TORONTO – Rogers and Shaw are set to reveal their new over-the-top video portal, known as Showmi, at an event Tuesday morning in Toronto. According to our sources, the service could be ready to launch as early as November (but announcing it officially now, just prior to the CRTC television policy hearing, is no mistake).
As Cartt.ca was first report early this year, the service was conceived as the Canadian answer to Netflix or Hulu, a one-stop online space where TV and film content whose Canadian rights – owned by Rogers Media, Shaw Media, Bell Media and Cineplex – would be stacked and available to Canadians for binge watching anywhere, anytime and on any device.
Despite several inquiries from Cartt.ca (one of which sparked a colourful ‘no comment’ from Rogers CEO Guy Laurence, who said that “rumours of the Loch Ness Monster have been around for decades”), none of the big entertainment companies would confirm on the record that such a project was in the works. Until now.
According to several sources with direct knowledge of the negotiations, Rogers has signed exclusive content deals worth more than $100 million with several U.S. studios and distributors, including Disney/ABC, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, NBC Universal and others, in order to stock this venture. The larger partnership, however, appears to have dwindled to just Rogers and Shaw, with Bell rumoured to be readying its own service to launch early in 2015, as Cartt.ca detailed earlier this month.
More to come…
