Canadian MSOs Rogers Communications and Shaw Communications will shutter their SVOD joint venture, shomi, just two years after its launch.
The joint venture, which will wind down on Nov. 30, costs Rogers US$75 million to $105 million, which it will write down for the quarter ending Sept. 30, according to a company statement.
Shaw already wrote down a $38.53 million loss in July.
“Rogers today thanked its customers who subscribed to Shomi for trying out a Canadian innovation,” Rogers said in its statement.
The cable companies offered shomi as both a stand-alone service and a complementary product for cable pay-TV services. However, the platform didn’t achieve its objective — to slow down U.S. behemoth Netflix, which has amassed 5.2 million subscribers in Canada.
Combined with Crave, the SVOD service launched by Canadian telecom giant BCE Inc., shomi only gathered around 700,000 subscribers, according to Solutions Research Group.
Meanwhile, Rogers itself has begun integrating Netflix into its product portfolio. For example, it’s offering a year free of Netflix for those who sign up for its 4K service.
For more:
- read this Reuters story
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