By Ahmad Hathout
Corus is preparing to pull the plug on a handful of children’s services come September 1, Cartt has learned, amid the company’s pursuit to cut down on costs and as the CRTC weighs what to do about such at-risk programming.
Corus has told distributors that Disney XD, Disney Jr., Disney French (La Chaine Disney), Nickelodeon, and ABC Spark will be pulled at the start of the new broadcast year, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told us, which was then confirmed by Corus.
“Corus regularly reviews its portfolio of channels to ensure we are meeting the evolving needs of our audiences and distribution partners,” a Corus spokesperson told us. “Following a comprehensive review we have decided to cease distribution of the ABC Spark, Nickelodeon, Disney French (La Chaine Disney), Disney XD and Disney Jr. channels. These channels will no longer be available as of September 1, 2025 at 12:01 a.m. ET.”
The media company will still operate Disney Channel, Teletoon, Nelvana, Boomerang, YTV, Treehouse, and the Cartoon Network.
The news comes on the heels of the upfront period, which gives media companies an opportunity to showcase their programs to advertisers for the next broadcast season.
It also comes after Corus CEO John Gossling said on a quarterly earnings conference call late last month that the company “will do things that will manage the content cost line better as we go forward,” adding the company has been “trying to stabilize things.”
He noted that Corus has been hurt by its reliance on linear, despite having digital options like Stack TV. “We’re absolutely feeling it,” he said. The company, which has been trimming costs, reported lower advertising and subscriber revenues last quarter compared to the same period last year.
The news also comes against the backdrop of a broader conversation about the viability of children’s programming on traditional television as more audiences seek online options. Last spring an MTM survey found that, while traditional TV remains popular among Canadian children, they are more likely to watch video content on other sources such as YouTube and SVOD services like Netflix and Disney+.
In May, broadcasters told the commission that CBC/Radio-Canada could be made to step up on carrying such at-risk programs. The public broadcaster, however, said floating this kind of programming must be a whole-of-system effort.
For nearly two years, Corus has been in a regulatory standstill with Rogers, which has been seeking to remove some of its services, including what it says are underperforming children’s channels. Rogers has maintained that the decline in viewership on children’s programming has significantly outpaced overall television viewership.
Rogers is now in active litigation against the imposition of the standstill rule forcing it to continue to carry some of Corus’s services.
Last month, Corus told the commission during a hearing on the dynamics between programmers and distributors that the regulator must factor in how distributors package their services when determining performance.
“When considering whether there are valid commercial reasons for a request to remove, consider the commercial agreement,” Matt Thompson, Corus’s vice president and associate general counsel, told the regulator at the time.
“Are there mitigants in the commercial agreement for channel performance that the BDU might be able to realize? I think the reality of termination requests for programmers is that loss of carriage … can be very, very harmful, more harmful in fact for the programmer, to our mind, than the continued carriage in the case of BDUs.”
Corus executives did, however, say that it is not in the business of continuing to maintain channels that are underperforming.
Corus isn’t the only children’s programmer that has been feeling the heat. WildBrain said this spring that it had been unable to renegotiate a new carriage agreement with Bell for its Family Channel, Family Jr., WildBrainTV, and Télémagino services after the CRTC ruled that Bell was not unduly disadvantaging those services.
The failure to get that affiliation deal meant it had to renegotiate certain commercial aspects of its previously announced agreement whereby IoM Media Ventures would acquire a majority stake in its TV broadcast business.
Photo via Corus
