Thursday evening saw Canada’s Bell Media announce a long-term agreement with HBO for exclusive rights to its library, past and current seasons of content, and plans to take The Movie Network (TMN) service national.
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The announcement arrives as Corus Entertainment says it will shut down its Movie Central, Encore Avenue and HBO Canada brands in western Canada, ceding to Bell Media the right to sign deals with all television providers in the region.
“After an extensive strategic review of our business, we made the decision to strengthen our focus on one of our biggest growth opportunities, our powerful national media brands targeted to kids, women and families”, said Doug Murphy, president and CEO of Corus.
Canadian telecom and entertainment group BCE has announced that its Bell Media subsidiary will expand The Movie Network (TMN) into a national pay TV service and will become the sole operator of HBO Canada.
Moreover, Bell Media will be the first company to exclusively deliver all HBO content, thereby expanding the reach of its lucrative suite of pay-TV channels which include The Movie Network and HBO Canada.
French-language HBO programming will continue to air on Bell Media’s Super Écran pay service.
Bell Media and HBO will further bolster their new partnership with a landmark programming and production arrangement.
The company said projects from Rhombus Media, Inverted Pictures/Artists Studio and Force Four Entertainment are already underway. New HBO Comedy special featuring new and established Canadian talent are also being considered.
After a hard year, Corus had said it wants to own and control more content, and had looked to deepen its connection to big-name brands – like HBO. The two companies will co-develop original Canadian drama, comedy and factual productions for their platforms and for distribution around the world.
Financial terms of the overall deal were not revealed, but this will likely be a a very large number seeing as it effectively stops HBO launching its HBO Now SVOD platform in Canada. “We can’t wait to get to work on developing the next great TV series for Canada and the world”. Bell Media is also to make its online streaming service CraveTV available to all Canadians starting in January, 2016 as it continues to fend off competition from Netflix Canada.
As part of the changes, BCE Inc. will expand The Movie Network across the country before the end of March.
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The broadcaster is stepping up its partnership with HBO after a year ago acquiring the exclusive national multi-platform rights for the entire off-air library of HBO programming, now offered on CraveTV. The services offer the popular subscription video-on-demand products HBO On Demand and Cinemax On Demand, as well as HBO GO and MAX GO, HD feeds and multiplex channels.
