Rogers Communications Creates Content Partnership With NBCUniversal For Bravo And Warner Bros. Discovery For Factual Entertainment

Rogers Communications has agreed to bring content from NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery to streaming platforms in Canada.

The Canadian telecommunications company said Monday that it has penned multi-year deals with the two U.S.-based mass media and entertainment companies

Starting in September, Rogers will Launch NBCUniversal's Bravo channel in the country and will become the English-language television content rights holder in Canada.

A few months later in January, Rogers will be the distribute Warner Bros. Discovery's U.S. lifestyle and factual brands, including HGTV and The Food Network.

Rogers said it will work with Canadian distributors to make the content widely available, and that it will increase its investment in original Canadian content and collaborate with Canadian independent producers.

July 2024 On KIX Across Africa | Channel Premiere: Playboy Cops | More Titles Including The Inspector Wears Skirts

EVERY SATURDAY @ 7 PM (CAT) | 6 PM (WAT) | 8 PM (EAT)

Sit tight and have fun with the action movies this July!

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Playboy Cops

Channel Premiere

6 July

Cast: Shawn Yue, Aloys Chen, Linda Chung

Two eccentric young detectives, Lincoln and Michael, go in search of a killer to bring him to justice, while vying for the affections of a young woman.

Bounty Hunters

13 July

Cast: Lee Min Ho, Tang Yan, Chung Hon Leung, Louis Fan, Karena Ng, Jeremy Xu

Five bounty hunters are tasked to track down the culprit of a series of bombings plaguing a hotel group in Bangkok. Can they solve the crime and finally collect the bounty?

Skinny Tiger & Fatty Dragon

20 July

Cast: Sammo Hung, Karl Maka, Carrie Ng, Woo Fung

Detective Baldy and his partner Fatty stumble upon the robbery of a jewelry store, which puts them on the trail of a triad crime syndicate.

The Inspector Wears Skirts

27 July

Cast: Cynthia Rothrock, Sibelle Hu, Kara Wai, Sandra Ng, Alex To, Fung Shiu Fan

In this slapstick comedy, an all-female police squad encounters sexism and conflicts during training, but must band together to take down a group of terrorists.

June 2024 On DreamWorks Channel Across Africa | New Series Alert: Gabby's Dollhouse And 3Below: Tales Of Arcadia | Returning Shows Including Spirit Riding Free | More

NEW SHOW (1-15)

Gabby's Dollhouse  

From Monday, 17th June

Weekdays at 8.55am, 2.20pm

With a little magic and a daily dollhouse delivery,

explore the fantastical dollhouse with Gabby and

all her kitty friends. Gabby is a positive and

determined 11-year-old girl who embraces

imperfection and turns mistakes into growth. Her

best friend Pandy Paws is always by her side, ready for any adventure with a snack and a smile.

Come along with them and the other Gabby Cats

on quirky adventures, and play, craft, dance and

discover new things every day!

NEW SHOW (1-13)

3Below: Tales of Arcadia 

From Monday, 3rd June

Weekdays at 7.15am

Two royal teenage aliens and their bodyguard flee

a surprise takeover of their home planet by an evil

dictator and crash land in Arcadia. Now on the run from intergalactic bounty hunters, they struggle to blend in and adapt to the bizarre world of high school all the while attempting to repair their ship so they can return and defend their home planet.

NEW EPISODES (40-52)

Trolls The Beat Goes On!

From Monday, 3rd June

Weekdays at 5.15pm

Weekends at 6.50am

In new season 2 episodes, the Trolls face a day

without a holiday, a fun-tastic new dance craze

and an epic “glamping” trip. We also introduce

hilarious new characters, brand new Troll

celebrations like Hug Fest and the Hair Ball, and

incredible original songs. The new episodes

feature fun and unique spotlights on the entire Snack Pack, in addition to exciting adventures with Branch and Poppy!

NEW EPISODES (14-26)

Spirit Riding Free

From Monday, 3rd June

Weekdays at 8.30am, 8.10pm

Weekends at 11.00am

In the new episodes from season 1 of

DreamWorks Spirit Riding Free, Lucky and Spirit

embark on new thrilling explorations while facing

unexpected surprises. Lucky's grandpa plans a

surprise visit to Miradero, Aunt Cora surprises the

family with news leading Lucky to live without

rules, and El Circo Dos Grillos comes to town

leading Lucky on a surprising, daring adventure.

STUNT

Mega Movie Stars

Saturdays at 9.20am, 6.05pm

Sundays at 7.15am 

Kung Fu Panda Specials - 8th & 9th June

Shrek Specials - 15th & 16th June

Madagascar Specials - 22nd & 23rd June

Dragons Specials - 29th & 30th June 

This month on DreamWorks join your favourite ‘Super Specials', Kung Fu Panda, Shrek, Madagascar and the Dragons gang starring in these special shorts! Featuring titles such as Secrets of the Furious Five, Dragons Dawn of the Racers, Puss in Boots and the Three Diablos and so much more!

