This Week in WCIW #70

Update (June 30): Our guide to July programming will be posted on Saturday, July 2. We apologize for the delay.

Hello there. Welcome to the June 27, 2022, 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.

I'm happy to be back with you after a few weeks of travel. That said, my time this past week has still been fairly limited, so we're making a slight change to the plan we published a few weeks ago.

This will be a regular newsletter with some (though not necessarily all) of the happenings related to Canadian TV in the past few weeks – including a quick recap of fall TV announcements, and a few other industry happenings.

Later this week – ideally by Friday, being July 1 – we hope to publish our monthly guide to new programming for July. Because of that, we do not expect to publish a newsletter next Monday, July 4. Our next regular newsletter should be published on July 11.

Programming news

The major Canadian networks announced their fall programming plans earlier this month:

• CBC Television announced a lineup heavy on Canadian programming as usual, including co-productions Fakes (with Netflix), Stuff the British Stole (a TV series based on the podcast co-produced by CBC and ABC Australia), and the previously-announced The North Water (previously released by Super Channel in Canada and AMC+ in the U.S.).
   
  This fall, CBC will also air season 3 of the UK/French remake of War of the Worlds, as well as the British miniseries Ridley Road, which aired in the U.S. on PBS this spring.
   
• CTV picked up four new series for its main network for the fall: East New York (airing in the U.S. on CBS / produced/distributed by Warner Bros.), The Rookie: Feds (ABC / eOne),  Alaska Daily (initially announced as Alaska – ABC / 20th TV), and Celebrity Jeopardy! (ABC / Sony). Midseason pickups include Alert (Fox / Fox Entertainment), True Lies (CBS / 20th TV), and the reboot of Night Court (NBC / Universal TV). Meanwhile, CTV Sci-Fi has picked up Supernatural spinoff The Winchesters (CW / Warner).
   
  None were particularly surprising – except maybe Night Court, though many CTV stations did air the original. Though as we noted in our projections a few weeks ago, CTV will not be able to simsub East New York on CBS in much of the country during CBS' NFL doubleheader weeks, barring the unlikely case it slides back its full primetime lineup and forgoes simsubs on the ABC shows. That's because CTV often simulcasts those NFL games, but has almost always just vamped until 8:00 p.m. ET with its own postgame coverage to get back on schedule. Global has worked around similar issues by delaying its full Sunday lineup any week CBS has sports overruns, even if it's not airing the sports in question.
   
  The full-day schedules for CTV and CTV2 indicate that the latter will actually have a more robust schedule than the past few years – no more nightly reruns of Criminal Minds, but several returning CW-originated series like Superman & Lois and In the Dark. And CTV2 will still be airing Thursday Night Football despite those rights moving exclusively to Amazon in the U.S. – presumably so it can still simulcast the local stations that will carry it in weeks when teams like Buffalo, Seattle, and New England are playing.
   
• Global is picking up So Help Me Todd, Fire Country, and The Real Love Boat (all three of which will air in the U.S. on CBS and will be produced or distributed by CBS Studios – no surprises), and the previously-announced (and delayed) Monarch (Fox / Fox Entertainment).
   
  Slightly more surprisingly, it is also taking over the rights to Home Economics (ABC / Lionsgate), which previously aired on CTV. However, having been paired with Abbott Elementary on ABC (and Global less likely to give that one up), it seems to make sense to move it.
   
  Coming to Corus specialty channels, in addition to a number of Peacock original programs, are Sky UK's The Lazarus Project, The Midwich Cuckoos, and Funny Woman, and CW-originated series Tom Swift (produced by CBS), Walker: Independence (ditto, despite being the spinoff of a series airing on CTV's channels), and Gotham Knights (Warner).
   
• Meanwhile, new programming on Citytv includes Quantum Leap (NBC / Universal), Lopez vs. Lopez (ditto), Dateline NBC (previously on IndieNet), Jimmy Kimmel Live! (most recently on CMT Canada) in late night, and The Jennifer Hudson Show (produced by WB) in daytime. (No real news about Rogers' specialty channels.)
   
