OSLO, Norway and TORONTO, Canada—Canadian broadcaster Corus Entertainment has partnered with Appear Appear, a global provider of live production technology, to modernize Corus’ news contribution architecture, replacing legacy leased circuits with an IP-based approach, using SRT as the primary transport protocol across the network’s affiliates, news bureaus and operational hubs.

The transition reflects the changing realities of broadcast environments in North America, including more live output, locations, as well as greater pressure to operate efficiently while maintaining the reliability required for news production, the companies said.

“Moving away from a reliance on leased circuits and bringing greater capability in-house was central to how we approached this transition,” said Drew Kikauka, Senior Director, Enterprise Architecture and Broadcast Engineering , Corus Entertainment. “Appear gives us greater control and has unlocked meaningful efficiency gains, while enabling a consistent, scalable IP-first contribution model across Canada.”

Corus’ transformation centers on shifting from leased circuits to IP, using the SRT protocol to enable secure, stable media transport for this always-on news environment. To ensure continuity across this transition, Corus required support for legacy interfaces such as ASI at key headend locations alongside IP workflows, enabling a practical hybrid operating model as facilities and endpoints transition at different times.

Corus is using Appear’s X Platform, a high-capacity, ultra-dense, low-latency media processing and gateway platform, to consolidate key functions into a more streamlined nationwide workflow. This reduces complexity and helps engineering teams maintain a robust operating model across a distributed footprint.

To support day-to-day operations at scale, the deployment includes an orchestration layer built around Skyline Dataminer, with Toronto-based partner Rocket delivering custom UI and application-layer tools for scheduling and operator control. The architecture also supports ground-to-cloud contribution, enabling more flexible, cloud-connected news production workflows.

“Corus has taken a decisive step that many broadcasters are now prioritising, replacing a reliance on leased circuits with an IP-first architecture engineered for resilience,” said Ed McGivern, President and General Manager, Appear US. “By consolidating functionality and increasing consistency across a nationwide footprint, it shows how a more streamlined contribution model can deliver both robustness and efficiency without adding operational burden.”

Based in Toronto, Corus Entertainment owns Global Television Network as well as specialty cable channels. radio stations and is also involved in publishing and streaming.

TORONTO—Pluto TV has made its previously announced debut in Canada, with the free-ad supported TV (FAST) offering of more than 20,000 hours and 110 plus channels as part of a partnership with Corus Entertainment. 

"I am thrilled to officially introduce Pluto TV to Canadian audiences, bringing them a fantastic lineup that combines the best of Corus' Canadian content, Paramount's deep library and more than 100 third-party partners," explained Olivier Jollet, executive vice president & international general manager for Pluto TV. "The union of Pluto TV and Corus delivers the best of both worlds, debuting a free streaming destination for fans, and creating opportunities for advertisers, offering a premium inventory in a brand safe TV environment. This year has marked tremendous growth for Pluto TV, having expanded to the Nordics in May and now to Canada. As we are now in more than 30 countries and territories, we are one step closer to our mission to entertain the planet."

"The debut of Pluto TV marks the next evolution of streaming in Canada, as Corus celebrates the launch alongside Paramount Global as partners in both content and ad sales," said Troy Reeb, executive vice president, broadcast networks, Corus Entertainment. "Corus is home to Canada's biggest portfolio of original content in the food and lifestyle space, and the stories that connect with Canadians where they live through Global News. Our strategy has always been rooted in placing more content in more places, and Pluto TV further advances this goal. We are also thrilled to expand our offering for advertisers with the addition of Pluto TV's huge inventory of premium video."

Programming includes channels dedicated to hit series like CSI, NCIS and South Park as well as The Drew Barrymore Show, Judge Judy and Beverly Hills 90210. 

The line-up also includes a wide variety of programming from Corus.

TORONTO—Corus Entertainment Inc. and Paramount Global have announced that Paramount’s free ad supported streaming service Pluto TV will launch in Canada this fall with more than 100 unique, curated channels and over 20,000 hours of content.

At launch, Corus will be the ad representative for the service and Pluto TV will offer a slate of Corus Original library series in a variety of genres.

Corus owns 33 specialty television services, 39 radio stations, 15 conventional television stations, as well as a suite of digital and streaming assets, animation software, technology and media services.

