The exec behind Canada’s surprise hit ‘Heated Rivalry’ on the secret to its success

Max Tani:
Welcome to another episode of the Mixed Signals podcast from us here at Semafor, where we are talking to all of the most interesting and important people shaping our new media age. I’m Max Tani. I’m the media editor here at Semafor, and with me as always is our editor-in-chief, Ben Smith. Ben, it’s very fitting. It’s very cold outside. It’s fitting we have a Canadian media executive on the show this week.

Ben Smith:
You’re here to warm us up with a steamy hockey show.

Max Tani:
That’s kind of an understatement. This week on the show, we are talking to Sean Cohan. Sean is president of one of the biggest independent media companies in Canada. It’s kind of like the NBC Universal of our friends to the north. They are owned by a big telecommunications company, but within Bell, they have a linear broadcaster. They’ve got some cable assets. They’ve got a streamer called Crave. They’ve got some radio stations still. But the reason that we’re having him on the show this week is to talk about this surprise hit show that they have. Listeners of the show are mostly media freaks like me and Ben, and so obviously they have most likely heard of it. It’s called “Heated Rivalry”. It’s this gay hockey show that premiered at the end of last year and has become this surprise hit going from this book series to now an international sensation, kind of surprisingly.
Ben, would you have predicted that the gay hockey show was going to be the show of the end of 2025 and of early 2026 for a certain cohort of people? Does that surprise you?

Ben Smith:
Yeah, no, of course it surprises me. I mean, that’s what’s fun about culture is that the hits so often totally blindside you and are something that you wouldn’t expect and we’re never thinking about. And that’s something I think, I mean, Sean, obviously, he had this very long career at A&E, 15 years. He’s like a central casting American entertainment executive in a certain way. He’s now sitting up there in Canada and just with a remarkable hit on his hands.

Max Tani:
Well, Ben, I’ve been to Canada many times. I have to admit, I’m not the world’s biggest premier expert in Canadian media, but I’ve been fascinated by the success of this show. So I’m really interested to ask Sean what it says about the state of Canadian media, what its success abroad says about the journey from kind of viral cult book hit to television streaming sensation. And also, what he’s seeing when it comes to the tensions between President Donald Trump and Canada. We’re obviously at this really interesting moment in Canadian American relations. How that’s impacting the Canadian media is also pretty interesting to me.
Well, I’ll stop rambling. We have a lot of questions that we want to ask Sean and we’ll get to them right after this.
Sean, thank you so much for joining us. We’re so excited to have you on the show today. So you’re here because you have one of the hit shows of the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026, kind of this surprise hit, Heated Rivalry. I think we’re really interested. Both Ben and I are fascinated by the process by which this show comes into being and then becomes a hit of its stature. The stars are going to be carrying the Olympic torches. I saw this went from a show that was not promoted very much to this huge hit on HBO, but just walk us from the beginning to where we are now. When does this land on your desk? What are your first thoughts about it? Explain that to us.

Sean Cohan:
Yeah, first, thanks for the interest and thanks for having me, Max and Ben. I’d say first, this comes when Jacob and Brendan from Accent, the ProdCo, and both of them we worked with extensively before. Jacob in the kind of Shoresy and Letterkenny family, which were more cult hits, but did well. It starts where Jacob reaches out to Rachel Reid, the author of a six soon to be seven book series, ‘Game Changers’, and says, “Hey,” jokingly in DMs, I think, “Has your material been optioned?” And she says, “No,” and starts a conversation. And then Jacob works through process option Z and develops an approach, brings it to us and we dug it. And when I say we, I’m going to give my team a ton of credit here, and Rachel and Justin from our team, they’ve been looking for romance, right? Actually looking for the romance category as a category that’s been underrepresented, both in streaming and just kind of broadly in our eyes.
And some folks have talked about, well, our Bridgerton as one way to think about it, but I think it’s more that just like we recognize that there’s a vacuum or there’s a gap in this category. But brought it to us. I think a bunch of things appeal from the outset to our team. One, obviously we’ve got all the trust in the world in Jacob and Brendan, it’s kind of master of the obvious here. It’s got built-in IP or IP with a built-in fan base, I should say, and pretty rabid at that. Our team actually went down a rabbit hole really just studying this category of books because there are a lot of folks that didn’t even really know that this genre existed or existed in such volume and that there was so much fandom around it.