STUNT

Baby Bootcamp

From Monday, 3rd June

Weekdays at 3.35pm

Weekends at 2.20pm

Meet Theodore Templeton, aka Boss Baby! Not

just any ordinary baby, but one with the ability to

take advantage of the typical behaviours of a

‘normal’ baby to help balance family life with his

job at the cut-throat Baby Corp. Headquarters.

Starting this June, explore different themes such

as Love, Mess, Laughter, and more. Don’t miss

The Boss Baby: Back in Business Baby Bootcamp

as we join corporate hotshot Boss Baby alongside his older brother Tim as they take their skills to a

whole new level.

WEEKEND MOVIE

Rio 

Tuesday 18th June at 6.05pm

Friday 21st June at 6.05pm

Captured by smugglers when he was just a

hatchling, a macaw named Blu (Lorànt Deutsch)

never learned to fly but has a happy domesticated

life in Minnesota with Linda (Élisabeth Ventura),

who thinks he is the last of his breed. But when

word comes that a lone female (Laetitia Casta) of

his kind is in Rio de Janeiro, Linda and Blu go to

meet her. Animal smugglers kidnap Blu and his mate, but the birds soon escape and begin a

perilous adventure back to freedom -- and Linda.

WEEKEND MOVIE

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Monday 24th June at 6.05pm

Thursday 27th June at 6.05pm 

Sunday 30th June at 6.05pm 

This is the story of Mr. Fox (George Clooney) and

his wild ways of hen heckling, turkey taking, and

cider sipping, nocturnal, instinctive adventures. He has to put his wild days behind him and do what fathers do best: be responsible. He is too

rebellious. He is too wild. He is going to try "just

one more raid" on the three nastiest, meanest

farmers that are Walter Boggis (Robin Hurlstone), Nathan Bunce (Hugo Guinness), and Franklin

Bean (Sir Michael Gambon). It is a tale of crossing the line of family responsibilities and midnight adventure and the friendships and awakenings of this country life that is inhabited by Fantastic Mr. Fox and his friends.

Those DStv Channel Changes With Canal+ Ethopia And Afrique

Canal+ Group is a French based pay-tv provider operated by Vivendi that distribute various films, series and TV channels. Not long ago, Canal+ had been granted permission to acquire remaining shares in MultiChoice after owning at least 45% of the company. 

Formerly serving as a rival to MultiChoice's endeavors within the African market. Canal+ comes with its own pay-tv platforms for consumers within Francophone Africa particularly Ghana, Ethopia, Ivory Coast and Niger.

Similar to DStv, the content seen on these packages vary immensely depending on the region. If DStv was looking to integrate with Canal+ questions amount to how the French broadcaster intends to do such.

The first known as Canal+ Afrique offers brands like Africa Magic Epic, SuperSport La Liga and Zee World while Canal+ Ethopia offers Telemundo, Star Life and KIX. All of which are on DStv and should a merger occur this could lead to less channels.

Both packages offer Canal+ Cinema with the elephant in the room for Afrique being M-Net Movies with FilmBox in Ethopia. Seeing as Canal+ would acquire MultiChoice they'd probably merge M-Net Movies with Canal+ Cinema and maybe remove some FilmBox brands.

The other thing would be pricing as you'd seen cases where channels like BBC Earth would be viewable to consumers in South Africa. This is a channel which is distributed in the United Kingdom, Australia, Turkey, Asia and Latin America.

WWF Betrayal (GBC)

The game's plot was roughly based on a storyline in 1999 where Stephanie McMahon gets kidnapped. Her father Vince McMahon promises to grant the player a shot at the WWF Championship if they manage to save her. The player must then fight through a series of side-scrolling levels to rescue Stephanie. The player can play as Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, Triple H , or The Undertaker.

Download Now

The Death Of WCW Explained

Really, the answer is Jamie Kellner. He was the one who made the call to pull the plug and kill the promotion. But, really, Kellner only made that call because WCW was losing so much money. If it was profitable, there’s a chance he never would have closed its doors. 

And why wasn’t it making money? Well, because Vince Russo made lots and lots of bad decisions. He took a company that turned a profit of $30 million dollars, and made it one that lost over $60 million dollars. 

But, Russo was only there to fix the mess that Bischoff had put the company in. Russo is an easy scapegoat, but Bischoff’s refusal to look past Hogan is a huge contributing factor to the death of WCW.

Hogan had a shelf life, and Bischoff – and Hogan – couldn’t see that. And giving Hogan creative control from the get go did lead to a lot of issues on what were supposed to be big shows.

He also spent big on contracts.

