Rogers Sports & Media unveiled their Upfront 2025 sizzle reel Tuesday and it flew by in 45 briskly-paced minutes. It went by so fast, in fact, it was easy to miss that one of their tent pole Canadian shows of the past four seasons was missing.
Confirmed later by a Citytv spokesperson: Canada’s Got Talent is not part of their 2025-26 schedule. “We’ve decided to pause production of CGT and the show will go on hiatus for next season.”
Just a reminder: CTV “paused” Canadian Idol in 2008. It is still “paused.”
Seasons three and four of the CGT, which was shot before live audiences at Fallsview Casino in Niagara Falls, Ontario, offered a millon dollar grand prize, touted as the largest payout in Canadian television history. Those millions came directly from Rogers, which may have stuck its hands back in its pockets after committing $11 billion over the next 12 years for NHL rights.
Two new judges were added to CGT this past winter: Shania Twain and Katherine Ryan, replacing Lily Singh and Trish Stratus. Ratings did not appear to go up, at least in overnight estimates which tracked around the 400,000 AMA mark this season.
Chief CGT judge Howie Mandel, however, still has a job at City. He’s going to come on down — or up from LA — to host a Canadian, primetime version of The Price is Right. City was not calling it The Price is Right Canada, however, perhaps because that sounds like something another game show host — Donald Trump — might say. The new series is scheduled for mid-season on City.
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As one might assume, there was a stong sports slant to the Rogers Upfront presentation reel. One interesting factoid: 34 of the Top 50 most watched programs in Canada last season were live NHL games on Sportsnet. I can believe that.
And, yes, as predicted here, Rogers on Tuesday did exactly what Corus did on Monday and claimed that they were the only media network in the country that is growing in terms of audience. Where Sportsnet had the edge is in the younger demos. Half of viewers ages 18 to 34, according to Sportsnet’s Anna Dua, watch Sportsnet every week. A third of Sportsnet viewing, we were also told, is in that 18-34 demo, and 48 per cent of the audience are female viewers.
The reel featured clips of sports figures such as Sidney Crosby and Conner McDavid, with sound bites from HNiC regulars David Amber and the Blue Jays’ Hazel Mae. Alvin Williams said the NBA was the second most popular sports league on TV in Canada. Does that exclude the NFL? Sportsnet co-anchors Evanka Ozmak and Ken Reid Circled around with a product intergration segment. We heard lots of testimony that radio was where it’s at and that Rogers had more No. 1 radio stations across the country including two of the Top 3 in Toronto — CHFI and 680 News.
City newcomer Tim Bolen from Breakfast Television got some face time early in the Rogers reel. Same with Buck Martinez. Rogers did a good job promoting their services across all ages and stages. They even snuck in a plug for their outdoor advertising business, right up there with a reminder that OMNI still exists.
Like there was any doubt, but a third season of Law & Order Toronto has been ordered and is scheduled to run early in 2026.
Rogers didn’t appear to import any new scripted shows for City from the American networks for 2025-26, pretty much standing pat with their prime time non-sports schedule. They did stock up on a couple of new unscripted reality dealios and they’ll be the home of a few live award shows like the Golden Globes and The Grammys. They’ve hired Arisa Cox from Big Brother Canada to work the red carpet this coming fall for the 50th anniversary of TIFF in Toronto.
Other new specialty titles include Property Brothers: Committment Issues and a new series from those Scottish lads Colin & Justin, an East Coast getaway primer titled Small Town Escapes. This to shore up their HGTV content which they claim is doing just fine thank you, please ignore Corus’ claim that those American specialty chanels Rogers swiped last winter have been abandoned by Canadians.
Other new titles imported for specialty channels such as Bravo and FX include The Real Housewives of Rhode Island, The Valley: Persian Style (working title), The Lowdown starring Ethan Hawke; and Alien: Earth starring Sydney Chandler and Timothy Olyphant.
Rogers also said, hey, wait a minute, to the claim Monday that Corus now owns mornings across Canada. Rogers says Breakfast Television is now the No. 1 morning show across Ontario where it outperforms its nearest competitor by 40 per cent. Good for Tim Bolen and Dina Pugliese but I don’t envy these young ad buyers who have to fact check any of this.
