This Week in WCIW #3 – March 1, 2020

Joshua Gorner -

Welcome to This Week in WCIW, a weekly (or so) recap of news about broadcast and streaming content affecting Canada – some major, some probably just interesting to the proprietor.

Updated March 2 to add FX item, which we saw last week but forgot.

  • Rogers has confirmed that FX Canada it will be carrying Devs and Mrs. America, two new FX series that will premiere in the U.S. on a new "FX on Hulu" section of Disney's streaming service for older viewers. FX, of course, is still only available in Canada with a TV provider subscription.
  • The expansion to CBS All Access to a ViacomCBS "House of Brands" seems to be officially on, but details (especially in terms of how CBSAA Canada might be affected) seem to be scant for the moment. So far this seems to just be a pre-announcement – if other recent announcements are a guide, there'll probably be a much bigger "investor day" in a few months with more concrete details, similar to what we've seen for Disney+, HBO Max and Peacock.
  • In the meantime, ViacomCBS is moving its brands closer together by shifting the next season of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars, which starts in June, from VH1 to Showtime. Any U.S. move probably wouldn't have had an effect here since OUTtv and Crave already share the Canadian first-run rights to new seasons, acquired directly from producers World of Wonder, but Crave being Showtime's Canadian output partner certainly can't hurt with promotion.
  • We'll likely have some more about this in future posts, but CBC Gem, the free service from the public broadcaster which has been the premiere Canadian outlet for American series like Documentary Now! and Pen15, is adding several Canadian series from the 1990s onwars in March, some of which have been hard to find in recent years. Among the series being added (at least in part): Slings and Arrows (which also recently became available in Canada on Acorn TV); Ken Finkleman's The Newsroom, and the Rick Mercer vehicle Made in Canada.

We're a bit restricted on time this weekend so that'll be it for now.