Watching This Week #99

Hi, and happy Valentine's Day week for those who celebrate. This is the February 13, 2023, 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 this week's listings, then updates on Global's spring programming, the future of NFL coverage on DAZN, and the future of Discovery+ in Canada.

What's new this week – February 13–19

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). *An asterisk denotes programming added in past weeks that we've learned about (or has been rescheduled) since our last newsletter.

• Netflix: Squared Love All Over Again (rom-com sequel – Monday); Jim Jefferies: High n' Dry (comedy special – Tuesday); Perfect Match (reality series – Tuesdays through Feb. 28); Re/Member (Japanese film – Tuesday); African Queens: Njinga (semi-dramatized docuseries – Wednesday); Cocomelon (season 7 – Wednesday); Red Rose (British teen series – Wednesday); Aggretsuko (season 5 – Thursday); The Upshaws (part 3 – Thursday); Ganglands (season 2 – Friday)
• Disney+: Mila in the Multiverse (Brazilian series – Wednesday); Wu-Tang: An American Saga (season 3 – Wednesdays); Dollface (season 2 – Wednesday); The Hair Tales (OWN docuseries – Wednesday); Prime Time (Mexican series – Wednesday)
• Crave: Star Trek: Picard (season 3 – Thursdays); Drag Race Belgique (Thursdays); Just for Laughs 2022: The Gala Specials – Russell Peters (Friday); Pil's Adventures (2021 film – Friday); Thunder Bay (docuseries – Fridays through Feb. 24); Wolf Hound (2022 film – Friday); The Woman King (2022 film – Friday); various past Pokémon films and seasons (Saturday)
• Prime Video: Planet Sex with Cara Delevingne (docuseries – Tuesday); The Nanny (1993–99 sitcom – Wednesday); The Shield (2002–08 series – Thursday); La Cabeza de Joaquín Murrieta (Mexican series – Friday); Carnival Row (season 2 – Friday); Drinkwater (2021 Canadian film – Friday); A Spy Among Friends (spy thriller series – Friday)
• CBC Gem: The Fall (2013-16 series – Wednesday); Canada's Ultimate Challenge (reality competition – Thursdays); multiple recent Ukranian drama and doc films (Friday); Night of the Kings (2021 film – Friday); Theodosia (tween series – Friday); Thin Blue Line (season 2 – Friday); Best in Miniature (season 2 – Sundays)
• Paramount+ (also available as a channel on Prime Video and Apple TV): American Gigolo (1980 film – Tuesday); Gigolos (2011–16 series – Tuesday); La La Land (2016 film – Tuesday); Run & Gun (2022 film – Friday)
• Apple TV+: Hello Tomorrow! (dramedy series – Fridays); Make or Break (season 2 – Fridays through Feb. 24); Sharper (film – Friday);
• BritBox (also available as a channel on Prime Video and Apple TV): My Family (2000–11 sitcom – Tuesday)
• CTV: The Company You Keep (drama series – Sundays); Magnum P.I. (season 5 of rebooted series – Sundays)
• Citytv (also on Citytv+): American Idol (season 21 – Sundays)
• Food Network (also on StackTV): Tournament of Champions (season 4 – Sundays)

Programming news

• Sports-focused international streaming service DAZN announced this past week that it will be holding onto the rights to NFL Game Pass in Canada, and indeed will be extending those rights worldwide except for the U.S. and China, for the next ten seasons. This surprised us a bit, as the service had been signalling a focus on Europe.
   
  However, there may be a change to how the service will be offered going forward, with the announcement indicating that NFL Game Pass will now be available either as a standalone subscription or as an add-on to the main DAZN service – whereas right now those games are bundled with the regular DAZN plan for Canadian viewers. It's not clear whether the new terms impact DAZN's ability to resell NFL Sunday Ticket through Canadian TV service providers.
   
  NFL Game Pass is essentially a combination of the NFL Sunday Ticket service that be sold by YouTube in the U.S. going forward, and NFL+, a U.S.-only mobile streaming package that the league sells directly. As before, the Game Pass package co-exists with linear broadcast rightsholders such as CTV/TSN in Canada.
   
• Global has announced midseason premiere and return dates for several series, confirming it will air the final season of The Blacklist beginning Sunday, February 26, and the 44th season of Survivor which begins on Wednesday, March 1. The eleventh season of its own reality series, Big Brother Canada, debuts on Wednesday, March 8, with episodes airing Tuesdays through Thursdays.
   
