What's new on Canadian streaming & TV in October 2023?
Everything of note we know of that's coming in October, including the returns of "Loki", "The Gilded Age", "Big Mouth", "Upload", and more.
News from mid-December 2022, including winter programming announcements from CTV, Citytv, and W.
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Update: A few hours after posting this week's newsletter, we realized we'd overlooked an announcement sent to us late last week by Hollywood Suite, confirming that they would carry the Ethan Hawke-directed HBO Max docuseries The Last Movie Stars, starting January 12. We've updated our existing article about the series with more information.
Welcome to the December 19, 2022, edition of Watching This Week, the weekly newsletter from Where Can I Watch – covering the latest news on where TV shows and movies will be available in Canada. Read on for news about winter programming plans on CTV, Citytv, and W Network, and an attempt to answer a mailbag question about the year ahead.
Just a heads-up: Barring significant news, this will be our last full edition of this newsletter until January 9. You will still get a newsletter next Monday morning, but it will only contain listings for that week, as we do not expect any significant programming news between now and then. We'll then send our monthly listings for January the following weekend.
Compiled from our monthly listings and/or any subsequent updates we've come across. We strive for accuracy but schedules may change without notice. Some series/seasons may have weekly rollouts; we won't list new episodes every week (though we may note significant episodes such as series finales). Particularly notable premieres (in our rough estimation) are bolded. *An asterisk denotes programming added in past weeks that we've learned about (or has been rescheduled) since our last newsletter.
As a reminder, we may get an affiliate commission for services you sign up for through links in this newsletter, which helps support our site maintenance, at no additional cost to you. Prices are in Canadian dollars before applicable sales taxes, and may change in the future.
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.
Jim: There seems to be quite a lot of wheeling, dealing, price increasing and general consolidating going on amongst the current streaming services south of the border. Does this bode well or ill for us Canadian subscribers in 2023?
WCIW: We're not sure the amount of deal-making has changed significantly year-to-year, though it’s perhaps been more visible in the past year as certain parts of the streaming market start to shake out. Certainly, the scale of some these deals has grown over time.
In the short term, we think things will continue to move fairly gradually here – perhaps more gradually than many in Canada would like – at least for now. The impact of the deals of the past year or so, like the Warner-Discovery merger, will take a few years to become clear here because of existing content sales agreements, and there will be some effects from regulatory changes like the Online Streaming Act (Bill C-11) which will take time to work through.
But even compared to a few years ago, clearly many of the major studios are getting more aggressive in bringing content into their in-house services, or to consistent international homes (as with BBC Studios selling Doctor Who rights to Disney+).
Now, is that shift good or bad? It depends to some extent on how much content you consume and how much you pay for it – were you content to pay a flat rate from a TV provider (or a couple of services like Netflix or Crave) for a wide selection of programs from numerous sources – or are you happier being able to pick from among the numerous, but individually less expensive, direct-to-consumer options that are coming on the market? To be clear, this particular trend isn't that much different in Canada compared to, say, the States, but the extent of the shift hasn't been as pronounced here until this past year or so.
But in short: it's complicated.
Doug: I tried this week to watch the last season of Better Things on Disney+, but the entire series has been removed from that site. Seasons 1-4 are still on FX Canada. I know the entire series was on Disney+, including the final season 5, as I started watching an episode there a few months ago? Any idea what's going on?
WCIW: We can confirm the same results when we looked for Pamela Adlon's FX dramedy series, and we agree, this is odd. It seems to remain available on Disney+ in other countries. If forced to guess, we'd wonder if there’s something in Rogers’ current FX Canada / Citytv+ deal that gives them temporary exclusivity on these older seasons for pre-determined periods of time, but even if that was the case, why would season 5 be missing from both?
We'll continue to keep an eye on this.
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