• Finally, having lost 60 Minutes a couple of years ago, CHCH and CHEK will be adding America's Funniest Home Videos, presumably in that same Sunday 7:00 p.m. timeslot. CHCH will also add action series Professionals, the new CBS-syndicated iteration of Women of Wrestling, as well as Inside Edition, and its upfront video seems surprisingly confident that there'll be a second season of NBC's low-rated American Song Contest. Otherwise, it seems to be status quo on the IndieNet stations, apart from a few new repeat series like Hawaii Five-O and Family Feud Canada on Yes TV.

Incidentally, since these announcements, there've already been a couple of additional U.S. moves: CBS swapped The Amazing Race and The New Real Love Boat on Wednesday nights, meaning that Global now has a conflict Wednesdays at 9:00 p.m. ET between Abbott Elementary/Home Economics and TRLB, and CTV has one Wednesdays at 10:00 between TAR and Big Sky.

In other programming news (just briefly summarizing for now):

• Several streaming services have released their July programming plans. Again, we'll have a separate post/email with full listings later this week, but we'll mention a few newly-announced titles of note now.
   
  Crave will be adding last year's James Bond film No Time to Die, recent Canadian Screen Award winner Scarborough, and the 2006–11 series Friday Night Lights all on July 1, and will continue to carry Love Island [USA] this summer after its move to Peacock stateside.
   
  Prime Video's listings (emailed to us) include Spider-Man: No Way Home and House of Gucci both on July 15, and Uncharted on July 29, while Netflix' July lineup is heavy on originals, including those remaining season 4 episodes of Stranger Things. Paramount+ (in a lineup also emailed to us) will be adding last year's season 5 of The Good Fight, and will re-add The Good Wife and Madam Secretary, on June 5.
   
• Global will finally air the second season of its original series Departure, which was released in the U.S. on Peacock last August, starting on Wednesday, July 13.
   
• CTV has apparently picked up The Challenge: USA, a version of the long-running MTV competitive reality series airing on CBS starting July 6, featuring stars from various other CBS reality series, which will eventually lead into The Challenge: Global Championship on Paramount+ (at least in the U.S.). The fact that it's based on an existing MTV series seems to have given CTV dibs in this case, given the long-running CTV/MTV deal.
   
• BBC biodiversity series The Green Planet with Sir David Attenborough, which was filmed in part in B.C. and northern Ontario, will air on BBC Earth starting on Wednesday, July 6.

Other notes

• As mentioned a few months ago, FuboTV will be the exclusive Canadian streaming home for (English) Premier League soccer games starting with the upcoming 2022–23 season. In anticipation of this, until June 30, the service is offering discounted initial offers on its quarterly and annual plans – including one year for $99.99 (before applicable sales taxes, we assume), $80 off the regular annual price.
   
• At its upfront this month, Corus also announced a deal with Paramount to "launch" its free ad-supported streaming TV (or "FAST") service Pluto TV in Canada this fall. We put "launch" in quotation marks because, technically, Pluto had already launched in Canada, just with a very small selection of channels (like one devoted to Mystery Science Theater 3000), though Pluto seems to taken all of the existing channels down in Canada for now.
   
  The Canadian version promises "more than 100 unique, curated channels and over 20,000 hours of content", with some of that content coming from Corus, and Corus selling the ads in Canada. The deal is based on a similar arrangement that Pluto recently implemented in the Nordics with local streaming provider Viaplay.
   
• The Online Streaming Act, a.k.a. Bill C-11, which amends the Broadcasting Act to enable foreign streaming services to be brought under Canadian regulation, received third-reading approval in the House of Commons this past Tuesday. It now goes to the Senate, and though approval there should be a formality, it may take some time to be studied and eventually go through. Any related new policies still have to be drafted and approved by the CRTC which will likely take several more months.
   
