Where can I watch HGTV programming in Canada in 2025?

Home & Garden Television (HGTV) launched in the United States in December 1994, and a Canadian version of the channel launched less than three years later in October 1997. Both versions helped raise the profile of home design and renovation personalities like Chip and Joanna Gaines, Drew and Jonathan Scott, Bryan Baeumler, and many others.

In late 2024 and early 2025, there will be significant changes in how Canadians access HGTV programming:

• On Monday, December 30, 2024, the existing Canadian HGTV channel owned by Corus Entertainment will relaunch as Home Network, due to the channel losing its rights to the HGTV brand the following day. However, it will continue to air programming with several Canadian personalities with long associations with the domestic version of the channel, like Bryan Baeumler and Scott McGillivray.
• On Wednesday, January 1, 2025, a new HGTV channel will launch under Rogers Communications ownership. Most American programming from the old HGTV will ultimately move to this new channel. It’s likely that Canadian programs will show up here too, but different from those on Home Network.

We're not certain yet of all of the exact details of this transition or about which shows will move and when, but we'll explain the broad strokes of what we know below. We will endeavour to update this post as more information becomes available.

Why is this happening?

As you may be aware, the HGTV channel seen in Canada is not the exact same channel available in the United States. While there are some American channels that have been (and continue to be) directly imported to Canada — like CNN or TLC — they are not allowed to sell localized advertising or (generally) air separate programming specifically for Canadian audiences. Moreover, under Canadian media ownership regulations, the owner of a brand like HGTV cannot directly operate its own Canadian version of the channel.

Thus, the version of HGTV that began broadcasting in Canada 1997 was launched by production company Atlantis Communications, under licence from the owner of the U.S. channel at that time, the E. W. Scripps Company.

By 2024, following multiple mergers and other transactions that separately affected the U.S. and Canadian channels, the HGTV brand came to be owned by American media conglomerate Warner Bros. Discovery (or WBD), while the HGTV Canada channel had been acquired by Toronto-based media company Corus Entertainment.

The relationship between Corus and WBD seemed to be a healthy one until June 2024, when Corus announced that WBD had informed Corus that some of its programming and brand licences would be ending at the end of that year.

Days later, rival media company Rogers Communications said it had reached an agreement with WBD to take over the Canadian rights to its lifestyle brands, including HGTV, Food Network, Magnolia Network, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, and more, all effective January 1, 2025. And that led to the situation we are in now.

As noted above, Corus has said that on Monday, December 30, 2024, it will relaunch the current HGTV Canada channel under a new brand, Home Network. Rogers has also confirmed that two days later, on Wednesday, January 1, 2025, it intends to launch a new Canadian cable channel under the HGTV brand.

So why did WBD decide to move all these brands to Rogers? For now we’re still not entirely sure, and can only speculate. Perhaps WBD wanted all of these lifestyle brands moved under one umbrella in Canada, and Rogers made the best offer to do just that.

It likely wasn’t unnoticed by WBD, though, that Corus—like many media companies, and especially those not part of a larger telecom conglomerate like Bell or Rogers—has had significant financial difficulties in recent years, leading to a significant drop in Corus share prices (to be clear, WBD has experienced many of the same difficulties itself). Those issues potentially put into doubt Corus’ ability to fully pay its debts to WBD and others. Indeed, the announcement it would lose rights to these WBD brands only exacerbated the matter.

Which programs from the old HGTV will move to the new HGTV, and which will stay on Home Network?

In general, you should expect that any HGTV programming filmed in the United States featuring primarily American personalities, with new seasons starting on or after January 1, 2025, will air on the new Rogers-owned HGTV channel — and repeats of past seasons of those shows should eventually move there as well. This would include shows like Good Bones, Home Town, My Lottery Dream Home, Rock the Block, and the like.

However, most of the channel's Canadian personalities, even those that have also been featured on HGTV U.S., have direct relationships with Corus Entertainment, and many have already been confirmed as carrying over their series to Home Network, at least for the time being. That includes Pamela Anderson (Pamela's Garden of Eden), Bryan and Sarah Baeumler (Renovation Resort and Building Baeumler), Ali Budd (House of Ali), Scott McGillivray (Scott's Vacation Home Rules), and Randy Spracklin (Rock Solid Builds). These programs will be supplemented with programs from third-party American, British, and Australian producers. You can read more about Home Network's relaunch programming plans here. Barring a very significant surprise, these programs will not be available on the new Rogers-owned version of HGTV.

Corus has also said that some HGTV U.S. programming premiering in 2024 will continue to air on Home Network into 2025, rather than moving directly to the new Rogers-run HGTV.

