‘Empire’ to stop airing on Canadian network City, will stream on Shomi

By David Friend

THE CANADIAN PRESS

TORONTO _ Fans of the hip-hop soap opera “Empire” will soon have to look elsewhere to watch it in Canada as the TV series is being dropped from its prime-time TV slot and is moving to Shomi.

The streaming video service says it has acquired the exclusive Canadian rights for the final half of the show’s second season, which begins airing March 30 on Fox.

The deal was made after “Empire” was dropped by Canadian television network City, which carried the show last fall.

Shomi says each episode will be available within 24 hours after its original U.S. airing. Canadians will still be able to catch the series on Wednesday nights through the Fox network feed offered by their cable or satellite provider or via an over-the-air antenna.

It’s the latest _ and most high-profile _ migration of a buzzy U.S. network TV show to a Canadian streaming service.

Last summer, “Fresh Off the Boat” took up residence on Shomi when it failed to find broadcaster support in Canada, and “Scandal” recently landed on Netflix Canada when it was bumped from City’s TV schedule.

“You take the opportunities when they come, and this was a great opportunity to shift the series,” said Marni Shulman, head of Shomi’s content and programming, in an interview.

Though Shomi refuses to disclose viewership numbers, Shulman said the first season of the series “always” ranks among the streaming service’s 10 most-watched shows.

“’Empire’ is a really, really strong show for Shomi,” she said. “It performs exceptionally well for us.”

Traditional TV viewers didn’t warm to the series in quite the same way, despite massive hype and U.S. ratings that were through the roof, said Hayden Mindell, vice president of TV programming and content at City’s owner Rogers Media.

“It wasn’t getting the audiences we needed on City,” he said.

While “Empire” routinely placed within the Top 10 for U.S. network Fox, the Canadian airing never broke the Top 30, according to data compiled by Numeris.

Around the same time as “Empire” was struggling on City, quite the opposite was happening on Shomi when it debuted last year, Shulman said.

The streaming service found that season 1 of “Empire” connected with its viewers almost immediately. About 77 per cent of the Shomi accounts that made it through the second episode watched all the way to the end of the first season.

“That’s really, really high,” Shulman said.

She added that “Empire” doesn’t attract only the younger viewers often associated with streaming services. She said Shomi’s demographics for “Empire” stretch beyond the coveted 18-to-49 demographic.

Along with Shomi, streaming competitors are in pursuit of shows that aren’t wanted by the major broadcasters, Shulman said. It’s hard to ignore that many of the series rejected by Canada’s biggest TV channels are also led by minority casts.

Among the shows Shomi owns the exclusive rights to is “Jane the Virgin,” a Golden Globe-winning comedy based on a Venezuelan telenovela, and Netflix streams “From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series,” a thriller with a mostly Latino cast.

“Regardless of how multicultural Canada is … a lot of the time that doesn’t tend to resonate across conventional television,” she said.

“Typically speaking, the more multicultural shows don’t perform as well on linear television as they do on (streaming services).”

There are exceptions to that rule, Shulman added, pointing to “Blackish” as one example.

Canadian viewers have also made hits out of “Quantico,” led by Indian film superstar Priyanka Chopra, and Shonda Rhimes’s “How to Get Away With Murder.”

“The stars have to align to make sure that you are getting the right show for your brand at the right time, for the right fee,” Shulman said.

“That’s just the nature of our business.”

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