Ben Smith:
And what do you call that? What genre? What is this genre?

Sean Cohan:
I want to be careful here. No, it’s-

Ben Smith:
This makes me feel so old.

Sean Cohan:
You and me both. And we’re not that old, and we’re not that old.

Ben Smith:
Right.

Sean Cohan:
So look, it’s romance. I’d call this thing a gay hockey romance, but I don’t know that I want to call it anything that people have gone to erotic or steamy. It’s just kind of people have called it romantic-y. And then you might say, “Well, listen, Sean, romance books of existence is the beginning of time.” Ben, the old reference here that you and I would go with would be like a Danielle Steele or something. That’s been around since the beginning of time. So I’m unfortunately unable to come up with a good label for it, but the team got really interested in, found a great deal of fandom in and it buoyed hope for the show. Then you add on the fact it’s authenticity. There’s such a great kind of longing and forbidden romance piece to this. And of course, Canadians and there’s a big population around the world that’s crazy about hockey. And then you layer on on top of that, we weren’t looking for this necessarily, but a nice representation thread.
I’ve always been a big fan of showing people themselves or parts of themselves on TV when they haven’t seen it before. And I’m veering a little bit, but as a person of color, the first time I saw A Different World on TV and saw Dwayne Wayne and Whitley, there’s something to that. And so a lot of different elements, and of course, like I said, a trust in the creatives, made us really interested. Now, of course, along the way, there were flags that it was going to be pretty explicit. That it was going to show a lot of stuff that the perception is people haven’t seen before. But as our creatives argue objectively and quite persuasively, we’re not showing anything that anybody hasn’t. It’s just that it’s, and I quote, “It’s just that it’s queer sex.”

Max Tani:
Yeah. I’m kind of curious about this because as Ben and I were both preparing for the show, we were talking about this journal article which reported that instead of co-financing this show with some other entity, you guys actually kind of went in alone here. And part of the reason for that was that as you were talking to other potential partners, that there was some concern about wanting to change some of the characters or maybe rolling back the eroticism a little bit. I mean, it is a fairly explicit show, but you guys felt really confident or confident enough in it, that you wanted to invest on your own and you didn’t have some of the same concerns that others had. What made you feel confident about this specifically when others didn’t have that kind of vision?

Sean Cohan:
Well, it starts with the creatives, the partners who were playing with an objective kind of side by side thinking through what had been seen. There’s no frontal nudity, for example, in this show, right? There was that that gave us comfort. There is the recognition that one of our competitive advantages is that we can move a little faster and we ought to play to being a little bit more agile. So part of this is just that when we met with partners, they’re moving slow now. Green lights in the US and around the world are moving slow and people, it’s that slow maybe. I always argue that a quick no is better than a slow maybe.

Max Tani:
Well, Sean, can I ask why are you able to move faster than some of your other peers in the space?

Sean Cohan:
We’ve got maybe a fewer layers. We’re a bit of a newer, slightly smaller entrant. We’re the largest media and entertainment player by a country mile in Canada, but we’re smaller than the other folks and we’re a little scrappier. And so yeah, we can move faster. And I think I’ve kind of gone out and said, back to your process question, at a certain point it came to me and we’d been seeing the cuts and got more and more bullish on this thing, but at a certain point you have the moment where you look in the mirror and you say to yourself, is it good? Do you believe in it? To our creatives and to our creative partners. Is it objectively defendable? And if it is, then we got to roll. And the lack of a process, the lack of eight layers, the lack of fear or the desire to take on calculated risk, I think made us different in this scenario and hopefully differentiates us going forward.

Ben Smith:
When you were talking to potential co-producers, what were you hearing from them?

Sean Cohan:
I think that there was a lot of love for the project. How many times have you folks heard somebody talk about a built-in fan base and established IP? And then the fact that there’s six books, soon to be seven books in this series, and that it’s a global thing. So there were a lot of reasons, and the material, and Jacob and Brendan, they adapted this with a lot of TLC. I mean, it was well done. And so there was a lot of love for it, but like I said, you know folks, it was a mix. Some folks who were moving a little slow, some folks wanted to dilute the Canadiana or the Big C Canadian of it. Some folks-

Ben Smith:
Really?