Occasionally there have been cases where Canadian personalities whose programs air on HGTV U.S. have also appeared on U.S.-produced programs, e.g. the Baeumlers appearing on Rock the Block. There may be similar cases in the future where personalities otherwise tied to Home Network will be seen in HGTV U.S. programming aired on the Rogers-owned channel, but we are not yet sure when those situations will arise.

What about the Property Brothers?

It's telling that Corus has not made any announcement about Canadian twins Drew and Jonathan Scott remaining under the Corus umbrella, even though the Scott brothers basically started their TV career at Corus' W Network (before their original show was picked up by HGTV U.S., and eventually moving to HGTV Canada here after Corus bought that channel). It's very possible that their most recent HGTV U.S. talent deal, which was described as "exclusive", overrode any relationship they had previously with Corus — meaning their future programming might end up on the new Rogers-owned HGTV channel in Canada.

What about Mike Holmes?

If you're wondering where the host of the 2003–08 HGTV Canada series Holmes on Homes (and several subsequent HGTV series) fits into these changes, you're a couple of contracts out of date — Mike Holmes has not had any association with HGTV Canada in several years. His programs have aired more recently on HGTV U.S., but it’s unlikely he’ll make any significant appearances on either Home Network or the new Rogers-owned HGTV going forward.

The Holmes family briefly took their talents to Bell Media / CTV in 2019, then about three years later sold their programming catalogue to Blue Ant Media, which now has exclusive rights to Mike's past series. The family's most recent series, Holmes on Homes: Building a Legacy, begins airing on Blue Ant's Cottage Life channel in November 2024.

I'm not a Rogers customer. Will I have to subscribe to Rogers Cable to keep getting HGTV?

You will probably be OK if you subscribe to a different TV service — but there are caveats.

Rogers has said it will "work with Canadian distribution partners to make the [WBD] content widely available". In short, much as existing Rogers-owned channels like Sportsnet and FX are available on other providers like Bell Fibe TV, Cogeco, and Eastlink, Rogers has thus far said that it's willing to let other providers carry its new channels, like HGTV.

But that carriage is subject to negotiations between Rogers and each provider — and it's not a foregone conclusion that every provider will agree to carry the new channels. Telus, for example, recently decided to drop the former OLN entirely, and not carry its replacement, the newly-launched Rogers-owned version of Bravo.

If you are an existing subscriber to a Rogers-owned TV service — including "classic" Rogers Digital Cable, Rogers Xfinity TV (previously known as Ignite TV), or Shaw Direct satellite TV — and subscribe to a tier that had the old HGTV, we expect you should get Rogers' new version of HGTV. For other providers, you will have to contact them directly to clarify, or perhaps wait and see.

In the event your service provider does not carry the new version of HGTV — or if you do not (and do not want) to subscribe to a traditional cable-style TV service, and perhaps have been getting HGTV programming through Corus’ StackTV — Rogers has said that all programming on its new HGTV channel will also be available on Citytv+, its streaming package available on Amazon Prime Video Channels.

As of this writing in October 2024, Citytv+ costs $4.99 per month (plus applicable taxes), on top of the price of Amazon Prime itself (currently $9.99 per month or $99.00 per year). [All prices in this article are in Canadian dollars before applicable sales taxes, which vary by province, and are subject to change without notice.]

Which other providers have announced that they will (or will not) carry the new HGTV?

As of November 13, 2024, the providers we are aware of that have announced plans related to this transition are as follows:

• Hay Communications (rural southwestern Ontario): Stated "[w]e will do our best to keep popular channels and content, for example [...] HGTV in their current position."
• SaskTel (Saskatchewan): Has announced they will maintain the current HGTV Canada under its new name Home Network, but has not made any announcement about carrying the new version of HGTV.

If there are updates about other major providers that are (or aren't) carrying the new Rogers version of HGTV, we will endeavour to add them to this article.

Why can't (or won't) Rogers just take over the existing HGTV channel?

While Rogers will be acquiring Canadian rights to the HGTV brand, neither Rogers nor WBD can force Corus to sell the existing HGTV Canada channel or any other associated assets. Thus, Corus has the right to do what it wishes with the channel (within the CRTC's rules), and for the time being it will attempt to repurpose that channel licence as a fully-controlled channel called Home Network, as noted above.

That said, in many ways it's easier for Rogers to launch HGTV as a new service rather than simply taking over the old one. If it did, it'd have to pay extra money to Corus, and then money on top of that to a CRTC-mandated benefits package typically required during ownership transfers, to take over the existing channel. As it stands, Rogers can leverage the well-known HGTV brand to help its service quickly build a subscriber base, without paying to acquire an existing channel licence.

Wasn’t Corus owned by Shaw, which Rogers bought?

Not quite. Corus Entertainment was spun off from Shaw Communications in 1999. From then until 2023, the Shaw family owned the majority of voting shares in both companies, and it’s fair to say the two companies had fairly close relations during that time.

