Can lifestyle channel reboot lay foundation for a Corus turnaround?  

After losing a long-running Warner Bros Discovery trademark deal, Corus last week unveiled a multimillion-dollar rebrand of its HGTV Canada and Food Network Canada channels. Co-CEO Troy Reeb chats with C21 about how the firm built new programme acquisition pipelines, broadened its commissioning remit and gives his thoughts on a reported takeover offer from Quebecor.  

Canadian broadcasting group Corus Entertainment has been fighting existential battles on multiple fronts for the past three months after losing the trademark rights to HGTV Canada and Food Network Canada.

But last week, for one day at least, the media company had its swagger back as it unveiled its rebranded lifestyle cable networks, Home Network and Flavour Network, to advertisers and media at an event at its Toronto headquarters.

The loss of the Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) trademark and licensing agreements to rival Rogers Sports & Media (RSM) has been a hammer blow to Corus, sending its already limping stock price to the doldrums and raising urgent questions about its long, medium and short-term prospects.

The unveiling of its two new lifestyle networks will have done little to change that reality – the independent broadcaster still has a C$1.06bn (US$780m) debt pile and no obvious path to repaying it that doesn’t involve a creditor protection filing or sale – but Wednesday’s event was intended as a reminder both to advertisers, and RSM, that Corus is the country’s premier operator of lifestyle channels and programming.

“We’re the company that in our previous iterations, going all the way back to Alliance Atlantis, invented the lifestyle television genres in Canada,” co-CEO Troy Reeb tells C21.

“Lots of others have tried to launch channels and shows to compete with our lifestyle services in the past. We’ve always prevailed – and we’re confident we can prevail again, because we’ve got the expertise and the passion.”

With the loss of the WBD deals, which had meant a guaranteed pipeline of US content to fill its channels, Corus has spent the past three months looking to source new programming. It still has trailing rights on certain shows, meaning some will continue airing on Corus channels even after its WBD deal expires on December 31. For the most part, though, the company has been forced to find new sources of acquired content.

While acknowledging that Corus was forced into this position, Reeb said it was “super fun for our programming team to go on a shopping spree” with the goal of acquiring shows from the world’s “greatest lifestyle talent.”

The result is 460 hours of newly acquired programming, sourced through deals with new licensing partners including Roku, PBS and the BBC. Shows acquired from Roku include Morimoto’s Sushi Master, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Honest Renovations, Celebrity Family Food Battle and Empty Nest Refresh, with distribution of those titles handled by Fifth Season.

Corus also pulled off something of a licensing coup, landing the rights to Fox series Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars and Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, which had previously been with Bell Media.

In addition, some of the international shows have been acquired from other parts of the WBD ecosystem, including Max original Chasing Flavor with Carla Hall.

While acquired programming provides the “tonnage,” Reeb said the original Canadian lifestyle programming commissioned via Corus Studios has always been the main attraction for viewers on Corus’s lifestyle networks.

Over the summer, the media company has gone to great lengths to secure and expand its relationships with existing talent, including Bryan and Sarah Baeumler and Scott McGillivray, and sign up a bevy of new talent including Andrew Phung (Run the Burbs, Kim’s Convenience).

New shows commissioned for Home Network and Flavour Network include The Big Burger Battle fronted by Phung, Rentovation with Natalie Chong and Beer Budget Reno with Kristen Coutts. In total, it revealed 110 hours of Canadian original programming for 2025/26. Existing shows such as Scott’s Vacation House Rules, Pamela’s Garden of Eden, Pamela’s Cooking with Love, Renovation Resort, The Great Chocolate Showdown, Carnival Eats and Top Chef Canada will also transition to the new channels.

Transitioning to these new brands means Corus will not be beholden to previous restrictions that were placed on it by its existing deal with WBD. That, said Reeb, will allow Corus to broaden its commissioning remit.

“There’s an opportunity to introduce brands with a profile that will be a little younger, a little fresher, a little more diverse than what people have traditionally been used to on those lifestyle services, because we’re able to go more unique in terms of both our acquisitions and our commissions,” he said.

In addition, that means Corus Studios will be able to work more flexibly with its advertisers and brands when developing new shows.

“Our commissioning strategy may also shift to support what our advertisers are looking for as well. We want to get the message out to the advertising community that these channels are open for sponsorship, open for business and open for integration in how we commission our shows.”

