TORONTO – While Corus Entertainment continues the hard work to absorb the assets and people of Shaw Media, CEO Doug Murphy said more changes are afoot as the company looks to solidify its leadership position with women and families while likely rationalizing its huge list of channels as new pick and pay regulations take hold.
The company currently has 45 specialty TV brands, which Murphy told a BMO Media and Telecom conference in Toronto on Tuesday is likely too many, over the long term.
While he didn’t name which ones he believes his top specialty brands to be, Murphy did drop a number, saying the company will sink most of its future programming investments into less than half of its current channels. “We’re in pretty good shape for the 17 channels which are our big ones which are going to get picked (by viewers and advertisers),” he explained.
“What happens to the bottom 15 services are something we’re going to be spending a lot of time working on in the next 24 to 36 months… I think you’ll see some culling occurring across all of us in the sector,” he continued.
“There are a lot of channels out there and it’s time to prune the garden a little bit and invest money in the big services that drive audiences.”
Whether that means shuttering some channels or selling, Murphy didn’t say. He did clarify, however, that decisions will be made as major wholesale agreements with Canadian carriers expire.
Corus is also in the midst of “optimizing” its programming and scheduling across all of its specialties, too, he said. For example, all of its property-type shows, such as Property Brothers, Buying and Selling, Masters of Flip and Love it or List It will be shifting from W to HGTV for prime time, while W will soon feature a scripted drama block in the evenings with shows like Lost Girl and Outlander moving from Showcase to W.
More programming rationalization will continue where the combined company sees fit, he said.
It’s all in the name of capitalizing where Corus is already strong. “We have five of the top five women 25-54 channels. We have six of the top six kids services and seven of the top 10 adult 25-54 (channels),” said Murphy, which lets Corus deliver millions of families and women viewers to its clients.
“They’re the audiences which advertisers most covet,” he added.