But Rogers’ merger with Shaw Communications, completed in early 2023, did not affect the ownership of Corus, which remains a separate company controlled by the Shaw family. (The Shaw family did, however, gain a significant number of non-voting shares in Rogers as part of the merger.)

So I will need to look up a new channel number for the new HGTV?

Maybe, but not necessarily. TV providers have the right to organize their channels in whatever way they see fit, subject to CRTC-mandated change notice requirements and any clauses in their agreements with channel operators.

We would not be surprised, for example, if Rogers Cable just ends up putting its new HGTV channel in the same channel positions as the Corus-owned version (e.g. channel 46 on Rogers' Toronto cable systems). At least one third-party TV provider, Hay Communications in Ontario, has already indicated it intends to simply swap the new Rogers-operated versions of channels like HGTV into the channel numbers already occupied by those brands.

That said, Corus is on record as intending to "assert[] the rights of [Corus'] channels to continue to be on the air, on cable, on satellite, in the position they’ve always been." In short, Corus would strongly prefer that its existing channel Home Network maintain that same channel 46 position on Rogers Cable in Toronto, and that Rogers find a different channel number for its new HGTV.

However, it's not guaranteed that every provider that picks up the new HGTV will even keep Home Network, as we'll get into next.

If my provider carries the new HGTV, will I also still get Home Network?

As of now, that isn't guaranteed, particularly in the case of Rogers.

We don't know the specifics of Corus' agreements with the various TV providers across Canada, though we doubt that most of those agreements would all simultaneously expire at the end of the year. In other words, most providers that carry the current HGTV should carry the rebranded Home Network for some time to come, even if it ends up being on a different channel number.

However, industry publication Cartt.ca revealed in November 2024 that Rogers has been trying to remove Corus channels like the future Home Network from its main packages, but has been blocked from doing so thus far under the CRTC's so-called "standstill" procedures. Cartt also reported that Rogers' overall distribution deals with Corus expire at the end of 2024, but the standstill situation might still block Rogers from dropping Corus channels immediately.

In short, even if Rogers carries both the new HGTV and Home Network for a short period of time, it's not guaranteed that the latter will stay on Rogers for long.

As noted above, other providers might do the same. The above-referenced Hay Communications, for example, has not yet indicated any plans to carry Home Network, just the new version of HGTV.

If your provider does end up not carrying (or dropping) Home Network, your best bet would likely be to subscribe to StackTV, Corus' over-the-top streaming package. For most Canadians, the most straightforward way to get Stack TV is as an add-on channel on the Amazon Prime Video streaming platform, where it currently costs $12.99 per month (again, on top of the cost of Amazon Prime itself).

Has the CRTC approved this? Could they stop it?

Rogers does not require any explicit approval from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), Canada's media and telecommunications regulator, to proceed with the launch of its new version of HGTV, for a couple of key reasons.

First, since its "Let's Talk TV" policy was released in 2015, the CRTC has not enforced most kinds of genre protection policies that were commonplace in years past, which might have otherwise blocked the launch of another service in the exact same category as an existing Canadian channel.

In short, if Rogers or anyone else wants to launch a new version of HGTV — or any similar channel with a similar programming focus under a different brand — they are free to do so, and any complaints Corus might have on that launch would likely end up being ignored (or summarily dismissed) by the CRTC. For that matter, Rogers could also take an existing specialty channel and reformat it as HGTV (as Rogers did recently with OLN / Bravo) and there would be no repercussions.

As for the HGTV brand itself, that is purely a contractual matter between Corus, WBD, and Rogers. If Corus thinks there are any issues with that move, it would be up to them to seek a resolution through the courts (as Bell did when it argued it had protections against Rogers from using the Discovery Channel brand). Corus has filed for court injunctions related to some of the other legal matters discussed earlier in this article. But Corus has not, to our knowledge, sought any court intervention related to the HGTV brand licence as of this writing, which suggests that they do not believe there's a case related to that matter they could win.

Second, if Rogers chooses not to use an existing channel licence — a likely possibility given the relatively small number of channels it operates directly right now — it won't need to apply to the CRTC in advance of the channel launching. Under that same 2015 policy, any Canadian company can launch a new channel without CRTC approval, and does not need to apply for a licence until it reaches 200,000 subscribers.

The new HGTV may very well exceed that threshold the moment it launches, but the point is that Rogers can launch the service, then apply and wait for the CRTC to take as much time as it wants to give it full approval — and not the other way around.

Significant revisions

• November 13, 2024 — various updates about how Rogers Cable and some other providers plan to handle the transition
• October 22, 2024 — initial publication (a few small updates were added shortly after first publish)