Watching This Week #124

Welcome to the September 18, 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.

This week, we look at how the recent Disney-Charter dispute and resolution might affect Canada, plus we have updates on CTV's fall scheduling plans, and answer a question about the Australian series The Newsreader. That's after the listings for this coming week.

What's new this week – September 18–24

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.

• Netflix: My Little Pony: Make Your Mark (part 5 – Monday); Kountry Wayne: A Woman's Prayer (comedy special – Tuesday); The Saint of Second Chances (baseball doc – Tuesday); Kengan Ashura (season 2 – Thursday); Snowpiercer (2013 film – Thursday); Sex Education (final season – Thursday); Love is Blind (season 5 – Friday); Spy Kids: Armageddon (family film franchise reboot – Friday)
• Disney+: Irrésistible (French rom-com series – Wendesday); Marvel Studios Assembled ("The Making of Secret Invasion" – Wednesday); Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir (season 5 – Wednesday); No One Will Save You (direct-to-streaming sci-fi film – Friday);
• Crave: The Traitors NZ (season 1 of the New Zealand iteration of the reality franchise – Friday, Sept. 14*); The Amazing Race Canada (season 9 – Friday); Big George Foreman (2023 sports biopic – Friday); The Guild Garage (season 7 – Friday); Mindcage (2022 thriller film – Friday); Real Time with Bill Maher (resuming new episodes without writers – Fridays) [never mind]; I Have Nothing (Carolyn Taylor "docu-comedy" series – Saturday)
• Prime Video: Neighbours (new season of the Australian soap – Mondays to Thursdays); Cassandro (wrestling biopic – Friday); The Continental (John Wick spin-off miniseries – Fridays)
• CBC Gem and/or CBC TV: Family Feud Canada (season 5 – weeknights); This Hour Has 22 Minutes (season 31 – Tuesdays); Bones of Crows (limited series version of 2022 film – Wednesdays); Dragons' Den (season 18 – Thursdays); Roads in February (2018 Canadian film – Friday); 2nd Legacy Awards (Sunday)
• Paramount+ (also available as a channel on Prime Video and Apple TV): Jersey Shore (full 2009–12 series – Tuesday); Jersey Shore: Family Vacation (all past seasons – Tuesday); Kroll Show (2013–15 series – Tuesday); Stars on Mars (2023 Fox reality series – Tuesday); Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (S1-2 of 1987 animated series – Tuesday); Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court (Showtime docuseries – Fridays); Gray (spy thriller series – Friday)
• Apple TV+: The Super Models (docuseries – Wednesday); Still Up (comedy series – Fridays)
• BritBox (also available as a channel on Prime Video and Apple TV): The Commander (2003–08 series – Monday); Avoidance (comedy series, season 1 – Wednesday)
• Global (also on StackTV): I Can See Your Voice (season 3 – Tuesdays)
• Citytv (also on Citytv+): Krapopolis (Dan Harmon-produced animated sitcom set in ancient Greece – Sundays)
• FX (also on Citytv+): American Horror Story: Delicate (Wednesdays)
• Starz (also available as an add-on/channel on Crave, Prime Video, and Apple TV): Somewhere in Queens (2023 Ray Romano comedy film – Friday)

This week in deals

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.

• Still available for a few more days, for new and returning subscribers of the applicable service: Disney+ for $1.99 per month ($10 off) for 3 months through Sept. 20; Crave Premium for $9.99 per month ($10 off) for 3 months through Sept. 21

A slightly narrower Spectrum

This past week’s settlement of the dispute between Disney and Charter Communications, which affected around 14 million U.S. cable customers’ access to channels like ESPN, seems to be an inflection point in the transition between the cable bundle in North America and the move to a new form of streaming-centred bundle.

In summary:

• After an eleven-day standoff that covered most of tennis’ U.S. Open and threatened to blackout Monday Night Football, Charter’s Spectrum cable TV subscribers have resumed receiving ABC (in the network’s owned-and-operated markets), and in most cases the ESPN channels, Disney Channel, National Geographic, and FX.
   
• Going forward, most of these customers will also get the ad-supported version of Disney+ at no extra charge (and apparently they will have the ability to add Hulu, likely for less than usual), while many will get ESPN+ as well.
   
• In exchange, Disney will no longer require Charter to include or pay for several of its channels. Most of these are spin-off services like Disney Junior, Nat Geo Wild, and FXX, but they also include Freeform, one of the oldest U.S. basic cable channels still in operation. Even so, almost all of their original programs eventually get funnelled to other channels with wider audiences, and/or Hulu or Disney+.

