Category Archives: TV

| Opinion, TV

The CRTC puts another patch on its mess of broken policies to keep local TV alive

Is the CRTC biased?

Is it captured by the telecom industry? Is it too inclined to bow to the demands of special interest groups? Is it too consumer-focused? Is it too liberal? Too conservative? Too bureaucratic? Too arbitrary? Too micromanaging?

The answer to all these questions is yes. Or at least very good arguments can be made for each of these, and some very good arguments can be made that on the whole, it tries its best to balance competing interests.

But one way the commission shows bias that really gets me is its deference to the status quo, how it will bend over backwards to keep things the way they are, to keep everyone happy, to resist changes in business models that might threaten industries.

That instinct isn’t all bad. The Canadian broadcasting system needs supports, and a well-regulated system is better than a chaotic one that can’t sustain itself or its many jobs.

But the desperation to prop up failing business models leads to some very inelegant policies that have glaring holes in them. And the way the CRTC subsidizes local television is a prime example of that.

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| TV

Rogers extends its NHL deal by another 12 years: What we know and don’t

On Wednesday, Rogers officially confirmed what had first been reported by the specialty publication Sportico: It has renewed its national television rights deal with the National Hockey League for 12 years, from 2026 to 2038, at a cost of $11 billion Canadian ($7.7 billion U.S.).

The deal is similar to the existing one: National rights to NHL television broadcasts in Canada, in all languages and on all platforms, including special events and all playoff games, and out-of-market rights. Like it did in 2013, Rogers promises more national games and fewer regional blackouts, though exactly how many is still unclear.

It also retains the rights to sublicense its rights to others. Currently all French-language TV rights are sublicensed to Quebecor’s TVA Sports, and Monday night national games are sublicensed to Amazon Prime Video. Rogers also has a partnership with CBC to allow Rogers to use CBC Television on Saturday nights and during the playoffs in exchange for Rogers retaining all ad revenue and programming control.

A press conference on Wednesday (which you can see here) clarified a few matters. Based on that, here’s what we know, what we don’t know, what’s likely and what’s possible:

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| TV

The great Canadian specialty TV shuffle begins, but it’s not going well for you

It’s New Year’s Eve. In a matter of hours, a great realignment takes place as Canadian rights to U.S. specialty TV brands owned by Warner Bros. Discovery change from Bell and Corus to Rogers.

We’ve known about this change for more than six months now, and yet we still have many unanswered questions, including whether you’ll be able to watch HGTV and Food Network content if you’re not a Rogers cable subscriber.

So here’s what we do know:

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| Media, Radio, TV

How your media is changing this fall

Welcome back to the school year. There’s been some changes announced in media locally and nationally. Here’s a snapshot of things that have recently changed or will in the coming weeks and months.

Radio

99.5 is now QUB (kinda)

The station formerly known as WKND has replaced its daytime schedule with content from Quebecor’s QUB Radio, and is airing rock music on evenings and weekends. People who like the WKND format can tune in to the station’s HD Radio sub-channel, which rebroadcasts WKND 91.9 in Quebec City.

The new 98.5

At the same time as 99.5 adds talk radio, the talk leader in the city has a new lineup. Paul Arcand, the most listened-to morning man in the country sometimes, has moved on to other things (though he’s still getting up way early and reading the news) and Patrick Lagacé has been promoted to the morning show, news first announced a year and a half ago. Marie-Ève Tremblay takes over late mornings, and Philippe Cantin (also of La Presse) takes over Lagacé’s old spot on afternoons. While the host chairs have been shuffled, the vibe is the same, with most of the same collaborators, though there is a bit of bad blood.

Lee Haberkorn joins The Beat’s morning show

Suspiciously six months after he left Virgin Radio to spend more time with his family, Lee Haberkorn has joined the morning show at competitor The Beat, with Mark Bergman, Kim Kieran an Claudia Marques. He fills the hole left by the departure of Stuntman Sam in December.

Chantal Desjardins takes a break from CHOM

Though she had been absent for a while, Chantal Desjardins made it official that she was “stepping back” from her role as co-host of CHOM’s morning show as she focuses on building a family. Her second child is on the way.

Tony Marinaro in French

The man once known as Tony in LaSalle has completed his transition to the other language and has relaunched his Forum midday show in French on BPM Sports, 91.9 in Montreal, 100.9 in Quebec City and 96.5 in Gatineau.

TV people on the radio now

In case you missed it in the spring, Frank Cavallaro took over as morning man at Lite 106.7 in Hudson/St-Lazare, filling the job formerly held by Ted Bird, while Mose Persico, formerly of CTV Montreal, started a show on Mike FM 105.1.