"Corus' relationship with Pluto TV underlines our commitment to ad-supported premium video, building on the success of STACKTV, the Global TV App, and Premium Video on Demand," said Greg McLelland, executive vice president and chief revenue officer, Corus Entertainment. "The agreement further expands the volume of digital video inventory Corus has to offer, in a premium, brand-safe environment allowing our clients to achieve the impact of TV with the measurement and targetability of digital and connect with audiences wherever they are streaming."

"Pluto TV is committed to further expanding its premium free offering for audiences around the world, and this game-changing partnership with Corus is a testament to that commitment,” said Olivier Jollet, executive vice president and international general manager, Pluto TV. “Following Pluto TV's  recent launch in the Nordics and the partnership we implemented with Viaplay, which served as the strategic framework for this deal, the upcoming launch in Canada will combine Corus' incredible local content offering with Pluto TV's global content and world class platform, positioning Pluto TV to become the leading free ad-supported streaming TV service in the country upon launch in the fall," 

Pluto TV is a major FAST player with nearly 68 million monthly active users who have streamed over 4.8 billion total viewing hours across over 30 countries and territories spanning three continents. 

Corus Entertainment is one of Canada’s largest media and content companies with assets in radio, television and online. The broadcast television side of the company is a mix of over-the-air broadcast stations and specialty cable channels. Like all media organizations, it is observing dramatic shifts in audience viewing habits and in the way advertising dollars are being designated. Corus is responding proactively to address the changing media marketplace, developing innovative technology and content solutions. It is a pioneer in Canada, creating consolidated news production facilities, building a national infrastructure with sophisticated content sharing capabilities and extending their various brands across multiple platforms. Corus also broke new ground in leveraging live data; both as a content source and as a driver of video and content to new platforms. Early on, Corus saw the value that data had as an editorial source that could be extended over its many media properties and as a powerful tool to strategically distribute content.

Data empowers Corus to accomplish two essential things: add significant editorial value to its multiple media properties and secondly, open new market opportunities driving untapped ad revenue. To meet these objectives and take full advantage of their data and content, Corus’ Global News division turned to Bannister Lake, a leading provider of professional video graphic display solutions for broadcast.

In working with Corus, Bannister Lake focused on three essential data-rich areas: elections, information tickers and creating new media products and services. Across Global News’ broadcast operations, Bannister Lake’s Elector election race software is being used to produce municipal, provincial and federal coverage. Elector allows editorial staff to quickly and effectively filter race results, identify important trends, make race calls and in turn populate and display dynamic election graphics on-air or online.

“Elector has become our go-to software solution for all our election coverage. It works great on municipal, provincial and federal races. Both our editorial and technical staff love its ease of use and quick implementation,” says Gerry Belec, director of news technology and operations at Corus Entertainment.

Across Global News, Bannister Lake powers L-Bars, tickers, and sponsor logos on all the local morning news programs. The key tool Global News uses to make all this possible is Bannister Lake’s Chameleon software. Chameleon provides Global News with a single data/graphics management solution that drives a wide variety of graphic playout devices across the entire Global News organization. By centralizing data through Chameleon, Corus not only realizes operational efficiencies, but also permits broadcast sales to create new media products and sell both national and local sponsorships on all its broadcast tickers. Editorially, Chameleon enables Global News to integrate the widest possible variety of data sources on-air, including social media feeds, financial data, sports scores, closings and atypical feeds such as community events calendars.

Corus foresees Chameleon playing an expanded and valuable role as the media company develops and launches multi-platform solutions, expands online, distributes more content via partnerships and explores innovative media opportunities.

Global News takes advantage of BLADE, Chameleon’s RESTful API feature, allowing them to manage and distribute specific portions of a data feed. With BLADE, Global News can effortlessly direct their content to various output channels including thousands of screens across digital signage networks in multiple cities across Canada. This has fostered new revenue and promotional opportunities for Corus and has dramatically improved brand recognition. BLADE allows Global News to target specific end points strategically with content designated for that output.

Corus and Global News further benefit from Bannister Lake’s development strategy that emphasizes multi-user, web-based solutions while still maintaining high levels of security. Teams from across the country can simultaneously access the solution, load content, query data and create and edit playlists, but only according to their user status. Should unusual operational issues emerge, Bannister Lake’s development team can write custom code resolving the issue.

“We look forward to a long and creative partnership with Corus. We are thrilled that our software and custom services can be plugged into so many aspects of their business”, says Georg Hentsch, Bannister Lake’s founder.