Sean Cohan:
... a little bit of that or-

Ben Smith:
Forget the gay sex. The really divisive thing here is Canada.

Sean Cohan:
Yeah, exactly. Who knew? Big C Canadian is the big problem. And some folks wanted to maybe think about dialing back how explicit it was. And so in the end, obviously we’re fired up to have taken the calculated risk, but I think it’s part of a... I’m going to sound dull and business speak-y, but it’s part of a program or a concerted effort over the last couple years for us to aim and communicate, to make great global and profitable, to take big swings, to take risk, and to work with what we think are some of the best creatives in the world, the Canadians. Whether they live in LA, New York or London or Guam or Toronto. I mean, I’ll just say, and I’ll veer off for one second, one of the things for years people have been talking about up here in Toronto and Vancouver and everywhere in between is they rue the fact that Canadian talent leaves, that they moved to LA, they moved to New York, they moved to London.
And maybe because I’m an adopted Canadian, a neurotic annoying New Yorker through and through, I don’t really care where they live. I just want to work with great creatives. And it just so happens that wherever they live, there’s some great Canadian talent, some that’s really well known, obviously, like the Seth Rogan’s and Ryan Reynold’s and the Tom Green’s and Elliot Page’s and so on. And some that maybe until recently were slightly lesser known, like Jacob.

Ben Smith:
So to switch to the sort of Big C Canada question as you put it, I mean, you’re an American running a defining Canadian media company. At a moment when there’s really just more animosity than probably in our life, maybe since Benedict Arnold days, between the US and Canada. Do you feel that? Does that affect your day to day or do you kind of feel it around the office? Not direct to you personally, but just in terms of how... Or maybe directed at you personally.

Sean Cohan:
Well, I’m cackling because I mean, thankfully there’s no team members here. No, I’m kidding. Do you really think there’s animosity? Did Carney and Trump have some funny things to say I didn’t hear about this week? Look, undoubtedly, it is a very curious moment in the relations of two very longstanding allies. There’s people smarter than me that can talk about the quirks of this moment. I will say that with my family, and so I call myself an adopted Canadian, and I am an unabashed, neurotic annoying, and unabashedly proud New Yorker as well. I will tell you, I’ll relate to you that my family was there at a Leafs game, I forget if it was a Leaf or the Raptors, where the Canadian crowd booed the US national anthem.

Ben Smith:
I saw that. I saw that.

Sean Cohan:
And my girls, I’ve got a four and 11 year old, they turned to me and said, “Daddy, why are they booing us?” Which was a very powerful moment for me and very hard moment for me as a parent. But of course, they’re not booing us and so on and so forth. That all said, and the fact that it’s a quirky and kind of hard moment between... There’s a lot of great respect in the creative community, in our business within Bell, there’s great respect across the border between Americans and Canadians. I have been welcomed along the way, and certainly there are moments where maybe I’m a little bit rawer or a little sharper than maybe folks are used to here, and there’s definitely differences culturally, but I’ve been welcomed and throughout the creative community and the business community, I think there’s been a let’s get on with it kind of approach. So it hasn’t really been a factor.

Ben Smith:
To talk about, I was in Davos last week for Carney’s speech and the thrust of it really was, the US hasn’t gone away, but that the relationships changed forever. And he had just gone to China and there’s a sense like US obviously the most important import market for what you’re doing for what most Canadians are doing, but also that they’re trying to balance and find other relationships and look elsewhere. I’m curious, you mentioned that the rivalry was doing well in China. I mean, are you following Carney to look in that direction a little? I mean, Chinese micro-drama is obviously this huge thing at the moment. I don’t know. Can you do stuff that American producers can’t because the US right now is in such a sort of more hostile relationship with China?

Sean Cohan:
Well, I’d probably stay away from the China of it and I’m not going to come out and say we’re going to be prolific in the micro-drama of it. There’s a lot of folks active there. For me, maybe it’s reductive or overly simplistic, but look, we want to tell great stories and we want to deliver great stories that people want to watch.