• Reader Shane has let us know that Israeli period drama series The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, which was added to Netflix in the U.S. last spring, is finally available on Netflix Canada as well.
   
• If you have been holding out on trying Disney+, but have cable, and want to see the first episode of the Star Wars series The Mandalorian, you're in luck: the episode will air on ABC next Friday, February 24, at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT, as part of a promotion for the third season of the series which premieres on March 1 on Disney+.
   
  As with a similar linear broadcast of the pilot for Andor back in November, there is no expectation that any other episodes of the series will air on linear TV – it's simply a one-time broadcast to promote the rest of the series on Disney+.

Other notes

• Last week we told you that Netflix was ramping up its crackdown password sharing globally, but without the option to add additional households to an account, which had been trialled elsewhere last summer.
   
  In fact, it was really only this past Wednesday that the crackdown began, but only in Canada and a small number of other countries, with many customers receiving notices to select a primary location. As part of this change, Netflix announced that it would in fact be providing Canadians with the ability to attach additional locations for an extra fee.
   
  If you're on the standard plan (currently $16.49 per month), you can add one other single-profile member that lives outside your household for an additional $7.99 per month. If you're on the $20.99-per-month premium plan, you can add two extra members for $7.99 each. The lower-tier basic plans will not be able to add more locations in this way. Further explanation of the option is available here.
   
  At this price point, it seems the goal of the extra member plan is to help with scenarios like family members moving out on their own, but is not intended for use with multiple large households.
   
• Meanwhile, a small number of customers recently noted on social media that they had received messages from Crave about a price change. This appears to be corroborated by posts we found on the Crave website indicating an increase in monthly prices from $9.99 to $12.99, and in annual prices from $99.90 to $129.90, starting March 13.
   
  However, the discussion to date suggests this may only relate to grandfathered subscribers to the old base Crave service – from when Movies + HBO was a separate tier – that are effectively now receiving the same service as $19.99 per month Crave Total subscribers, as opposed to the current $9.99 per month Crave Mobile service. So far, no price changes have been indicated for new subscribers to the current Crave Mobile / Total plans, though it's worth noting Crave is no longer promoting that $9.99 starting price point in outside advertising.
   
• A number of media outlets reported this past week that Warner Bros. Discovery has decided to keep Discovery+ alive as a separate streaming service. That service will co-exist with a bulked-up version of HBO Max which will still be adding most Discovery+ programming – and is widely expected to be renamed simply "Max" – which is expected to launch in the U.S. later this year, and in other markets (not including Canada) shortly thereafter.
   
  The apparent rationale is resistance from current Discovery+ customers to being forced to move to a much more expensive service with scripted programming they don't want (never mind that there are likely many HBO Max customers that likely feel the same way about being forced to pay more for Discovery+ programming).
   
  Regardless, the move likely simplifies matters in the short-term in markets like Canada, or the Sky territories in Europe, where WBD would not yet be able to bring rights to mainline HBO programming back to its own services until, reportedly, at least 2025. If it had gone through with a full merger, WBD would have had to decide whether to maintain Discovery+ for just those conflicting markets (likely with minimal maintenance), replace it with a stripped-down version of Max without HBO programs, or shut it down entirely. Instead, at least for now, Discovery+ will continue with its current international footprint.

Mailbag

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

Carol B.: Is there anywhere to stream or watch the British talk show The Graham Norton Show in Canada?

WCIW: The Graham Norton Show is available in Canada on the BBC First cable channel. Unfortunately there’s no streaming-only version of that channel, nor is there any other streaming option for the show in Canada outside of that, at least at the moment.

Carol P.: Is there any update on when or where season 7 of Outlander will be coming?

WCIW: Ultimately, it’s up to the services to decide when they want to make these sorts of announcements. They may not even be sure precisely when it’ll be ready to air yet. So far, the only thing that’s been confirmed is that the new season will be coming this summer, which is the same information we knew in December – and that means the premiere could be any time between June and August.

Starz, the program’s U.S. broadcaster, has typically announced exact premiere dates for new seasons of Outlander about 3-4 months ahead of the premiere. So, given the previous announcement about a summer premiere, it would be within their usual practice for them to wait until March or April to announce the premiere date.

To be abundantly clear, W Network still has the first-run Canadian rights, but our understanding is that under their contract, they can’t air new episodes before they premiere in the United States.

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