TORONTO – It appears Corus Entertainment and a number of other Canadian broadcasters have made their Canadian specialty channels free to the customers of broadcast distribution undertakings (BDUs) in Canada until April 30th.
The companies have not put out a press release or made an announcement saying so, but carriers such as Rogers Communications, Cogeco, Eastlink, SaskTel, Access Communications, Westman Communications and Quadro Communications have announced every one of Corus’ 28-plus channels (from Adult Swim to Food Network to History to YTV) are now free to all customers to watch while they hunker down at home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
At this point we’re assuming the Corus channels will be made available to customers of all Canadian BDUs, but we have yet to see official announcements from others at this point. Wednesday morning we heard from sources that Bell TV and Telus are close to making a large number of TV channels free to all of their cable, satellite and IPTV customers (Update: Telus has added additional free channels. Update#2: Bell has added an extensive list of free channels, too. Update #3: Here is Shaw’s list of freeview channels.) Not all carriers are making the same number or same list of channels available free to their customers, but all are following through with the excellent idea of offering up more content in this uncertain time as so many more people stay home.
Other broadcasters also making their channels available in free preview mode on some or all BDUs include Hollywood Suite (the broadcaster says it will show more than 330 movies on its channels between now and the end of March), Blue Ant Media, Channel Zero, Ethnic Channels Group, Telelatino and a handful of other independent services.
These are on top of the announcements earlier this week where various news and kids services were made available free to consumers.
This story was updated twice to reflect the additional broadcasters and BDUs which are making certain specialty services free for their customers. More to come.