Ben Smith:
Do you think maybe it’s... I mean, just the success of this project suggests to me that maybe the broad brush we’re living in this era of backlash and more conservative cultural politics is perhaps oversimplified. I mean, even betting on this project suggests you didn’t totally buy that idea.

Sean Cohan:
Oh, I definitely didn’t, because I think if you look at the stats, there’s a big part of the US population, they want to hide in their puritanical homes or caves. And maybe I came up, I was brought up professionally in an environment where you just, if your people believe in it and you think it’s really good and you think there’s an audience out there for it and you have a trust with great creatives that you’re working with, you take shots. I don’t know. And so I don’t want to give us too, too much credit in terms of recognizing that the cultural seas or the current, maybe a little bit less conservative out there, but I’ll say in retrospect, it’s a slightly more progressive environment up here and a slightly more tolerant. And I guess it goes both ways because we’re also, as Carney said, “We believe in the power of legitimacy, integrity, and rules.” But we also on the flip side have a scrappiness and an ability to kind of go against the grain a little bit.

Max Tani:
You were saying that you felt that the kind of romance category was underappreciated, undervalued. Why do you think that that is? And when was that an observation that you guys had and an insight that made you veer into this lane?

Sean Cohan:
Well, clinically or statistically, I think our team’s been looking at that for 18 months. For me, I’ll admit that I noted it anecdotally when I looked at some of the hits, things that have broken through or been zeitgeist-y over the last couple years on different platforms. So I don’t necessarily like to sell other people’s book, but when you think about ‘Nobody Wants This’ or when you think about Bridgerton. I mean, they work because they’re very good. They’re authentic and they’re specific. There’s a thirst or a hunger for romance out there that I think was underserved or has been underserved.

Ben Smith:
That’s obviously so true. I mean, ‘Nobody Wants This’, it’s like a kind of pure classic romance film. Why do you think there’s less of it being produced? That is an interesting observation.

Sean Cohan:
Smarter people than I would probably have to opine, but I think we go through cycles. I mean, we go through creative cycles where there’s... I’ll make this observation and then the next thing you know, a year from now, there’ll be seven gay hockey dramas set in Canada.

Ben Smith:
Right.

Sean Cohan:
Imitation, purest form of flattery, all of that. So I think we go through cycles and that very cycle will produce an abundance in a certain category, and then along the way, we’ll sleep on another category. But I do think that romance has been underserved for a while.

Max Tani:
No, it’s interesting and it’s an interesting angle that you guys took. And it reminded me a little bit of Ben and I had coffee recently with the CEO of Tubi who was showing us their big hit teen show where everybody’s just kind of making out and stuff. I had never heard of the show. I had no idea. I’m not kind of exploring the category. But it does also seem like, and correct me if I’m wrong here, that there’s an opportunity to make those types of shows. They don’t cost as much. You don’t necessarily need recognizable stars. But if you’re identifying the audience that feels underserved, you can kind of make this slightly lower budget hit out of nowhere.
Because as we were talking to the Tubi CEO, she was saying essentially, “All we care about is audience, we don’t care about...” And this is my words, “We don’t really care about the quality, we don’t really care about whether it wins awards. We just know that there’s an audience which wants this thing and we’re going to kind of serve it to them.” Not saying that this show doesn’t have that. A lot of people really like the show qualitatively as well.

Sean Cohan:
Yeah. Look, and I don’t know that I’d separate. To me, quality can be part of the formula to get audience. You create something great and to your point, it wasn’t promoted. We didn’t spend gazillions promoting this thing, but when you make something great, people find it, or at least that’s old school, but that’s just the way that I’ve always thought about it. But I think, Anjali, who I think you’re talking about a great, very strong leader, but I tend to agree with her. And as a matter of fact, we’re partners in Canada. We have a strategic partnership. We represent all of their inventory up here. And we think of what they’re doing with Tubi with some of the originals as complimentary or kind of fits in interesting ways, the audience is a little different, but also there is a linkage to your point.
And I do think back to your question, I do think there are these creative lanes that are somehow left behind by big players or by the kind of group-think or the on-rush into certain categories. So I think what Tubi’s doing in YA and what they’re doing maybe at a slightly different price point or execution style, a little bit grittier, I think those lanes are there. And it’s amazing in a world where so much attention and so much capital flows into making great content, but there is empty space.

