, whose term is ending.

Péladeau said he has a big vision for the public broadcaster, including more cooperation with private broadcasters, a new more narrow focus on high-quality niche programs, and integration with Videotron’s Helix distribution system.

The Alouettes owner more specifically announced he intends to make Tou.tv a channel within Club Illico, cancel underperforming projects like Véro.tv, and create a new province-wide news and information show on ICI Première hosted by Richard Martineau.

Asked about English services, Péladeau said he didn’t have any big plans there but whatever Bell doesn’t like sounds good to him.

CFQR 600 AM to broadcast live audio feed of April 8 eclipse

In its quest to offer the best radio experience, CFQR 600 AM has proposed special programming of the April 8 total solar eclipse, with a live raw audio feed so its audience can listen to it from their homes or across the country.

“This event happens only once in a lifetime, so we can’t miss it,” said whoever is in charge there these days. “We’ll have a special directional microphone pointed directly at the sun and will broadcast super HD audio of the sound as the moon crosses over the sun and blocks out its solar sounds.”

The broadcast will start around 2pm, and continue until the end of the partial eclipse around 5pm. The broadcast will run without a host, analysis or any spoken words, just the raw sounds of the eclipse.

“We’ll also be sending a copy of the recording to scientists so they can study the sounds and learn more about the sun and moon,” the station’s management said.

Ken Connors arrested after revealing secret cryptocurrency Koin Coinnors

Fans were shocked and outraged by this incident.

Only a day after his retirement from CJAD 800, Ken Connors was arrested by authorities, charged with illegally revealing a secret cryptocurrency that has exploded in value making people insanely rich.

“The government doesn’t want you to know how to make all this money,” Connors said as he was being led away in handcuffs by police on Monday morning.

According to a CBC News article that looks fairly legit, Connors chose to retire from broadcasting because of massive wealth he accumulated investing his savings in Koin Coinnors, a trivia-based cryptocurrency that is guaranteed to be the next Bitcoin. Rather than mining currency by crunching complicated mathematical equations, Koins are distributed when Coinnors successfully answer trivia questions.

“It makes crypto fun and eco-friendly,” Connors explains in the story at cbcnewsnews.co. Understanding how it works or if it’s sustainable or secure isn’t important, nor is it important to check if the story is real. What is important to understand is this is the perfect time to take all the money out of your bank account and convert it to this cryptocurrency.