Contracts that were so big that when WWF bought WCW, they didn’t pick up a lot of the TimeWarner contracts for the likes of Hogan, Hall, Nash, Goldberg etc because it would have upset their own pay structure in the WWF.

But perhaps the person who killed WCW was the man who created it in the first place.

A lot of WCW’s problems can be traced back to Ted Turner’s decision to merge with Time Warner in 1995.

If Turner hadn’t made that merger, they wouldn’t have been involved in the AOL merger of 2000 which wouldn’t have brought in Jamie Kellner who pulled the trigger on the Death of WCW

Turner lost a lot of power after the TimeWarner merger, and even more from the AOL one.

Eric Bischoff even argues that once Turner lost his power after the TimeWarner merger, he no longer was able to have Eric’s back and sign off on his big money spending, and he had other people to answer to who didn’t like the way he spent money, like giving wrestlers big contracts.

You could make the argument for any one of these people being the ultimate reason for the downfall of WCW, but in actuality, it was all of them.

Important Notice: Digital TV Europe And TBI Magazine Are Shutting Down After 35+ Years Of Publication

Statement regarding Digital TV Europe

Digital TV Europe was launched just over 40 years ago. Originally published as Cable & Satellite Europe, in those distant pre-internet days exclusively as a monthly print magazine, it provided news, features, analysis and data about the nascent multichannel TV industry.

Cable & Satellite Europe, morphing into Digital TV Europe, has therefore covered the European multichannel TV business almost from the beginning, Eutelsat having launched the first European direct-to-home satellite channel a couple of years before our first print issue appeared.

The title was around for the launch of Canal+’s terrestrial pay TV service, the launch of Sky TV by Rupert Murdoch and its doomed rival BSB, and the near simultaneous launches of Canal+/Bertelsmann/Kirch Group-backed services such as Premiere in Germany and Telepiù in Italy.

It also covered the flawed franchising and rollout of cable TV in the UK (and the debt-financed attempts to bring about its rational consolidation thereafter) as well as the evolution of cable in western Europe from a local utility model to a commercial multiplay one), and the rollout of pay TV in central and eastern Europe from the 1990s.

In signing off, I’d like to thank the wider DTVE team past and present, along with our external contributors and other Informa colleagues, for their commitment, enthusiasm and expertise in designing, populating and commercialising this website and associated resources (including our long-running print magazine).

It has been a privilege to work with the many fantastic people who have contributed over the years, and I’d like to give a special thanks to our current team – marketing manager Abigail Appiah, product manager Alba Bayes, sales manager Grazyna Gray, creative lead Matthew Humberstone and associate editor Melissa Kasule, along with colleagues from our sister title Television Business International – senior account manager Michael Callan, deputy editor Mark Layton and editor Richard Middleton.

Finally, I extend my thanks to our external industry partners, our clients and, not least, our readers, without whom we would never have lasted those incredible 40 years.

Statement regarding TBI Magazine 

After more than 35 years of publication, Television Business International (TBI) is to close and will stop publishing new content from today.

TBI has documented everything from the emergence of pay TV to the decline of linear broadcasting and the ongoing drama caused by the shift to streaming.

Its archives are a treasure trove of history that reflect how the industry has transformed and how people have adapted along the way.

We thank you for your unwavering support and hope that you found insight and perhaps also entertainment in our coverage of what remains a fascinating, dynamic and vitally important global industry.

Farewell, we hope to see you soon in some other capacity and thank you for being a part of the TBI family.

Interesting Note: Canal+ France Also Has Services In Africa Which Is Likely To Merge Or Get Spun-Off With MultiChoice Africa

Canal+ Group is a French based pay-tv provider operated by Vivendi that distribute various films, series and TV channels. Not long ago, Canal+ had been granted permission to acquire remaining shares in MultiChoice after owning at least 45% of the company. 

Now both parties seek to fight regulatory hurdles which limit the broadcasting license of a foreign entity in order to get this approved. Canal+ is looking to shape MultiChoice into a global powerhouse against the likes of Disney and Netflix.

As we've discussed time and time again, both these companies have rivaling assets all of which would be subjected to a merger and will be trialed for. These would lead to a reduction of content and services while the Canal+ side of things garners more reach.

Despite Canal+ already serving 8 million households in Francophone Africa all of these operations are handled by Canal+ in France. Based on MultiChoice's audience reach, Canal+ could build its own division as seen in Poland and Luxembourg. 

With that in mind, MultiChoice's DStv and GOtv will likely fold under the Canal+ tier within those regions. If anything, Canal+ will try to save most of the content and services from their packages as they rollout under MultiChoice's offering. 

Local legislation within these areas won't just let Canal+ operate two separate services of the same stature co-exist unless there were some backing involved. In this case, the phasing out of the France feed of Canal+ in favor of a localized feed through MultiChoice.