Ben Smith:
And is the land basically just like injecting TikTok straight into your veins?

Sean Cohan:
I don’t know. I even have to ask her about that more so because we haven’t quite gotten to that mainlining. Although the ironic thing is, in my TikTok, in my Instagram, when I use it, my Facebook, in my LinkedIn feed, I will say Heated Rivalry is like an extraordinary proportion-

Ben Smith:
Yeah, unavoidable.

Sean Cohan:
... of those feeds. It’s unbelievable. Now, obviously the algo is like, they see that I love it. They see that I spend a lot of time on it, so I don’t know about mainlining, but I am enjoying the presence of that show and some of our other shows in those feeds.

Max Tani:
So Sean, you mentioned before that you guys didn’t put very many promotional resources behind this before you launched. I saw as well in some other piece that HBO decided to buy this two weeks before it was set to launch in Canada. Can you explain when it was clear that it was taking off? And I mean, was this kind of a deliberate decision that you kind of were hoping for word of mouth or was it like, “Hey, we don’t want to spend that much marketing this show, so we’re just kind of hope it works.” Talk a little bit about when you noticed a little bit of the shift there.

Sean Cohan:
Well, first, when I say we didn’t spend very much, I’m doing that on a kind of a relative basis with regard to how some of the bigger studios or bigger hyperscalers might’ve spent. We certainly were committed to the show and we did take a bit more social heavy in approach and along the way, we’re very careful to tap into what we saw as a pretty rabid fan base. But to your question, there were signs along the way that this was special, not just in the cuts when they came in. There was a lot of the social activity that happened, whether it was driven or sparked by what we did or just kind of happened independent. And that was before the show. The producers and the author were doing kind of book events and the lines were like several times around the block. I’m sure we promoted them, but it wasn’t like we had an ad running every five minutes.
And so you had these signs, kind of a rising fervor in the weeks leading up, on top of the fact that every time we saw a cut of this thing, people used the cliche lightning in a bottle a number of times and we had to maintain our enthusiasm, but it scaled up as we went. In terms of your question about HBO getting on board a couple weeks before, we had originally envisioned this show airing in the first quarter of 2026 around the Olympics, you could see the association.

Ben Smith:
Hockey, Canada, the Olympics.

Sean Cohan:
Yeah.

Ben Smith:
Well, the one time anybody in the States thinks about Canada or used to be.

Sean Cohan:
Yeah, but Ben, I hope-

Max Tani:
I think we think about it a lot these days.

Sean Cohan:
Yeah, I think about it a lot, but you’re right. I have, for better or worse, for a very long time. But I’d say we love what we were seeing. We loved what we saw as the built-in base. And so we made the decision to bring it forward. And in doing so, we created some kind of tight timeframes around about getting it out. But while it was closer to air, some of the distribution deals that we cut, we felt the love from a lot of different buyers, and I thought that it was very important to go day in date with this thing in most of the world. And so I would say it all kind of came together and we knew we had something. I’m not going to sit here and disingenuously tell you that this is exactly what we thought it was going to be. This level of zeitgeistiness, that’s not a word, but so don’t shoot me.

Max Tani:
Sure it is.

Sean Cohan:
My father’s a retired English teacher and he’s going to go nuts on me if he hears that. But just how much it’s in the zeitgeist, just how much buzz this has gotten, just how talked about. I mean, this is arguably people have said the biggest hit that Canada has ever produced.

Ben Smith:
How global is it? Is it hitting in places that maybe I wouldn’t expect a gay hockey movie to hit? Where are you seeing it?

Sean Cohan:
I believe it was number one on IMDB for a minute in China. It was number one on Sky Now in the UK when it launched, and that was two or three weeks. That was one of the few places that launched a little later. It was number one in Australia and New Zealand on their platforms. It was sold throughout Europe, aired throughout Europe on HBO Max, and you’d have to ask them, but I think it’s been a top show for them. So I would say every continent, it has driven outsized results. So that’s a long-winded way of saying, “We thought we had something special, but I’m not going to lie to you and say we knew everything has to line up for it to resonate and ripple through pop culture the way it has.” I did not predict an SNL parody heated wizardry or that it would be the toast of the Golden Globes or the Critics Choice Awards.

