Jon Stewart is coming back to Canadian television.
Corus announced Tuesday morning that its lifestyle and fashion specialty channel Slice will be airing The Daily Show starting Sept. 9, just in time for the 2024 U.S. presidential election and its second presidential debate.
The show will air at 11pm Mondays through Thursdays, and will be available on Corus’s streaming service StackTV.
For the past year, after it stopped being available on Bell Media channels, the Daily Show has only been available here on Paramount+ (plus whatever clips they post on social media).
According to Playback magazine, the show will continue to be available on Paramount+ in September, even though Corus says Slice will be “the exclusive home of the Daily Show in Canada.”
Corus, which will lose the Canadian rights to big U.S. lifestyle brands like HGTV and Food Network to Rogers in January, is scrambling to find new programming to entice Canadians to keep its channels. The Daily Show might be enough to convince people to subscribe to Slice, whose total revenues dropped 10% from 2022 to 2023, according to CRTC data.
Corus could also add The Daily Show to the Global Television schedule if it wanted to, but it really needs people to subscribe or stay subscribed to its specialty channels if it’s going to survive.
Much of the Daily Show is already available free to Canadians on YouTube and Facebook soon after broadcast. There is no special reason to pay for it unless you’re a superfan who wants to see it immediately.
The Daily Show. Really!
This thing is a dead brand. I doubt very much people will bother with it. Corus seems to be in big trouble when they think a show that was hot during the George Bush era still matters. It also shows the lack of understanding of what is going on by the people at Corus.
Young people do not watch Cable speciality channels, let alone pay for it. If it’s free, they’ll consider it.
Put it on the Global TV Network. It’s free over the air TV. You have a better chance of getting some ratings.
If they continue with this crap, we might actually see a day when Corus disappears.
Of course, if we didn’t have laws to prevent it, we could just subscribe to the source and get it over with. All this silly games of Canadian ownership and such just serve to make it harder to enjoy what you like, and more expensive when you do. Gatekeeper mentality is dinosaur thinking.
No law prevents Canadians from accessing U.S. programming like the Daily Show, which is why it was available on Paramount+. It’s private licensing agreements that restrict where people can watch stuff.
Really?
“The Parliament of Canada last spring passed the contentious Online Streaming Act that requires foreign streaming services like Netflix, YouTube, and Spotify to extensively promote Canadian content in Canada, and pay into a fund that supports the creation of Canadian content.22 Mar 2024”
Effectively, if enough people sign up, they will have to offer a “special” service for Canadians, and pay to support Canadian content… even if they are not here.
That would likely lead to them just blocking Canadians.
“Even if they are not here” is an odd thing to say for services that are actively selling to Canadians. If they’re getting tens of millions of dollars of revenue from Canadian users, for content they have licensed the Canadian rights to, I would argue they are most definitely “here”.
So when a Canadian travels and buys things on vacation, does that suddenly make those businesses subject to Canadian law? Are transactions done with companies outside of Canada suddenly make them part of a Canadian regulatory scheme? Most services don’t specifically buy Canadian rights to anything, they often get worldwide except certain countries or even worldwide.
Are border blaster radio stations subject to Canadian law? Are border TV stations subject to Canadian law?
Your mentality on this one is old school CRTC / Canadian government thinking that they can wag the dog. The internet doesn’t give a crap about borders. Trying to force it to be what it isn’t never works.
No. Though the things purchased would be subject to Canadian rules (customs fees, for example) when brought into the country.
It depends on the regulatory scheme. In the case of streaming companies who get revenue from Canadian subscribers and advertisers, yes, under the Broadcasting Act as currently written.
Sure. But that doesn’t really change anything legally.
Not directly. They are subject to U.S. law, including a treaty signed with Canada regulating cross-border signal protections.
The internet doesn’t give a crap about anything, it’s not sentient. But the people who manage copyrights for television programming, and those who buy rights to television content, care a lot about borders, which is why streaming services have all sorts of rules on where content can be broadcast.
Corus’s chance of survival is about the same as the odds of finding buried treasure on Oak Island.
Global has lost over $120 M each of the last two years and its revenue is less than its cost of content. That means Global is not financially viable.
Come January, Corus’s specialty businesses will take a huge hit with the loss of the WarnerDiscovery content. How cable companies will handle having Rogers and Corus versions of HGTV, Food, etc remains to be seen, but I expect Rogers cable will switch customers to their version and put Corus’s channels into an optional tier. I also expect that the loss of content will cause Corus to cut the price of STACK TV to try and prevent customers from cancelling their subscription. There are other storm clouds on the horizon, Disney is pushing Disney+ and is giving indications that it might shut down its cable channels aimed at kids that Corus licenses.
With the above issues, the only way I see Corus surviving is to close down Global, HGTV and Food, and then selling its Canadian HGTV and Food content to Rogers. That would leave Corus owning some radio stations, History Channel and a few other specialty channels. By making these changes Corus might be able to survive until Bell or Rogers outbids them for the American History content.