Other moves

Changes elsewhere in Canada

TV

The Great Specialty Brand Shift

The announcement from Rogers that it had signed new deals with Warner Bros. Discovery and NBCUniversal is going to radically change Canadian specialty channels over the coming months, with some details still unclear due to a legal dispute.

The first impacts have already been felt:

  • Corus, which lost the rights to brands like HGTV and Food Network, has already pulled the plug on the Canadian version of the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN).
  • Rogers has rebranded OLN as Bravo, putting its deal with NBCUniversal into place.

In the new year, assuming Corus and Bell don’t succeed in blocking it, Rogers will take over as the Canadian rights holder to HGTV, Food Network, Cooking Channel, Magnolia Network, Discovery Channel, Discovery Science, Animal Planet and related brands. What happens to the Canadian specialty channels with those brands currently is up in the air, though Corus has said it plans to keep its channels running.

UPDATE: Corus has announced it is rebranding Food Network as Flavour Network and HGTV as Home Network as of Dec. 30.

Rogers, meanwhile, has announced that it will launch linear TV channels for HGTV, Food Network, Discovery, Discovery ID and Magnolia in addition to rebranding OLN as Bravo. That leaves Cooking, OWN, Motor Trend, Animal Planet and Discovery Science whose content will only be available online on Citytv+ in Canada.

Cuts at Global News

The loss of Warner/Discovery brands to Rogers was just the latest in a string of bad news facing Corus, which is struggling to stay alive after Shaw was sold (also to Rogers) and it lost millions in regular cross-subsidies. It’s renegotiating debt and a staff rationalization plan that hopes to cut a quarter of positions has meant a series of layoffs at Global News across the country.

The most visible cut is Kim Sullivan, who did weather at 11pm for Montreal and the Maritimes. But the online desks have been slashed and longtime Montreal station manager Karen Macdonald retired in the spring.

Meanwhile, Global Kingston has essentially ceased to be its own station, with 95% of its staff laid off. And Global has decided not to order any more seasons of Big Brother Canada. More than 100 people have been laid off by the company so far.

CTV Montreal backup plan

A water main break near the Jacques-Cartier Bridge flooded the basement of the Bell Media building housing CTV, RDS and Noovo studios, forcing them to move off-site while things are cleaned up and rebuilt. They lost vehicles and camera equipment and access to their studios, so they moved in to Bell’s campus on Nuns’ Island, where they’ve been operating from ever since.

After being able to manage only short pre-recorded newscasts in the days after the flood, CTV Montreal is back to its regular schedule of 5pm, 6pm and 11:30pm newscasts. (Noon newscasts were cancelled in budget cuts in February.)

But the anchors will have an unfamiliar backdrop until they can get back to their usual studio.

Quebecor merges Club Illico and Vrai

Videotron is merging its two streaming services into one — or more accurately folding its nonfiction service Vrai into Club Illico, which will be renamed Illico+. Each service costs $15/month nominally but various discounts are offered for Videotron subscribers. This is mostly a recognition that trying to sell people on two separate subscription services when there are already so many streaming services out there was a losing battle.

The new APTN

APTN has implemented its new two-channel system, replacing the somewhat confusing East/West/North/HD system with APTN and APTN Languages, the latter with at least 100 hours a week of programming in Indigenous languages. The change also comes with a hike of its mandatory per-subscriber fee, to $0.38 per month from $0.35.

Other changes

Print

Saltwire is now Postmedia

My employer has closed a deal to acquire the assets of the bankrupt Saltwire Network for $1 million. The Atlantic Canada print media assets include the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, St. John’s Telegram, PEI Guardian and others. The Telegram has been turned into a print weekly, and it’s still unclear how many of its employees will remain on the job in the long run.

Other changes

| TV

Corus’s Slice picks up Canadian rights to The Daily Show

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.

| TV

Rogers kneecaps Corus, stealing Canadian rights to HGTV and Food Network

If you’re a fan of lifestyle channels like HGTV and Food Network in Canada, things are going to change dramatically as of January 2025, when Rogers acquires the Canadian rights to those brands, along with the Cooking Channel, Investigation Discovery and more.

Rogers announced this morning as part of its fall preview announcements that it has signed a deal with Warner Bros. Discovery and NBCUniversal to become the Canadian home to Warner’s factual and lifestyle brands as of January, and NBC’s Bravo as of September.

These deals include both the Canadian rights to those brands as well as to U.S. programming of those networks.

A complete list of brands isn’t included in the announcement, but Corus confirms these brands are affected:

  • HGTV
  • Food Network
  • Cooking Channel
  • Magnolia Network
  • OWN

Children’s brands like Adult Swim and Cartoon Network are not affected by this announcement.

