Where can I watch Discovery Channel programming in Canada in 2025?
Having trouble finding shows like "Deadliest Catch" and "Highway Thru Hell" in Canada? Here's what you need to know.
Listings for June 19-25, 2023; Global announces more summer programming; mailbag questions about "Frayed", "Cruel Summer", and more.
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Welcome to the June 19, 2023, edition of Watching This Week, the weekly newsletter from Where Can I Watch – covering the latest news on where TV shows and movies will be available in Canada.
While it was a notable week in the Canadian media industry (specifically at Bell Media, as we note below), it's been a slow week for programming news – but we did have a time to respond to a few mailbag questions about shows like Frayed, Les revenants, and Cruel Summer. That's all after this week's listings.
Compiled from our monthly listings and/or any subsequent updates we've come across. We strive for accuracy but schedules may change without notice. Some series/seasons may have weekly rollouts; we won't list new episodes every week (though we may note significant episodes such as series finales). *An asterisk denotes programming added in past weeks that we've learned about (or has been rescheduled) since our last newsletter.
As a reminder, we may get an affiliate commission for services you sign up for through links in this newsletter, which helps support our site maintenance, at no additional cost to you. Prices are in Canadian dollars before applicable sales taxes, and may change in the future.
Here's some of the reader questions we've received recently by email (hello@wherecaniwatch.ca). We welcome questions of general interest, and publish a few of them (and our answers) from time to time; messages may be edited for brevity and clarity.
Trevor: I have three questions. (1) Will Season 2 of Frayed air on Showcase any time soon? (2) Has season 2 of the French show Les revenants ever aired in Canada? (3) Showtime shows have been leaving Crave but many aren't yet available on Paramount+, when can we expect to see them on streaming again?
WCIW: For Frayed, it looks like Showcase may have given up the rights entirely, considering that season 1 is no longer available to stream. That does seem weird to us considering it appears to be distributed by Sky / NBCUniversal which Corus has an output deal with (and has maintained streaming rights to several series from), but perhaps the fact that it’s an Australian series means it’s exempt from Corus' regular terms, or perhaps Corus made a deliberate decision to give up the series.
For Les revenants, the series is old enough that unfortunately it’s hard to tell if the second season ever was available to stream here. We found some references to the series having aired in French on CBC-owned specialty channel Ici ARTV, but we can’t tell whether that was both seasons or just the first.
Regarding Showtime, it's up to Paramount to decide when to add those series to Paramount+ Canada, once they've left Crave. But there are two issues that may be at play. The first is that Paramount+ doesn’t yet seem to have the ability to promote the Showtime brand in Canada yet – we assume that this is a transitional period as some of its shows remain available on Crave, and are still branded as Showtime shows there. So Paramount might be holding off until it can fully promote its service as the home of Showtime in Canada to launch more classic programs from that service.
The second factor: it’s possible that, much like services in the U.S. have been removing shows – including, incidentally, Showtime – Paramount may ultimately decide not to add some lesser-viewed Showtime shows in Canada, in order to reduce residuals and/or intra-company licence fees.
In the meantime, many of those Showtime shows remain available for digital purchase.
Shane: Where is season 2 of [Freeform's] Cruel Summer in Canada and why is [Corus-produced] ET Canada promoting it if it's not even accessible here?
WCIW: Cruel Summer is currently airing Monday nights at 10:00pm ET on ABC Spark, the licensed Canadian version of Freeform (formerly ABC Family) operated by Corus. Based on current scheduling, it appears ABC Spark has been airing episodes day-and-date with Freeform since the new season started on June 5 (which we missed at the time, unfortuately).
Unlike most other major Corus-owned channels, ABC Spark remains exclusive to cable subscribers (and not available on StackTV), at least for now. The current season should be available on-demand to cable subscribers for a limited time. The first season of the show remains unavailable to stream anywhere else (apart from the French-language dub, which remains available on Noovo.ca for Vrak subscribers), but it is available for digital purchase.
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