Some significant changes to the Canadian television landscape are coming up in January, 2025.
As many of you may have heard, back in June, Rogers signed a deal with NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery to acquire Canadian distribution rights and Canadian rights to HGTV, Food Network and the Discovery brands. As a result, this had a major impact on Bell Media and Corus entertainment and will have a huge ripple effect on all the major players.
For Corus, they will lose the rights to the HGTV and Food Network names and content and will be launching the Home and Flavour networks as replacements.
Bell settled their legal differences with Rogers and still retain the rights to carry HBO content on Crave... but they lost the rights to the Discovery brand and content. Animal Planet, Discovery Science and Discovery Velocity will be renamed CTV Wild, CTV Nature and CTV Speed, and Discovery will become "USA Network" and Investigation Discovery will become "Oxygen True Crime"
OWN ceased broadcasting back in September and Magnolia Network, Cooking Channel Canada, and MTV Canada are all scheduled to shut down at the end of this year.
Rogers still has not announced the relaunch of Discovery, HGTV or Food Network. Presumably Citytv+ will expand in scope and make WD/Discovery content available on-demand.
What remains to be seen is how this will impact carriage and to what extent it will further fracture the Canadian TV landscape. Start announced that they will be picking up Home and Flavour, dropping the channels that will cease broadcasting by their current owners at the end of this year, and have said nothing about picking up any of the new channels that Bell and Rogers plan to launch/relaunch in January. It's also unclear as to how customers of the major BDUs (e.g. Rogers, Bell, TELUS, SaskTel, Eastlink, etc.) will be impacted.
Meanwhile, more and more channels are being made available on Prime Video and/or as a standalone service. Netflix has also acquired exclusive rights to WWE content.
No news yet on how this will impact Ignite/Xfinity TV packages, past, present or future. Nothing on https://www.rogers.com/support/tv/channel-updates , and it still remains to be seen what announcements will come in our December bills. Will also be interesting to see whether changes of this magnitude will allow Rogers customers, who are locked into long-term contracts, to cancel their service without penalty.
There is also no word as to how this will impact the legacy Digital TV service, or whether its shutdown will come anytime soon.
**Labels Updated**
Just got an "Updates to your TV package" email:
We would like to share an update with you about your TV service.
Starting January 1, 2025, the Cooking Channel will no longer be aired by the broadcaster – but good news, you can continue to access your favourite Cooking Channel shows on-demand and on the Citytv+ app. You will be able to log into the Citytv+ app, at no additional cost, with your MyRogers credentials.
No doubt, we will be seeing more of these messages in the days and weeks ahead.
@ReneHache wrote:
I've been following those change for a few months on Digital Home.
Also I read that there are rumors that Rogers also planing to remove these Corus channels too: DTOUR, DejaView, H2, MovieTime, Nat Geo Wild, Treehouse, YTV and Slice.
They better not removed YTV, that my #1 favorite channel. Without my famorites channels (my other favorite should be safe, for now), there's no reason to have cable.
It's more than just rumours. A carriage dispute between Rogers and Corus has been going on for months, but it has also been kept surprisingly quiet. As far as I know, it still has not been resolved. Rogers wants to drop Corus' specialty channels that either "underperform" or compete with their own brands.
I suspect that Rogers wants to continue to carry W. Nothing has been said about Home and Flavour.
Sadly, Corus is barely clinging to life. Back in July, they issued a "going concern" warning in their quarterly financial results. At that time, they were carrying something like C$1billion in long-term debt. Last I checked, their stock was sitting at $0.11, and apparently they are exploring a potential sale of their business. Even if they don't lose carriage, Corus' days may still be numbered.
@ReneHache wrote:
It's really sad, specially that Corus channels are the ones I watch the most. I know you can get StackTV throu Rogers, hope that won't affect those, specially we have to pay extra if we want to subscribe to StackTV.
If Rogers and Corus cannot come to terms on a new carriage agreement, it's entirely possible that Rogers will drop all of the Corus specialty channels AND Stack TV.
Rogers just issued a new press release confirming that they will relaunch the Discovery, HGTV, Food Network, Magnolia Network and ID channels on January 1, 2025, with additional content being made available on-demand on Citytv+.
It still remains to be seen whether Rogers will carry any of the new Bell Media channels and what Corus channels they will carry in the new year.
@ReneHache wrote:
Just got my bill for this month, I'm surprise Rogers didn't give information about the big changes coming 1st of January. The only note we got was the service name change from Ignite to Xfinity.
Thanks for the update.
Rogers only needs to provide notice when they know that you will lose channels. If you previously received Discovery, HGTV, Food Network, Magnolia Network and ID, presumably you will continue to receive them.
They notified us by email that we will lose access to the Cooking Channel, but we will apparently continue to have access to an archive of that channel's programming on Citytv+.
Since they didn't announce that you would be losing Animal Planet or Discovery Velocity , does this mean that they will continue to offer those channels after they get renamed?
Since they did not say anything about the loss of any Corus-owned channels, it could just mean that their carriage dispute has not yet been resolved.
Will be very interesting to see whether Rogers comes out with new TV packages in the new year and how much they will charge for them.
I received this message on my December bill:
TV channel update: MTV
Starting January 1, 2025, the broadcaster of MTV will stop airing this channel. As a result, it will be removed from your TV package or theme pack. If you subscribe to MTV as a standalone channel, you will no longer be charged as of this date.
If you have MTV selected as a Flex channel, please visit rogers.com/flexchannels and replace it with another available channel of your choice.
The rest of your Rogers TV package remains the same. If you have any questions or no longer wish to subscribe to your TV services, please reach out to us as indicated in the Contact Us section of this bill.
Note the last paragraph. If you are locked into a two-year contract, Rogers may be providing you with an opportunity to sever that agreement without paying an early cancellation fee.
I still have not heard where things stand regarding carriage of Corus channels in the new year.
@aboyaci wrote:
Given that there are so many changes coming up in the next few weeks, is it possible for someone to provide a comprehensive list that shows exact 1) Which channels are going down, 2) Channels rebranding, 3) New channels being added?
We still do not know how or to what extent the channel lineups will change in the new year.
We do know that HGTV, Food Network and Discovery will be relaunching on January 1, 2025 under Rogers ownership. They will also be making quite a bit of program content available to stream on their Citytv+ platform. (See the press release for details.)
We also know that the Cooking Channel and MTV will cease broadcasting at the end of the year.
The Rogers Ignite TV Guide also says that Magnolia will no longer be available on January 1. It's also possible that Rogers will relaunch that channel and assign it a different channel number.
We do no yet know whether Rogers plans to carry Home or Flavour, or whether they plan to add or drop any Corus channels from their lineup, or what the status of Stack TV will be.
We also do not know whether Rogers plans to carry any of Bell's new or rebranded channels, or whether Rogers will relaunch Animal Planet, Discovery Science or Discovery Velocity.
There is also no word yet as to whether Rogers will be launching any new TV bundles. As of today, they are still selling Essentials TV, Popular TV and Ultimate TV, with today's channel lineup, and do not even mention any of the known or potential changes coming up.
Just a quick update on the Corus channels. I'm not absolutely 100% sure about this but it looks like Rogers will maintain carriage of Corus's channels and will also be carrying Home and Flavour.
CRTC 2024-0573-7 has additional information but as I understand it, Home and Flavour will get get carriage and will get assigned three-digit channel numbers. Corus tried to get the channel slots previously assigned to HGTV and Food Network but Rogers declined. I don't think that Home and Flavour will be getting easy-to-find/remember 2-digit channel assignments either.
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