Warner also owns the following Discovery brands with Canadian versions managed by Bell Media:

  • Discovery Channel
  • Animal Planet
  • Investigation Discovery
  • Science Channel (Discovery Science)
  • Motor Trend (Discovery Velocity)

So what does this mean for those channels? Well, it’s unclear, actually. When I asked about this, a Bell Media spokesperson at first said “it’s business as usual,” but followed up Monday evening with this statement:

Bell Media is Canada’s foremost media company, with industry-leading assets across every content genre. Our long-standing partnership, content, and brand arrangements for the Discovery Canada channels includes protections against the launch of competing services. We fully intend to assert our rights with a view to protecting our business.

Cartt.ca noticed that in its upfront announcement last week, Bell Media avoided using Discovery brands and referred to some series as being only on “Bell Media Specialty Channel”.

Bravo used to also be a Canadian channel until Bell rebranded it CTV Drama in 2019. Rogers says it will launch a new Canadian Bravo channel, though I’m waiting to hear if their plan is to create a new TV channel or rebrand an existing one like OLN.

For HGTV, Food and Cooking, it gets a bit more complicated. Not only does Corus have channels by those names, but it has a lot of the U.S. programming on those Canadian channels. On top of that, the Canadian channels of HGTV, Food Network, Cooking Channel and Magnolia are about 16-19% owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.

Corus quietly issued a vaguely-worded statement on Friday saying some “programming and trademark output arrangements” wouldn’t be renewed. But it says Corus intends to “continue operating the country’s largest and most widely distributed lifestyle channels based on the strength of top-rated Canadian programs and alternate foreign content supply.”

This will likely mean the channels we know as HGTV, Food Network and Cooking Channel will rebrand as of January, and while some Canadian content will remain the same, the U.S. shows associated with them will move to Rogers-owned channels.

Rogers doesn’t have enough specialty channel licences to rebrand into all these, so assuming they go ahead with linear channels, it would require new licences. Thankfully, the CRTC allows new channels to launch without prior approval. They just have to apply for a licence once they hit 200,000 subscribers (which probably won’t take long).

Broadcast Dialogue reports Rogers saying “distribution details are still being finalized with an eye to a mix of linear and streaming options.”

Corus blames the change on “inequitable structural relationships in the Canadian media and telecom industries, particularly affecting independent broadcasters like Corus.”

In other words, since Rogers bought Shaw (whose family still owns Corus), Rogers has deeper pockets and more power to acquire these kinds of rights. Meanwhile Corus, which no longer has the deep pockets of a cable giant, has to get by as an independent now.

This kind of change could be potentially life-threatening for Corus. If it loses its audience to the same brands it and its predecessors have spent decades building, the loss of subscription and ad revenue could not only devastate Corus’s lifestyle brands, but the Global network as well. (Corus is still waiting for the CRTC to authorize Global to access the Independent Local News Fund, since Rogers took away its cross-subsidy funding from Shaw to redirect it to Citytv stations.)

The markets would seem to agree. Corus’s stock fell 29% on Monday, to an all-time low of 34 cents per share. As recently as 2022 it was worth 10 times that.

Back when Corus did this

There is some precedent for this kind of change, and ironically it was Corus doing the stealing that time. In 2015, after DHX Media (now WildBrain) acquired Family Channel, Disney Jr. and Disney XD out of the Bell Media/Astral deal, Corus announced it had signed a deal with Disney for Canadian rights to its children’s channel brands. DHX rebranded the channels to Family Jr. and Télémagino, while Corus launched new channels under the Disney Channel, Disney Jr. and Disney XD brands. DHX had to find non-Disney children’s content to fill their schedule.

Now Corus will get a taste of that medicine, only on a larger and more expensive scale.

UPDATE (June 17): Corus’s CEO has left the company in the wake of this news (and its dramatic impact on Corus’s stock price), effective immediately. Troy Reeb and John Gossling will act as co-CEOs.

| TV

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.

| TV

Bell’s MTV2 becomes latest casualty of specialty channel decline

If you’re a subscriber of Bell Media’s MTV2 channel, you may have already received a notice that the channel is being shut down at the end of March.

The shutdown is not too surprising. It was on my list of endangered channels along with ESPN Classic and Yoopa, which have seen dramatic declines in subscribers and advertising in recent years.

According to the latest CRTC data for the 2021-22 broadcast year, MTV2 had about 750,000 subscribers (including zero satellite TV subscribers), about $215,000 in total advertising revenue, and had cut expenses by 84% in four years to try to shrink itself back into profitability.