Given the scope of Corus’s financial challenges and uncertainty around its future, C21 has heard from sources that some of the banks, including National Bank, will not provide interim financing to new Corus Studios shows.

Reeb dismissed worries that Corus would not be able to realise its slate of upcoming shows because of challenges around accessing interim financing. “I would just say we have no concerns about getting shows greenlit, into production and onto the air,” he said.

One of many interesting facets to this situation is that Food Network Canada and HGTV Canada are joint venture (JV) channels majority owned by Corus (80%) and with WBD owning the remaining 20%. Whether or not WBD will exit its position on January 1 when the rebrand takes place has not been confirmed, with Reeb claiming the future status is “under discussion.” For the meantime, the channels continue to operate as JVs.

Earlier in the summer, co-CEO John Gossling suggested that Corus – like Bell Media – may also seek a legal challenge to WBD’s deal with RSM. At the time, Gossling said Corus was exploring legal avenues to “protect [its] business,” but would not confirm exactly what those were.

In the time since, Corus has filed a complaint with Canada’s broadcast regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), accusing RSM’s parent company Rogers Communications of “predatory behaviour” that aims to suppress smaller competitors.

Reeb implied that while Corus has pursued a regulatory complaint against Rogers, it is unlikely to go down the legal route. Instead, Corus’s focus is “on asserting the rights of these channels to continue to be on the air, on cable, on satellite, in the position they’ve always been,” he said.

For its part, Rogers previously said that Corus “has not kept up with the demands of Canadians and is now looking for the regulator to protect their broken business model.” It added that Corus was “trying to force service providers to carry, and our customers to pay, for channels they no longer want to watch.”

Reeb said that Corus isn’t interested in “relitigating the battles of the past” and would instead be focusing squarely on “ensuring carriage” for its portfolio of cable networks via channel distributors including Rogers. “We’re not trying to litigate the battles of past, but rather ensuring these great channels can continue to have the same fantastic carriage that they’ve always enjoyed and that they are not prejudiced by distribution companies – or one distribution company in particular – who has decided to go and launch their own competitors to them.”

With the multi-million dollar rebrand now officially completed (a source told C21 it cost C$6m), Corus’s sights will return squarely to how to navigate its debt issues.

As it stands, the company is somewhat at the mercy of what its principal lenders, including RBC Capital Markets and TD Securities, decide to do. Corus had looked set to default on its debt covenants on September 1, but was able to secure an amendment on its agreements for six weeks until October 15.

Per its initial agreement, Corus needed to reduce its total debt to cash flow ratio to less than 4.25 times by September 1. However, over the summer it warned that it would likely be in breach of that agreement, and the banks agreed to increase the ratio to 4.75 times until October 15.

That extended deadline is now just three weeks away, meaning that unless it is able to improve its debt situation, or secure another extension from its lenders, it will default on its loan agreements.

Rumours have swirled for months that French-Canadian telco Quebecor was potentially interested in making a bid to buy Corus. Last week, the Globe & Mail reported that Quebecor officially made an offer to buy Corus but had not yet received a response.

When asked by C21 about Quebecor’s approach, Reeb declined to comment specifically but hinted that the offer did not come close to the price tag Corus believes it can fetch.

“I can’t speak to that. I would just say that we have tremendous value in these assets and channels, and I think the whole industry recognises that. All conversations, I’ll leave [Quebecor] one aside, show that there are lots of people who have interest and see the value in this company.”

Whether the rebrand and relaunch of Home Network and Flavour Network will entice advertisers and audiences remains to be seen. But given that Corus’s portfolio of specialty channels is its main profit centre, the company’s future prospects are tethered closely to the success of these new brands.

A lot rides on the events of the coming weeks as the company must thread the needle of managing its debt agreements at the same time as trying to bring potential buyers to the table.

In the meantime, Reeb insists Corus is building its new lifestyle portfolio for the long term with a focus on rejuvenating the ways in which it interacts with brands, reaches audiences and attracts top talent.

“Sometimes you do your best work under tight deadlines and the team just did incredible work on this,” he says, adding that Corus will have “full control” over how it operates the channels once the WBD deal expires.

“This provides a great opportunity to integrate with those brands as we want, we can greenlight shows that fit with the brands as we want, and Home and Flavour can truly grow and mature as Canadian channels.”