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Rogers, Shaw shutter Shomi

Shomi, the two-year-old Canadian SVoD service operated by Rogers Media and Shaw Media, is to close on November 30.

David Asch

David Asch

The joint venture launched in November 2014 offering some 11,000 hours of TV content, with a subscription priced at C$8.99 a month.

Over the past 24 months, the partners inked a string of deals with the likes of NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures Television, CBS International and Warner Bros International Distribution, bringing the service Canadian exclusives on US shows such as Chicago Fire, Outlander, Justified, Jane the Virgin and iZombie.

But Shomi has struggled in the face of an increasingly crowded on-demand landscape, with competition from the likes of Netflix and Bell Media’s CraveTV.

“The business climate and online video marketplace have changed markedly in the last few years,” said David Asch, Shomi’s senior VP and general manager. “Combined with the fact that the business is more challenging to operate than we expected, we’ve decided to wind down our operations.

“We’re proud of the great service we created and the role we played in the evolution of Canada’s video landscape.”

Rogers said it expects a loss of between C$100m and C$140m on its investment in Shomi in the third fiscal quarter of 2016, while Shaw stated earlier this year that it would be taking a C$51m write-down on the value of its investment in the venture.

  

 

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