The other day, somebody asked me what I thought about shomi. First thing that popped into my head: that sexy Showcase series starring Rachael Crawford that aired a decade ago.
No, that was called Show Me Yours. Maybe they were just wishing me a Happy New Year. (Shana Tova?)
Then it clicked. That new Shaw/Rogers Neflix-y thing. The one that seemed so day late and a dollar short.
Then today: “shomi and Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution announce subscription video on demand content deal.”
This means all past seasons of Modern Family, Sons of Anarchy, Sleepy Hollow, American Horror Story, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Louie will be available for streaming at shomi. Me, I just heard Louie and got interested. These Can-Am content deals can get complicated, but access to past seasons of Tyrant and The Strain is supposed to also kick in in 2015.
In addition to many FX shows, Fox favourites New Girl, Glee, Family Guy and 24: Live Another Day will also be on shomi. Missing: The Simpsons, one of the most valuable worldwide rights properties ever. A huge deal was made earlier this year using the entire, 550+ Simpsons library as a carrot for U.S. subscribers to get hooked on FXX.
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Still, Shomi claims it will have 14,000 episodes of other shows to chose from when the digital streaming platform becomes available to Rogers and Shaw subscribers in November. The trend to binge watching will especially suit Homeland, also part of this package from Fox TV. Shomi will retail for $8.99 a month.
The buzz is Bell will soon launch its own digital streaming portal. They’ve already nailed down a deal to load the sucker with cool HBO content. What will Bell call their new service? Blomi? Too rude. Snomi? Now that’s Canadian.
Whatever they call it, brace yourselves for an onslaught of ads for these new dealios. This is a business that’s only going to grow in Canada as broadcasters tippy-toe away from conventional television–and all that nasty, sticky, produce-something-Canadian regulatory stuff.
1 Comment
I’m a Bell subscriber so I guess this will exclude me. However, I’m not sure I’d be willing to pay $8.99 for such an add-on . If anything I’d just eliminate the satellite and get just Netflix and the Bell streamer except they are saying you can’t get it if you don’t already have cable or satellite.