This Week in WCIW #74

Welcome to the August 8, 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.

This week, we have updates about Days of Our Lives, Candy, and a bunch of new (and returning) arrivals to Paramount+. But first...

Not Invented Here+

(This first section this week is mostly about studio news and some analysis about the distant future of a few specific streaming services. Feel free to skip ahead if you're just interested in programming news.)

You may have heard that Warner Bros. Discovery had some news this past week. Basically, as David Zaslav and the new management team (mostly from the legacy Discovery Inc. side) takes charge, they've dispensed just about everything about the previous management strategy of WarnerMedia and Jason Kilar.

Out: Batgirl, early streaming availability, and the HBO Max tech stack (much-maligned but significantly improved since launch).

In: ten-year plans, "genredoms", disappearing content, and the 90 Day Fiancé Universe (which, in fairness, is quite large, and highly-watched).

While we're not as concerned as some seem to be about the future of the HBO brand – WBD still seems to be feeling positively about the team in charge there – otherwise, there seems to be a serious case of "not invented here" syndrome. Which, honestly, is not a huge surprise considering everything that had been reported previously about the differences between Kilar and Zaslav.

From a business standpoint, many of the changes announced still make a certain amount of logical sense, if your primary consideration is the bottom line (as Zaslav's seems to be). But it absolutely seems like a raw deal for those involved in producing movies and TV shows that will never be seen – and more that were released but have now been permanently pulled from distribution – in order for the parent company to claim a tax writeoff.

So ultimately, the big news on the streaming front is that HBO Max and Discovery+ will eventually go away, and an as-yet-unnamed combined service will replace it starting next summer (2023) in the U.S., and other existing HBO Max / HBO Go Asia markets (and maybe a couple more parts of Europe) by late 2024. In the meantime, HBO Max will add some Magnolia Network content, while Discovery+ will soon "domestically" (i.e., in the U.S. only) add a CNN Originals section.

On the investor call where a lot of this was discussed, the closest WBD executives got to discussing how this might ultimately affect Canada was in response to a question about the future of HBO's relationship with Sky, which has a deal for HBO programming in countries including the UK, Germany, and Italy similar to what Bell / Crave has in Canada (and which has similarly blocked the launch of HBO Max there).

Streaming head JB Perrette described Sky as an "important" partner, noted that the Sky territories were not covered by the roadmap they'd just announced, and said "we don't have to deal with that question at this point". We can only assume he'd have said something similar if he'd been asked about Bell.

All told, it sounds like Crave and Discovery+ will be status quo in Canada until at least 2025 – which we basically already knew – but given the speed bumps in international rollout associated with launching the new service elsewhere, it might well be longer.

Programming news

• The future of Days of Our Lives in Canada seemed to be a significant point of confusion in some quarters this past week, after NBC announced the long-running daytime drama, which airs on Global in this country, would become a Peacock exclusive for U.S. viewers starting on September 12.
   
  In the short term, it seems unlikely Global will drop the soap opera, as it presumably has its rights directly from distributor Sony. But NBC's change does mean Global can no longer invoke simultaneous substitution over NBC stations carrying Days, potentially reducing the incentive for Global parent company Corus to keep the show on broadcast as opposed to moving to a cable channel like W Network or streaming-only. We've posted a separate article with further information. (We reached out to Corus for clarification but hadn't heard back by publication time.)
   
• We finally received Paramount+'s August highlights for Canada early last week. Besides the previously-noted Secret Headquarters (August 12) and Beavis and Butt-head revival (August 4), these include the NBCU-distributed BBC series Everything I Know About Love (August 2), Mayim Bialik-directed drama film As They Made Us (August 2), Australian comedic drama series After the Verdict (which appears to have been retitled for North America as After the Trial – August 9), Québec musical film-à-clef Aline (August 9), and recent Paramount-distributed movie Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank (August 30).
   
  Library content arriving or returning includes 1990s CBS series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (August 2); CW series Reign (August 9) and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (August 16); and a number of past MGM and Paramount movies throughout the month.
   
• Disney+ quietly added Hulu miniseries Candy, starring Jessica Biel and Melanie Lynskey, on July 29 (or shortly before), almost three months after its U.S. release. We've posted a separate article with more details.
   
