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Discovery, HGTV etc.. now free preview?
I’ve always had discovery, HGTV, food network etc… and they were taking away in January and replaced with channels that I never asked for and do not watch, Now I see HGTV, Discovery etc… are back but now under Free Preview…… so what the hell? Give me back the channels I originally had in my contract, I don’t want the replacement channels, how can this be resolved?
This has been discussed to death already on the forums. All of this was first announced last fall by the broadcasters and then by Telus a bit after. The discussions on the forums started last year about the changes.
To summarize things since you missed the multitude of existing discussions:
- First and foremost, Telus does NOT control the content aired on the channels by the broadcasters.
- Secondly, your contract doesn't specify what channels you get but the number of channel packs included with your plan. You can go and change channel packs pretty easily at any point.
- You still have the original channels. Bell lost the rights to the WB/Discovery owned suite of channels. The original Bell ones were renamed and were left with most of the Canadian content only. No US content.
- Rogers won the rights to use HGTV, Discovery etc. from Bell. The new HGTV, Discovery, etc., are the Rogers owned versions with some but not all of the American content, and none of the Canadian content. They are still inferior to what used to be there before. Discovery's parent company in the US moved a bunch of the content to Discovery+ now so they can charge users more. Rogers moved a bunch of the content from multiple channels fully over to their CityTV+ paid streaming platform now. Rogers wants you to pay extra for that now too.
- Overall the content on the renamed Bell channels and the new Roger's flavours of Discovery, etc. all suck now.
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- Nighthawk
Community Power User
This has been discussed to death already on the forums. All of this was first announced last fall by the broadcasters and then by Telus a bit after. The discussions on the forums started last year about the changes.
To summarize things since you missed the multitude of existing discussions:
- First and foremost, Telus does NOT control the content aired on the channels by the broadcasters.
- Secondly, your contract doesn't specify what channels you get but the number of channel packs included with your plan. You can go and change channel packs pretty easily at any point.
- You still have the original channels. Bell lost the rights to the WB/Discovery owned suite of channels. The original Bell ones were renamed and were left with most of the Canadian content only. No US content.
- Rogers won the rights to use HGTV, Discovery etc. from Bell. The new HGTV, Discovery, etc., are the Rogers owned versions with some but not all of the American content, and none of the Canadian content. They are still inferior to what used to be there before. Discovery's parent company in the US moved a bunch of the content to Discovery+ now so they can charge users more. Rogers moved a bunch of the content from multiple channels fully over to their CityTV+ paid streaming platform now. Rogers wants you to pay extra for that now too.
- Overall the content on the renamed Bell channels and the new Roger's flavours of Discovery, etc. all suck now.
Actually my contract dose discuss what channels I subscribe to because it is what is in the theme pack, I subscribed to theme pack “X” Because it had the channels that were”Listed” in that theme pack. Telus offered HGTV, Food etc in the theme pack and when they lost those channels/networks they substituted them with something no one asked for , something no one subscribed too, now they are sticking you with the channels that you don’t want and going to sell you the channels they lost and brought back. Why not just reinstate the channels back where they were? I called telus today and they can’t make changes until after the free preview
There is NO substitution or reinstatement that will get you back to what you had because, despite the name, HGTV and Food are NOT what they were before. From a channel provider perspective and contractually the new "HOME" channel is the old HGTV, etc. The reality is, some shows on the old HGTV will be on HOME and some will be on the new HGTV, some will move elsewhere or nowhere in Canada. There is nothing Telus can do to get the exact same content back on the same number of channels.
Thanks for this, I agree USA network is NOT Discovery, but I do like Oxygen over Investigation Discovery and Flavour Network over Food Network - it's great that we can compare now that everything is in free preview. I do worry that TELUS adding all these channels likely came at some cost which will be ultimately passed onto us. I actually added Discovery+ so wasn't really missing any of the american content, I'll probably drop Discovery+ soon though as I can't really stomach watching (and supporting) anything american these days.