• Meanwhile, the CBC's CRTC licences have been renewed through 2027. In a split decision, the majority of the panel decided to approve a more "flexible" approach allowing programs on both traditional and online platforms (the latter including the likes of CBC Gem) to count towards regulatory requirements. The CBC welcomed the decision, while the corporation's main union interpreted it as a decision that could allow further cuts to local newscasts on broadcast TV in favour of further spending on online content.

Mailbag

Here's some of the reader questions we've received recently by email (hello@wherecaniwatch.ca) or Twitter (@wherewatchtv). 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.

Sylvain: Where can I watch season 3 of All Rise in Canada?

Response: Some background for those who are less familiar: the third season of the revived American legal drama series starring Simone Missick, which previously aired on broadcast TV (CBS and CTV) from 2019 to 2021, premiered earlier this month on OWN in the U.S., following its cancellation by CBS, and a subsequent deal between the Discovery-owned OWN and producer Warner Bros. (prior to the WBD merger taking effect).

At first glance, it would seem obvious for the series to move to Corus' licensed Canadian version of OWN in Canada as well. But because CTV aired the first two seasons, we would expect Bell Media to have first right of refusal to air subsequent seasons, even if it moved to a different network in the United States.

And presumably Bell would want to hold onto those rights, considering the series regularly garnered upwards of one million Canadian viewers during its two CBS seasons – though obviously it would no longer have the benefit of simsub – while OWN is a fairly small player in Canadian TV.

We think that would point to the new season of All Rise most likely airing on CTV Drama Channel (where, if memory serves, Bell also ran reruns of the CBS seasons). However, we haven't seen any indication yet of an airdate in Canada.

Perhaps the rights are settled and Bell just hasn't announced an airdate yet – one that might better suit its needs than the American airdate. But as situations like the recent delayed moves of SEAL Team and Evil from Global to Paramount+ have shown, occasionally there are complications with these kinds of contracts when the programs move between different kinds of services.

Christine: Could you please put Five Days at Memorial on your list of series to watch for? It is a limited series to air on Apple TV+ but I haven’t heard anything about it for Canada.

Response: We understand the skepticism about programs on streaming services not being available in Canada, and from time to time it's been valid for many services, even Netflix and Prime Video, where programs described as "originals" in one country may not be available in others.

But that hasn't really been an issue with Apple, which has generally bought worldwide streaming rights to all of original-commission programs. So it's generally safe to assume that almost any new program that is being promoted as being available on Apple TV+ should be available there worldwide – including Canada. Even for series co-produced by international broadcasters, like Israeli series Tehran, Apple still has non-exclusive streaming rights in the originating country.

Five Days at Memorial – a drama about a hospital affected by Hurricane Katrina, which was partly filmed in Toronto – is being produced by ABC Signature, but at far as we can tell it will be available on Apple TV+ in the U.S., Canada, and everywhere else the service is available. Assuming Apple has confidence in the series, you'll probably see more marketing in Canada closer to the premiere date, August 12.

Grant: Just wondering about the HBO (Max) documentary Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes. I saw it listed on a list of recent premieres but only realized later it isn't available in Canada yet. Any word who might be picking it up? It would make sense to me if Crave grabbed it to pair with the Chernobyl series.

Response: We agree, it would make a lot of sense on Crave. However, it does seem to be a slightly different scenario from other HBO-aired documentaries in that it appears to have been an acquisition from Sky after it was already produced (as opposed to, for example, the Chernobyl miniseries, which HBO was a co-producer on from the start). This seems to mean Bell would presumably have to make a separate deal with Sky, or with producers Top Hat, for the rights.

It doesn't seem likely that this is covered by Sky / NBCUniversal's output deal with Corus – which we've seen described as covering scripted programming, but not documentaries – but that is a possibility nonetheless. Failing that, it's possible there's a Canadian theatrical distribution deal that takes precedence, or it could always be picked up by a service like CBC Gem.

Recent updates on WCIW

Shortly after our May programming guide went out, we added a post about a golf exhibition that has already taken place. The only other change of note has been publishing a new version of our guide to watching the Tour de France in Canada (the 2022 edition begins this Friday).

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