• One of Warner Bros. Discovery's other strategy changes seems to be to end streaming releases on HBO Max (and Crave) for Warner Bros. films right after the shortened 45-day theatrical window, or at least handle these movies more flexibly going forward. Thus, the recent Baz Luhrmann-directed, WB-distributed film Elvis now appears set to become available for premium video on demand (PVOD) rental and purchase this Tuesday – but with no streaming availability for now, likely until the fall.
   
• CBC Television has announced its fall premiere dates, with new seasons and series rolling out starting on Monday, September 12.
   
• Hollywood Suite has just launched a new original series titled Cinema A to Z, with episodes that "explore common themes through a selection of expertly curated movies". The first episode, "Books", is now available on demand and online (free for non-subscribers, at least for now), and will air on the HS 2000s Movies channel on August 21. A second episode, "Monsters", will premiere in October, with more promised in the future.
   
• New this month on Blue Ant channels: On Makeful, The Prince's Master Crafters: The Next Generation (produced for Sky UK) features six amateur craftspeople as they explore Britain's "heritage of traditional crafts", with the final showcase pieces to be judged by Prince Charles; the series starts Wednesdays at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT starting August 10.
   
  On Love Nature, original miniseries Becoming Orangutan explores the "world's largest orangutan rehabilitation centre" in Borneo. It premieres Saturday, August 20 at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT.

Other notes

• Quebecor has quietly acquired heretofore-independent TV and internet service provider (and RiverTV owner) VMedia. At this point, VMedia says it plans to continue operating autonomously under Quebecor ownership, though it will likely offer bundled offerings with Freedom Mobile should the company succeed in buying that Shaw unit as part of the proposed Rogers-Shaw merger.
   
• OneSoccer, the Canadian soccer channel and streaming service backed by Mediapro which owns national team rights, has tried a new tactic in its efforts to get picked up by traditional TV service providers (it's only carried by Telus so far, plus streaming bundler Fubo, in addition to à-la-carte streaming). In a CRTC complaint (ZIP download), the entity that operates the OneSoccer TV channel argues that with Rogers Cable carrying co-owned Sportsnet but not its service, Rogers is giving itself an undue preference to the detriment of OneSoccer.

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.

Ryan: Do you know if Orphan: First Kill will be released on Paramount+ in Canada on the same day as the U.S. (August 19)? I would also love to know when YTV is set to air Are You Afraid of the Dark?: Ghost Island since they don't have it scheduled for the same time as the U.S. (last weekend).

Response: We haven’t heard anything specific about Orphan: First Kill, the psychological horror film starring Julia Stiles, in Canada yet, but Paramount+’s press release about the movie only mentions the U.S., it was not mentioned in the Canadian highlights we received, and one of the producers is Entertainment One which has its own movie distribution arm in Canada. So it wouldn’t surprise us if it was made available for digital rental to start, or maybe on a different streaming service in Canada that’s partnered with eOne, like Prime Video or Crave.

As for Ghost Island, the latest season of the revival of 1990s Canadian horror anthology series Are You Afraid of the Dark?, there's no indication yet, but we wouldn’t be surprised if YTV waits until the fall to air the series, which (as you may know by now) is fairly typical for Corus-owned channels. Honestly, with last weekend having been a long weekend in most of the country, it wouldn’t have been a great weekend to premiere any new TV show in Canada.

Jim: Is Dark Winds set to come to a Canadian streamer?

Response: Dark Winds, the 1970s-set psychological thriller series about two Navajo police officers which counts George R.R. Martin among its executive producers, premiered on the AMC TV channel in June. It's already available on AMC+, which is available as an extra-charge streaming channel on both the Apple TV app and on Prime Video. At this point, we don't expect it to come to any other Canadian streaming service in the near future.

Recent updates on WCIW

In addition to new posts about the aforementioned Days of Our Lives and Candy, we've updated our post about The Last Movie Stars to reflect the increased possibility that it could end up on Discovery+ in Canada, and added a new post about the Premier League, which kicked off its 2022–23 season this past weekend.

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