While a few disagree, the majority of analysts we’ve come across seem to be in agreement that Disney agreeing to let Charter drop some of its channels in exchange for its streaming services is a win for Charter, a loss (though maybe only in the short term) for Disney, and a big step towards an eventual “rebundling" of cable TV.

“But what does this have to do with Canada?”, some of you are probably asking at this point.

Well, the Disney-Charter dispute and settlement have some parallels with Eastlink's dropping of Corus-owned channels earlier this year.

Obviously, of course, the result in that case has thus far been very different – there has been no indication that Corus' channels will return to Eastlink anytime soon. And a few of the specifics of the Canadian market mean that, with the availability of Corus' StackTV, it's a lot easier to get Corus channels elsewhere without switching providers entirely.

But we do find it curious that, of the Corus channels not included in StackTV, many are equivalents or have other parallels to the channels Charter is dropping, including Nat Geo Wild and ABC Spark (the Canadian equivalent of Freeform). MovieTime could similarly be seen as a Canadian version of FXM, FX's all-movies offshoot.

And while Corus' Canadian versions of Disney Junior and Disney XD are included in StackTV, some similar spin-off channels like History2 and Boomerang (an adjunct to Cartoon Network) are not.

Knowingly or not, Corus may have already conceded which Canadian channels are likely to survive to the next stage of linear TV, and which ones aren't.

With Disney-Charter as a precedent, Canadian TV providers may feel emboldened themselves to pressure channel operators to reduce the number of channels they offer – and, perhaps, to ensure that any exclusive programs on their streaming services (as has happened occasionally with StackTV) remain available to their subscribers.

Again, the parallels between the Canadian and U.S. TV markets are not exact. But, as the streaming market matures, it does seem likely that the number of traditional cable TV channels will continue to contract, and we will see more TV providers in both countries reworking their value propositions to skew more towards streaming bundles.

Programming news

• CTV / CTV2 has finally confirmed its fall scheduling plans [fixed link, again] which include a number of Canadian series (like new seasons of Transplant), unscripted series (such as Kitchen Nightmares and Snake Oil), and Canadian unscripted series (specifically The Traitors Canada and more episodes of Battle of the Generations). New foreign scripted series will be limited to the final ten episodes of the rebooted Magnum P.I., which were produced prior to the U.S. strikes.
   
  As for how CTV will handle that roadblock of unscripted rights it has on Wednesday nights (save Survivor on Global)? Generally it'll be Snake Oil airing in the access hour (7 p.m. ET/PT / 10 p.m. CT), The Masked Singer simsubbed with Fox at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT, original sitcom Children Ruin Everything at 9:00, and extended episodes of The Amazing Race simulcast with CBS at 9:30. However, in the Maritimes and Alberta, the order will be TAR out of simulcast at 7:00 AT/MT, Children at 8:30, Masked at 9:00, and Snake Oil simsubbed at 10:00.
   
  Meanwhile, Celebrity Wheel of Fortune will be pre-aired on Tuesdays, and Celebrity Jeopardy! will air in post-release on Thursdays.
   
• T+E's Creep Week event will air this year from October 6 to 15, and will include the North American premiere of Haunted Discoveries along a number of other new episodes from various series.

Mailbag

Here's a reader question 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.

Doris: Is the Australian series The Newsreader coming to any Canadian streaming service?

WCIW: The Newsreader – the ABC Australia drama series starring Anna Torv (of Fringe and Mindhunter fame) which premiered in 2021, and recently returned for a second season in that country – has to this point only been available in Canada through Telus Presents, an on-demand offering within that company's Optik TV service in B.C. and Alberta. The series' international distributor, eOne, announced it had sold Canadian rights to Telus in early 2022.

It’s not clear to us whether the show is still available there, however, as the show is no longer listed on the Telus website (and we are not in Alberta or B.C. to be able to check the service itself). And in any case it has unfortunately never been available to Telus' mobile subscribers, including those with Stream+, in the rest of Canada.

We posted an article a couple of years ago about a series titled I Hate Suzie which was handled very similarly, except that for The Newsreader, even buying on DVD does not seem to be an option yet.

It is possible that The Newsreader may come to another Canadian TV channel or streaming service in the future, but we have not heard about anything imminent.

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