CHUM 104.5 morning show co-host and media personality Marilyn Denis, CBC/Radio-Canada President Catherine Tait, and Directors Guild of Canada (DGC) Ontario Executive Director Victoria Harding are among this year’s WIFT (Women in Film + Television) Toronto Crystal Awards honourees. Denis will be honoured with the Creative Excellence Award, while Tait will receive the Jury Award of Distinction. Harding will be recognized for Outstanding Achievement in Business. Actress Missy Peregrym, known for her roles on ABC/Global’s Rookie Blue and CBS’ FBI, will receive the International Achievement honour. Neishaw Ali, Founding Partner, President, and Executive Producer, at Toronto and Atlanta-based visual effects studio, SPIN VFX, is this year’s Innovation Trailblazer. Toronto-based unscripted television producer and director Margot Daley will be recognized in the Mentorship category. Read more here.
Sportsnet has become the first Canadian sports network available to stream on Prime Video in Canada. The Sportsnet Prime Video Channel will be available as an add-on channel, enabling Prime Video users to watch live NHL hockey and all of Sportsnet’s linear programming on Sportsnet national (Sportsnet, Sportsnet ONE, Sportsnet 360) and regional (Sportsnet Pacific, West, East, Ontario) channels. Prime members can add the Sportsnet Prime Video Channel at a cost of $19.99/month. Read more here.
Rogers Sports & Media says the NHL on Sportsnet reached 27.2 million Canadians, or 72% of the population last year, with an average reach of more than nine million viewers per week. Rogers says subscribers to Sportsnet+ are up 56% over the past year with more than 4.5 million Canadians visiting sportsnet.ca each month and more than 750,000 using the Sportsnet app for the latest NHL news, updates, and live streams.
9 Story Media Group has launched a new 9 Story hub channel on YouTube, with plans for its first branded FAST channel through a partnership with Cineverse in 2024. The new hub channel marks the company’s continued expansion across digital platforms, with 1,400 half-hours of content, including seven seasons each of classic series Barney and Friends and Garfield and Friends, and multiple seasons of Angelina Ballerina, and Guess How Much I Love You, along with newer shows.
Bilal Baig and Fab Filippo, co-creators, executive producers and showrunners of Peabody-winning CBC and Max original comedy Sort Of, have announced that the upcoming third season will be the series’ last. The final eight-episode season will make its premiere in Canada on CBC Gem, beginning Nov. 17 (two episodes will be available per week), with the series finale set for Dec. 8. Baig, who is also the star of the series, and Filippo, say they set out “to tell a story about a kind of transition in Sabi’s life, and how those around them also change — and we feel in this coming season that story came to an end in a way that felt right for us.”
CBC has greenlit Ghosting with Luke Hutchie and Matthew Finlan (8×30), a new unscripted comedy series from Blue Ant Studios, that follows Hutchie (Ezra) and Finlan (Orphan: First Kill, Ezra), two actors known for their work in the horror genre, as they step off script and into their own real-life thriller on their quest to decipher if Canada’s most haunted places are truly haunted. The paranormal series filmed this summer in haunted locales around Ontario and will launch on CBC Gem this winter. In each episode, the amateur ghost-wrangling duo are joined by celebrity guests, to meet locals who claim to have experienced a real-life haunting.
Acting Good is back for a second season, Mondays at 10:30 p.m. ET/PT on CTV Comedy, beginning Oct. 16. Filmed on location in Winnipeg and Brokenhead Ojibway Nation, Season 2 sees Paul (Paul Rabliauskas) return home after yet another failed attempt at moving to the big city only to find that his girlfriend Rose (Cheyenna Sapp) and mother Agnes (Tina Keeper) have shut him out. According to data supplied by Bell Media, the first season of Acting Good was the #1 overall CTV Comedy program among adults 25-54.
Eagle Vision and APTN factual series 7th Gen returns for a second season with 10 new episodes featuring inspiring young Indigenous leaders from across the country. Returning in English on Friday, Oct. 13 and on Monday, Oct. 9 in Cree, the series is hosted by Ivana Yellowback, Darcy Waite and Lorraine George and follows subjects including motivational speaker, educator and advocate Laura Grizzlypaws; hockey coaches and NHL athletes Brandon and Jordan Nolan; entrepreneur, chef and community leader Melissa Brown; athlete, coach/educator and live-stream gamer Jon-Ross Merasty-Moose; advocate and post-secondary student Makaela Blake; and music producer and recording artist Matthew Monias aka Mattmac.
Waterside Studios, Corus Entertainment’s IP and production venture focused on bringing premium scripted Canadian content for youth and primetime audiences internationally, has announced two new development deals. The studio is set to produce live-action television adaptations of Marcela Citterio’s The Girl who Didn’t Want to be a Princess and Uma Ghost for young adults around the globe. Following the success of her last book adaptation Lady Voyeur on Netflix Brazil, along with her past successes for young audiences with Chica Vampiro and Yo Soy Frankie, the latest titles add to her growing list of adaptations for streaming platforms and Latino TV channels.
Corus Entertainment’s Nelvana has announced new distribution partners for 3D animated original series Millie Magnificent (52×11) to Canal+ in France and Treehouse in Canada, inspired by the best-selling book by Ashley Spires. With deliveries starting in early 2024, the preschool series will be prominently featured by Nelvana at MIPCOM this fall. Kids Can Press, Corus’ children’s book publisher, has further expanded the Most Magnificent franchise with new book The Most Magnificent Maker’s A to Z and the Make That Most Magnificent Thing board game, produced in collaboration with Fat Brain Toys, both launching this fall.
Bell Media has unveiled its slate of original programs available for international sale at MIPCOM 2023. With more than 150 new hours of content, highlights include CTV’s new daytime series The Good Stuff with Mary Berg; recently announced Crave and APTN Original dramatic comedy series Don’t Even (Pier 21 Films, Frantic Films, Sekowan Media), following two best friends in late ‘90s Winnipeg; CTV Original comedy series Shelved (Counterfeit Productions), from creator and executive producer Anthony Q. Farrell (The Office), which follows the employees and patrons of a public library; CTV Life Channel’s Staying Inn: Hotel Julie (Alibi Entertainment) centred around the revamp of a 19th century inn into a luxury boutique hotel in Stratford, ON; and Crave Original docuseries We’re All Gonna Die (Even Jay Baruchel) (90th Parallel Productions), with Baruchel returning for another investigation of six ways the world could come to an end.
Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) has announced the winners of this year’s juried Canadian film awards. Fitting In, directed by Molly McGlynn won Best Canadian Film; Anna Fahr, director of Valley of Exile, was named Emerging Canadian Director; housing crisis exploration Someone Lives Here, directed by Zachary Russell won Best Canadian Documentary, while Best BC Film went to WaaPaKe, directed by Jules Arita Koostachin.
