Rogers Sports & Media is renovating its original lifestyle programming, unveiling 11 new series for HGTV and Food Network.

The Canadian originals include three projects from Scott Brothers Entertainment, two from RTR Media as well as shows produced by Blink49 Studios, Ocean Entertainment, Proper Television, and Rockhead Entertainment.

Among the series are Canadian editions of formats including Come Dine with Me Canada and Home Town Takeover Canada. Those combined with Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent and Citytv’s upcoming Canadian edition of The Price is Right, showcase formats as a valuable tool for the broadcaster.

“What we’re trying to do is make the biggest, most scalable programs that we can,” Kale Stockwell, Rogers Sports & Media’s head of original programming, tells Playback Daily.” It takes a lot to cut through what is a crowded content market right now, and having established brands that we can build off of immediately, that the consumer recognizes and trusts, is really helpful.”

Outside of formats, the slate includes Property Brothers: Commitment Issues  (working title), featuring Drew and Jonathan Scott, as well as Proper Television’s Andy’s East Coast Kitchen Crawl   and Ocean Entertainment’s Small Town Escapes with Colin & Justin.

The raft of originals come at an uncertain time for Rogers Communications’ slate of new channels, launched in January after the company signed new content deals with Warner Bros. Discovery and NBCUniversal, taking content rights previously licensed to Bell Media and Corus Entertainment. Following that shakeup, BDUs outside of Rogers and Telus have opted not to include the channels in their packages.

Meanwhile, Rogers has asked for an appeal of the CRTC’s decision to require it to carry Corus’ Home Network and Flavour Networks (which replaced its prior HGTV Canada and Food Network Canada channels).

Rogers Sports & Media president Colette Watson said in January that Rogers had paused plans to commission original unscripted content, as the level of investment in original programming is based on the percentage of channel revenue, derived by subscriptions.

“There are some, let’s call them, outstanding issues on the regulatory level that we’d like addressed, but we also very much believe in the HGTV and Food Network brands,” says Stockwell. “We want to be able to establish a slate of programming for those brands that we can offer to consumers… We’re certainly trying to do as much programming as we can under the current regulatory pressures.”

No new Canadian scripted originals were announced as part of the company’s upfront presentation this year. Stockwell says Rogers is happy with its returning programs for 2025-26, Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent (Lark Productions, Cameron Pictures) and Hudson & Rex (Shaftesbury, Pope Productions).

“It’s not to say that we wouldn’t look to do more scripted programming if the right thing came along. But, I think as of right now, we’re really happy with our scripted slate. It performs well for us,” says Stockwell.

Image courtesy of Rogers Sports & Media; pictured (L-R): Top row – Sarah Keenleyside and Emily Michelle; Bottom Row – Drew and Jonathan Scott and Andy Hay