Ben Smith:
Are you annoyed you weren’t eligible for an Emmy?

Sean Cohan:
No. I think ultimately as someone that straddles the US and Canada, my hope is that we’ll look carefully at those rules going forward. And I say we, the community. But in the end, the kids would say game recognizes game. And I think the Tubi CEO said it best, it’s not about awards. I mean, we like the recognition, it’s nice buzz for the show, but the biggest hit Canada ever produced and probably in one of the biggest hits of 2025, 2026. And if the domestic Emmys doesn’t want to recognize it as such, that’s okay.

Max Tani:
Well, we need to take a short break, but we’ll be right back with more from Sean after this.
So obviously this has been a big hit both inside and outside Canada, but what I’m curious about is I was reading a story where it said that HBO paid around $600,000 for each episode to license it in the US. Having a hit that is a global hit is obviously good for business in many ways, but beyond driving some revenue, how do you build on this? Where do you go from this? And is this a bigger cultural hit than necessarily a financial one for you guys and for Bell and for Crave?

Sean Cohan:
Well, first I’d take a step back and say for the last couple of years I’ve been running around trying to be the equivalent of a rap hype man for Canadian creative, Canadian productions and for Bell Media’s ability to produce great. And I’ve ran around every partner I could find in Hollywood, in the UK and elsewhere. And it’s probably the best proof point, the best case study you can get and the best cred you can get that we can produce great up here. And whether it’s with us or with another Canadian player, it doesn’t matter. So I think first off, it’s a pretty big win and we’ve had other wins behind it. We’re also, we’re the commissioner behind Sullivan’s Crossing, we’re the commissioner behind a really successful French Canadian show called Empathy. There’s other things behind it, but this is defining, right? Your question is, how do you build on this or what does this mean financially and culturally?
Well, we produce a lot of originals and we last year bought a company, majority control in a company that distributes content around the world outside of Canada. And I’d set out when I came in a couple years ago to own more of our content, distribute more of our content around the world and be more ambitious, make more and make bigger. And so for us, it’s a great calling card, great proof point, and we’re making a bunch of original before and we’re going to make even more on the back end of this. It’s a great cultural moment for Canada and for Bell Media. But I’d also say the show itself is a pretty big financial success. And you folks would know that very rarely do shows show up season one and be material drivers, financially.
Generally, you got to go deeper. There’s got to be more volume. You got to be season three, season four, season five. And I know some of that is old world when there was syndication and there was lots of other streams. But in the end, I think having worked in content for 30 plus years, that’s the historical model. In this case, this is a driver today. This was a driver the minute it showed up on air and we have more to come, having green lit season two and we’re playing with the seven book series. So that’s a long-winded way of saying I think it has been financially strong and a success. It will be a pretty big play financially long term. And then it’s a case study and street cred, if you will, for both Bell and Canada. And while I’ll bemoan the fact that there’ll be like 800 gay hockey romances in three years, because of it, I will say, you know what? It’s a great thing for us and for the industry short and long term.

Max Tani:
So Sean, you mentioned that you were welcomed to Canada as an American, which is true, but I was in preparation for this interview reading an article in which I guess when you arrived a few years ago and you had to do some layoffs and had to do some cuts, that Justin Trudeau or somebody pretty high up in the government had said it was like a garbage decision or something like that. I’m curious if you’ve talked to Mark Carney at all recently. I’m curious what you think about him. And I’m curious if he has shared some of the sentiments of his predecessor.

Sean Cohan:
Well, so you are quite right about Justin Trudeau did call it a garbage when we had some tough decisions to make early on, as you know all tech and media companies have made over the last couple of years. We are in a well publicized transformation from a legacy Canadian broadcaster to digital media and content leader with global impact. And he called it a garbage decision that he was very pissed off about. And there were some other unkind things he said. And it was about two or three months into me being here. So yes, that was a great welcome to Canada. It was across every major media outlet here. And so that was fun.
I would say we’ve not heard any similar pronouncements from Mark Carney, Prime Minister Carney. And I would say at least in the wake of the Heated Rivalry fanfare and its success, culture ministers and other government officials alike have had some really kind things to say about the show and what it says about the Canadian creative community.