Billed as “the ultimate destination for Canada’s 12-24s”, the channel currently runs marathons of reality shows like The Real World, Teen Mom, Catfish, Geordie Shore and Canadian filler shows Cash Cab and Comedy Now!

The channel began service in 2001 during the digital specialty channel explosion, originally as Craig Media-owned MTV Canada, then rebranded to Razer and finally to MTV2. MTV still exists as a separate Bell Media channel under a separate licence, though Bell hasn’t done much more to promote that channel than it did MTV2, and it was also bleeding money according to CRTC data.

UPDATE (May 6): The CRTC has revoked the channel’s licence at Bell’s request.

| Media, Radio, TV

Natasha Hall, Mose Persico, Lise McAuley among Bell Media cuts in Montreal

Updated March 24 with more details.

Two weeks after BCE announced it was abolishing 4,800 jobs, we’re starting to learn how those losses are trickling down to the local level.

In Montreal, CTV News was hit hard. The station’s website confirms weather presenter Lise McAuley, assignment editor Derek Conlon and production assistant and movie reviewer Mosé Persico no longer work for the company. That’s decades of experience with CFCF gone.

Director Yves Marion and producer Helen Michailidis have also left the organization.

This doesn’t mean they were all let go. In fact, a source within CTV Montreal tells me most of them took voluntary retirement packages instead. (Persico confirms this was the case for him.)

CTV News also lost Montreal-based national reporter Vanessa Lee. There’s no official list nationally, but correspondent Judy Trinh notes some names gone at CTV National News. It includes Kevin Gallagher, who was formerly a local reporter with CTV Montreal.

On the radio side, CJAD cut afternoon co-host Natasha Hall and Trivia Show co-host Dan Laxer is also gone. The loss of Hall isn’t entirely unexpected — a schedule shuffle in 2021 to incorporate more unoriginal programming on the schedule meant merging her show with Aaron Rand’s and making them co-hosts. This made one of them an easier cut in the next round of layoffs.

Rand, no stranger to having to carry on after his co-hosts get fired, paid tribute to Hall in a Facebook post, calling her “a smart, talented, and a consummate radio professional who didn’t deserve this outcome.”

With Laxer’s departure, Ken Connors is listed as the sole host of the Sunday morning Trivia Show.

I haven’t seen any cuts at CHOM, Virgin Radio or TSN Radio in Montreal. Despite the sword of Damocles seeming to dangle above TSN 690’s head, the station itself seems to have survived the latest round of cuts.

As announced with the news of the layoffs, CTV has cancelled noon newscasts at local stations outside Toronto, as well as news on holidays. CTV Montreal’s weekend newscasts survived the cut, along with Ottawa and Toronto, but other CTV stations have seen those newscasts cut as well.

UPDATE: Persico has already announced a new gig to keep him busy: Host of the afternoon drive show on ethnic station Mike FM 105.1 starting April 1. The announcement confirms his Mose at the Movies segments will move to Mike FM’s platforms.

| TV

Jon Stewart is coming back to The Daily Show, but it’s not coming back to CTV

For those of you who miss the good ol’ days of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, there’s good news and bad news.

The good news is the old host is coming back. Stewart will host the show Mondays during this presidential election cycle, starting Feb. 12, and be an executive producer.

The bad news is the show isn’t coming back to CTV or CTV Comedy. Paramount confirms the show’s Canadian rights will remain with the Paramount+ streaming service, where it had moved since the end of the writers strike.

The show will be available on Paramount+ the day after it airs on Comedy Central.

Many Canadians (including myself) were confused when they heard the show had resumed production in October but CTV continued airing The Big Bang Theory reruns at 12:05am weekdays. Bell Media would only say it no longer had the rights to the show.

Then Paramount+, a service few Canadians have heard of much less subscribe to, announced it was adding The Daily Show last month. But within weeks, the show disappeared from there too. Paramount told me it’s because they weren’t producing new episodes at the time. (Why they couldn’t have archived episodes available is unclear.)

Today’s news confirms that even with Stewart’s return, the show won’t be widely available in Canada. Paramount+, which also includes Yellowstone, Yellowstone spinoffs, a bunch of series you’ve never heard of and that Sylvester Stallone project you may have seen ads for, costs $10/month directly, or through Apple TV+ or Amazon Prime Video.

Bell Media has complained recently to the CRTC and others that big U.S. streaming services are unfairly competing for Canadian rights to shows, making it harder for Bell to make money. It used the example of Star Trek, which is also owned by Paramount. Though CTV and Space/CTV Sci-Fi has been Star Trek’s home since the days of The Next Generation, expect future Trek series to be exclusive to Paramount+ in Canada. (The service already has all the Star Trek series, but for now at least those rights are mostly non-exclusive.)