21 Facts About Corus Entertainment

Corus Entertainment has a large presence in Canadian broadcasting as owner of the national Global network, 39 radio stations, and a portfolio of 33 specialty television services; the company's domestic specialty brands include Showcase, SeriesPlus, Slice, Teletoon, Teletoon, W Network, and YTV.

Corus Entertainment owns the animation studio Nelvana, animation software vendor Toon Boom Animation, and as well as the children's publisher Kids Can Press.

Corus Entertainment would be a separate, publicly traded company, first listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange in September 1999, but it would still be primarily controlled by the Shaw family.

In September 1999, Corus Entertainment acquired the broadcasting assets of the Power Corporation of Canada, which included four television stations and sixteen radio stations.

In September 2000, after negotiations and rumoured offers by other studios, Corus Entertainment announced that it would acquire the Toronto-based animation studio Nelvana for $540 million; the deal was considered to be a complement to its children's television networks, including YTV, Treehouse, and its stakes in Family Channel, Teletoon, and its French counterpart Teletoon.

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Corus Entertainment stated that it planned to use the purchase to help launch a preschool-oriented cable network in the United States.

In March 2001, in response to complaints by the CRTC over its near-monopoly on ownership of children's specialty channels in Canada, Corus Entertainment sold its stake in Family Channel to Astral Media for $126.

Corus Entertainment sold its stake in the Western Canadian pay-per-view service Viewers Choice to Shaw Communications for $22.

Corus Entertainment sold its Red Deer, Alberta stations CKGY-FM and CIZZ-FM to Newcap Radio.

Also in August 2007, Corus Entertainment announced a partnership with Hearst Corporation to launch Cosmopolitan TV.

Corus Entertainment cited their low profitability in comparison to their stations elsewhere as reasoning for the sale.

In March 2013, as part of Bell Media's proposed acquisition of Astral Media, Corus Entertainment reached a deal to acquire Astral's stakes in Historia, Series+, and TELETOON Canada Inc, as well as the Ottawa radio stations CJOT-FM and CKQB-FM, for $400.

Corus Entertainment indicated that these purchases were meant to help the company expand its television holdings in the competitive Quebec market.

Corus Entertainment planned to open a new office in Montreal following the sale.

In June 2019, Corus Entertainment was announced as a launch partner for Amazon Prime Video Channels in Canada, offering a subscription-based bundle known as StackTV with access to live and on-demand programs from five Global TV stations and eleven Corus Entertainment specialty services.

In March 2020, Corus Entertainment replaced the individual mobile apps for most of its specialty channels with a new unified app under the Global brand, featuring content from Global, Global News, Food Network, HGTV, History, Showcase, Slice, and W Network on-launch.

Corus Entertainment is an industry sponsor of the University of Waterloo Stratford Campus; Gary Maavara, Corus Entertainment' Corporate Secretary, sits on the Waterloo campus' advisory board.

Corus Entertainment was formed from the media assets that had been owned by Shaw Communications in the years before.

Shaw and Corus Entertainment are independent, publicly traded companies, but nonetheless, some reports indicate that the two companies continued to have a close relationship.

For several years, Corus Entertainment managed advertising operations for Shaw's cable systems, although this operation has since been discontinued.

For example, Corus Entertainment owns three over-the-air TV stations which were longtime CBC affiliates, and which agreed in 2015 to switch to Bell Media's CTV network, despite Shaw owning the rival Global network at the time.