Ben Smith:
Has Carney seen Heated Rivalry?

Sean Cohan:
I can’t comment on it except I’m making a smug face because we’re going to be doing some screenings with some key government officials in the very near future as in the next few weeks.

Max Tani:
Very interesting. In an interview, you were talking about some kind of areas where you had some strategic advantages in navigating this kind of new media landscape. And you mentioned news as one of them. Here in the US, every major media company, a lot of the streamers are kind of trying to move far away from news or not talk about it, or they see it as kind of this thing that makes their life more difficult. I think CBS News is an example of that. I’m curious, is news a good business for you guys and why do you think that that’s different than how things are going down here where many of the big media companies do not want to remember... If they have news, they don’t want to talk about it at all?

Sean Cohan:
Yeah, Max, I understand your characterization and news in the broader ecosystem as like a bit of a third rail. I’ll start 50,000 feet and I’ll dive in. I think for us, for the last couple years, we’ve been talking in all these kind of... I’ll go a weird digression, but it’s related, I promise. Thanks for indulging me. But we’ve been talking to the regulators about making Canadian content. We’ve got rules that say that we’ve got to spend a significant part of our revenue on Canadian content. And we’ve got specific rules that say we’ve got to spend a significant bit and we’ve got certain requirements around news. And I had my first committee hearing last summer and a lot of what I’ve been saying is forget the fact that it’s required. It is Canadian content in all of its forms is the way that Bell Media in Canada is differentiated and well positioned to win versus the global streamers.
And for many years, executives have been, not necessarily Bell executives, but from elsewhere in the Canadian landscape, have been saying, “Oh, these requirements, they’re terrible. They’re like attacks. Nobody watches these shows.” And so part of our thesis here is when you talk about news or daytime, very social shows or just a ton of Canadian content, this is what differentiates us is relevance every day to Canadians. And so in the case of news where I drill in, we have a very strong relationship in local and in national news with a host of Canadians. I always talk about Bell Media reaches 98% of Canadians every month, 98% of all Canadians. Our local news reaches and aggregated over a million people. Now that may not sound like a lot, but in Canada, we’re 41 million people. So local news in aggregate reaches over a million people every night. And that’s a hit even in the US, but we’re talking about Canada.
And so I guess that’s a long-winded way of saying, Max, that whether it’s news or select sport or cultural events or these big buzzy shows or even small, nichey shows, we think this is the way that we win in the territory. We have thousands of Canadian employees, these other folks, these other platforms, they don’t. And so we’ve got built-in relevance. Now I’ll build on that. Because we then think that if we make great Canadian content with a big C, things like Heated Rivalry, there is an audience outside of Canada for that because too many people are trying to make generic or diluted as opposed to authentic and very specific. Heated Rivalry is a very Canadian show, as you recognize, down to the loon references, L-O-O-N, which I as a New Yorker would never know and I would have know about, and I would’ve had the same reaction as Ilya would’ve. I would’ve jumped out a window if I heard a loon in my life before now.
But a long winding way of saying, so yeah, I believe it’s part of the special sauce that helps us win in Canada. And if we deliver on the premise, the hype man, the thing I’ve been running around talking about for two years and what we’ve been delivering on even before Heated Rivalry that says we can produce, we can tell great stories global and profitable, I think that we can take those big C Canadian stories around the world and people will see themselves regardless of whether they see Ottawa or insert Canadian city here.

Max Tani:
You had mentioned one of the challenges of the situation of having a smaller audience size in Canada and having to compete against the Netflix’s and the YouTube’s of the world. I saw in another interview that you said that you had 4.3 million subscribers for Crave, your streaming service as of last year. Did you guys see a significant bump because of Heated Rivalry? And how much were you guys at now?

