{"id":503572,"date":"2026-02-27T18:28:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T18:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/503572\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T18:28:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T18:28:07","slug":"is-heated-rivalry-a-game-changer-for-canadian-tv-around-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/503572\/","title":{"rendered":"Is ‘Heated Rivalry’ A Game-Changer for Canadian TV Around The World?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE: \u201cIf it\u2019s not the biggest hit out of Canada ever, it\u2019s one of them,\u201d says Sean Cohan<\/a> about Heated Rivalry<\/a>, the red-hot Canadian-produced ice hockey romance. Cohan is President of Bell Media<\/a>, the media giant that owns CTV and Crave, the streamer that launched the Jacob Tierney show, which is produced by Brendan Brady under the Accent Aigu banner.<\/p>\n

\n\tBell Media now plans to capitalize on this distinctly Canadian content moment. \u201cThere is absolutely more coming post Heated Rivalry,\u201d says Cohan. \u201cIn addition to the fact that Heated Rivalry will go on, we\u2019ve got high hopes for Jacob and Brendan and the folks at Accent Aigu, and what they\u2019re going to produce in that universe and elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn March 2024 and in his first interview<\/a> after joining Bell Media, Cohan told Deadline that he was \u201cpot committed\u201d on content. When Bell bought UK-based distributor Sphere Abacus, he explained<\/a> why the company was doing that deal as well as backing \u2018Northern Lights\u2019 \u2013 meaning Canadian creators with worldwide ambitions. When we sit down with the former Nielsen and A+E exec during the London TV Screenings he says: \u201cWe recognized that the Canadian market, the product and the creative brand was misunderstood and underestimated. It\u2019s a very nice case study or proof of the point having an incredibly buzzy show like Heated Rivalry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u2018Beer, Lesbians and Baseball!\u2019 & Yaga<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tCrave, along with the likes of Stan in Australia, is one of a new breed of domestic streamer that is making or co-producing international hits. Other Crave shows that have bubbled up include Empathy from Quebec-born actor and screenwriter Florence Longpr\u00e9<\/a>. The second season is a co-production with France\u2019s Canal+. From the CTV side there is Sullivan\u2019s Crossing, which airs in the U.S. on The CW.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn terms of the pipeline of new shows from Crave, there is Slo Pitch<\/a>, which Bell Media announced with the headline \u2018Beer, Lesbians and Baseball!\u2019 From Shaftesbury, Boss & Co and Elliot Page\u2019s Pageboy Productions, the half-hour mockumentary follows an underdog queer softball team. Buzz has been building around that one this week at the Screenings.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s also Yaga, a half-hour drama starring Carrie-Ann Moss (The Matrix), Noah Reid (Schitt\u2019s Creek), Clark Backo (Letterkenny), as well as Heated Rivalry\u2019s Hudson Williams. Kat Sandler is writer-showrunner on the mystery thriller, which is based on her play. For Bell Media, it\u2019s an in-house affair with Blink49 Studios, which it backs, producing alongside Front Street Pictures, and Sphere Abacus selling it internationally.<\/p>\n

\n\tTom Green\u2019s Funny Farm <\/a>is coming out of a development deal with Tom Green Productions and there should be news soon of what\u2019s coming out of a deal with Seth Rogen\u2019s Point Grey.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u2018Re-Heating\u2019<\/p>\n

\n\tSix of the top-ten most-watched shows on Crave were Canadian originals over the all-important holiday viewing period and the streamer has added about a 1.5 million subs over the last two years.\u00a0It had 4.6 million subs at the last official count.<\/p>\n

\n\tCohan says there is a Heated Rivalry effect on the numbers, which can partly be discerned by analyzing what new customers tune into first after they sign up. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely delivered an uptick,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s a decent number of subs that have joined for that.\u201d He also talks about \u2018re-Heating\u2019, a term coined by Canadian press for the folks who have Heated Rivalry on repeat. \u201cRoughly a third have watched it more than two times and I\u2019m hearing about really amazing stats where some people are even getting into the double-digit viewing, which is wild.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHeated Rivalry will not, however, be winning any Emmys \u2013 it not eligible. Cohan says: \u201cPeople say: \u2018The Emmys isn\u2019t allowed to give Heated Rivalry an award. Is that a problem?\u2019 Well, the show\u2019s already got a fair bit of recognition, and the fans love it, and they\u2019re re-watching it, and we\u2019re going to continue to drive it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAwards aside, Cohan and Bell Media want to harness the buzz and use that to put a new generation of Canadian shows on the map. \u201cIt\u2019s not just the Bell Media story, but we want to be at the center of it,\u201d he says. Heated Rivalry may just be sparking a Canadian drama power play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: \u201cIf it\u2019s not the biggest hit out of Canada ever, it\u2019s one of them,\u201d says Sean Cohan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[92263,49,48,75,140293,200962,200963,348,195265],"class_list":["post-503572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-bell-media","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-heated-rivalry","tag-sean-cohan","tag-slo-pitch","tag-tv","tag-yaga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}