Rogers & Shaw team up to launch new subscription-video service
Posted Aug 26, 2014 7:18 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Cable-and-internet giants Rogers Communications Inc. and Shaw Communications Inc. are partnering to launch a new streaming-video service, set to debut in November.
The subscription on-demand service — called shomi — will feature 14,000 episodes and titles, 11,000 hours of TV shows and more than 1,000 movies. Users will be access the service on a computer, tablet, mobile device, Xbox 360 and cable set top boxes.
The joint venture will be owned equally by Rogers Communications and Shaw Communications. It will operate as its own standalone entity with its own management structure.
shomi will go head-to-head in the video-streaming space against Netflix Canada, which offers a similar all-you-can-watch-video model for one monthly fee. Earlier this year, Netflix Canada announced that it was raising its price from $7.99 to $8.99 a month for new customers.
The new service will be available first to Rogers and Shaw internet and TV customers and will cost $8.99 a month.
It will combine TV-and-movie recommendations from staff programmers as well as a software-based recommendation engine.
