This Week in WCIW #8

Welcome to the February 8 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.

We know a bunch of new people signed up for emails this week. Based on what most of those people were looking at, we should let you know: there are no new developments about Discovery+ in Canada. The only change is that the Discovery+ Twitter account is now recommending signing up to their own email list (via this page) for future updates on availability.

The biggest story in the Canadian media industry this past week was the continued restructuring at Bell Media, owner of CTV, TSN, Crave, and of course Discovery Channel Canada, resulting in the departures of at over 200 staff, including both on-air personalities and behind-the-scenes figures. Steve Faguy has been doing a great job covering the changes both on his own website and in an unlocked article on Cartt.ca. We don't have much that would be worth adding to that at this point, beyond extending our best wishes to those affected by the changes.

Beyond that, there haven't been any big media-related stories that have captured our attention this week, so let's get into a few programming updates.

Programming news

• In keeping with Corus' deal for Peacock originals, W Network will air the Punky Brewster revival starting Thursday, March 4 at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT, in the same timeslot it had aired the Saved by the Bell revival in the fall (and a couple of weeks after its February 25 U.S. premiere on Peacock), with special rebroadcasts of the pilot that weekend on YTV. The full season will be available on Corus' StackTV add-on for Prime Video Canada at that time. That, too, is similar to how SBTB was rolled out in the fall – and we'll note that linear subscribers to W Network were not given similar on-demand access to the full season until every episode had aired, so we expect it'll be the same for Punky.
• CTV Sci-Fi Channel has picked up Superman & Lois, the latest TV series in the DC Arrowverse (distributed, of course, by Warner Bros.), with episodes airing Tuesdays at 9:00 p.m. ET starting February 23, the same time as regular U.S. timeslot on The CW (except the latter will be airing the 90-minute premiere episode starting at 8:00). These iterations of the characters first appeared in Supergirl, which continues to air in first-run on Showcase in Canada, but the Arrowverse series as a whole have been split between CTV / CTV Sci-Fi (Arrow, early seasons of The Flash, and Legends of Tomorrow, and now S&L), Netflix (which took over first-run rights to The Flash a few years back and also airs Black Lightning), and Global / Showcase (Supergirl and Batwoman).
• On Sunday night, CTV announced (via on-air promo) the pickup of Rebel, starring Katey Sagal and based on the life of Erin Brockovich, airing in simulcast with ABC on Thursdays starting April 8. The series is produced by ABC Signature in association with Sony, similar to a few other current series airing on both networks like The Good Doctor and For Life.
• Specialty channel Makeful (currently in free preview through early April) has picked up the Australian version of Pooch Perfect, a pet grooming series hosted by Rebel Wilson (and distributed by Beyond Rights), airing Tuesday at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT starting this week. (This appears to be different from an American version, also hosted by Wilson, which will be airing on ABC Tuesdays at 8pm E/P starting March 30; it's not yet clear if Makeful has Canadian rights to that show as well.)

Recent updates on WCIW

We added a post about Judas and the Black Messiah, which, in Canada, debuts this Friday in theatres where open and on premium VOD. It's a Warner Bros. release, so if you've seen our recent posts about WW84 or The Little Things, it's basically the same deal.

We've also updated our FX / FXX post to reflect the lineup announcements for Disney+'s Star hub mentioned in last week's newsletter.

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