Posted March 15, 2021 • Last updated March 15, 2021
This Week in WCIW #13
News and notes about the 2021 Canadian Film Fest, "The Parker Andersons", and more.
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Welcome to the March 15, 2021 edition of This Week in WCIW, the weekly newsletter from Where Can I Watch – covering the latest news on where TV shows and movies will be available in Canada. There wasn't a whole lot of that sort of news this past week, but there are a few quick items to share.
Programming news
- For the second year in a row, the Canadian Film Fest, an annual festival focusing on domestic filmmakers that normally takes place in-person in Toronto, will be partnering with Super Channel to present its lineup virtually. Screenings will air on the Super Channel Fuse linear channel (and only the linear channel, i.e. no on-demand streaming) on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT from April 1 to 17, with three lineups of short films airing on Saturday afternoons. The full schedule is available here.
Super Channel is available through most major TV service providers, as well as both Amazon Prime Video Channels and Apple TV Channels, typically for about $10 per month. Both of the over-the-top "channels" services also offer free trials for Super Channel (one month via Amazon, one week via Apple) for first-time subscribers through each service.
- Super Channel has also acquired the Canadian broadcast rights to two new family comedy series which were produced in Canada but commissioned by American channel BYU TV, which focuses on "inspiring, uplifting, and entertaining" programming. The two series, The Parker Andersons and Amelia Parker, are each intended to be able to stand on their own but present different perspectives on the same newly-blended family. The two half-hour series will air together on SC Heart & Home, Monday nights from 8:00-9:00 p.m. ET starting April 19, with on-demand availability the next day.
- This next item is technically news about a service's original series, but it's a fairly novel scenario, at least for Crave: it will be debuting a new French-language original series with English subtitles available, the first such series according to Bell Media (but in keeping with an increasing number of subtitled acquired series on Crave like Beartown, not to mention global services like Netflix). The six-part psychological thriller Sortez-moi de moi (roughly translated as "Get Me Out of Me") will debut on Friday, May 7. In addition to all episodes being available to stream that night at 8:00 p.m. ET, the series will air weekly (en français, bien sûr) on Super Écran.
- Hollywood Suite will carry the British Academy Film Awards, more commonly known as the BAFTAs after the acronym of the organization that presents them, on Sunday, April 11 (the broadcast time has not yet been confirmed). Apparently this is the fifth year Hollywood Suite has carried this particular awards show; it has also carried the Independent Spirit Awards in recent years (this year's edition of that ceremony will be on Thursday, April 22).
Other notes
- In international streaming service news: On Friday, AT&T / WarnerMedia confirmed its plans to launch HBO Max in 39 Latin American and Caribbean markets in June, followed by 21 European territories later in the year. A lower-cost, ad-supported version of the existing U.S. service will also launch in June.
Based on this, AT&T updated its subscriber targets for Max to 120–150 million by the end of 2025, which, according to WarnerMedia head Jason Kilar, "does not include some sizable markets where we have licensing agreements, like the U.K., Germany, Italy and Australia, which we believe represent further upside longer-term beyond the 150 million."
Canada is, of course, another one of HBO's existing licensed markets, not to mention it's now the home of one of WarnerMedia's biggest tech teams working on supporting HBO Max, so it's tempting to try to read something into the decision not to mention this country as among those having "further upside". But ultimately, there is nothing new contradicting previous indications that Bell / Crave's deal for HBO Max programming still has several more years to run.
Recent updates on WCIW
- We've updated the HBO Max overall page to add a couple of more shows like Genera+ion and update links throughout (since many links to Crave were broken by a minor redesign earlier this year).
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