Sean Cohan:
So I’d say first I can answer yes, we saw a bump and I’d say like the other streamers, we look at when folks subscribe, what’s the first thing they watch? And so first views as a proxy, we think Heated Rivalry had something to do with pretty good growth on Crave. I always quip that I like my job and so I don’t want to scoop the parent co-CEO with an earnings call a couple weeks away. But I’d say suffice it to say the platform continues to grow nicely and I will give you just two contextual points. Two years ago at the beginning of ’24, so back when Trudeau was calling our moves garbage, it was right around three million subscribers. And now as you mentioned at the beginning of the fourth quarter, we called out 4.3. So we’ve grown pretty handily over a couple years off the back of a lot of strong work in originals, some commercial bundling and changing the user interface and so on.
And I’d say we’ve announced very clear plans to get well beyond six million subs. Now the second contextual point is there are between 15 and 17 million households in Canada. I’d say we’re in good shape, but we’ve got a bunch more headroom to go. And I feel pretty optimistic about our ability to grow meaningfully over the next several years.

Max Tani:
Can I ask just one final parting question? This is just for the hockey people out there, and you’ve been really generous with your time here, Sean.

Sean Cohan:
Of course.

Max Tani:
But one thing that’s notable in the first season of Heated Rivalry is it’s supposed to be kind of like the NHL, it’s not the NHL. The NHL has kind of winked a little bit and clearly trying to navigate what to do with their fan base, but also the popularity of the show. Is there any chance we see any sort of collaboration between the NHL and you guys going forward when it comes to the show? Like will Heated Rivalry season two take place in a world where the NHL exists?

Sean Cohan:
Well, I don’t want to speak for Gary Bettman, the commissioner of the NHL, but I will say beyond the wink last week, Gary came out and announced that he had binged the show in a night. He got the episode count right for those that are skeptical about him not watching it. And he also referenced two scenes. There was one an all star game in Tampa and there was another, which was the Sochi Olympics. And even the prior statement by the spokesperson said that this was one of the more unusual means over its 106, I think, year history that they’d gained fans. So I think there’s probably a little bit more fandom and a little bit more recognition from what we’ve been doing with hockey. And I think the other thing I’d say is we’ve had a longstanding relationship with the NHL and we’re the biggest sports player in the territory as well. We haven’t talked about that all that much.
It’s a longstanding relationship. We’re the broadcaster streamer for lots of franchises like the Habs, the Leafs, the Senators and the Jets. But as for whether there’s a collaboration or whether they express their affection more vocally going forward, I’m going to defer to Gary on that. But look, it’s hockey, a great game. Obviously, as an adopted Canadian, you can’t have not drank the Kool-Aid. And there is inherently, there is a global love for the game. And this show is not necessarily about hockey, but hockey is a character. And there’s a really nice undercurrent of fandom, I think, for the game that comes from this. And we’ve had a longstanding tradition of a lot of shows that were hockey related or hockey adjacent. Shoresy being one of them.

Max Tani:
Sean, we really appreciate you taking the time and congratulations on this big hit. We’ll be looking forward to whatever public officials in Canada may or may not be doing some sort of Heated Rivalry partnership sometime soon. So thanks for taking the time.

Sean Cohan:
Thank you folks. And thanks for your interest in it. It’s been fun.

Ben Smith:
Yeah. Thank you, Sean.

Max Tani:
So Ben, before the show, you were positing that maybe the success of Heated Rivalry meant that there has been another cultural shift back away from the backlash to woke. Woke is back once again, and Heated Rivalry proves that. What do you think it says about culture that this show is having at the moment that it’s having? Because I got to say, I am surprised by how popular a gay hockey show from Canada that wasn’t made with very much money has become.

Ben Smith:
Well, thank you for airing my dumbest pre-show comment that you then were like, “That is too dumb.”

Max Tani:
Sorry, sorry.

Ben Smith:
I think you told me that was too dumb to ask, and I shouldn’t ask him that.

Max Tani:
No, no, no, no. It was good that it was good that you asked.

Ben Smith:
No, but I do think like, I mean, the famous kind of nobody knows anything lying about Hollywood. This is a moment when everyone is kind of like, “Let’s make some programming with conservative cultural values.” But of all the spaghetti that got thrown at the wall, this is the one that hits for reasons that are totally orthogonal to politics and sort of Washington. Obviously, it’s just this deep vein of culture rooted in TikTok in particular and fan fiction and romantic-y, and it’s a great show and it hit. But I do think it is a good reminder that whatever the consensus is on what’s going to hit, what’s going to make good TV, that’s almost always just incredibly boring. And the thing that hits is the thing that surprises you. I don’t know. And culture change is really fast. And so I feel like this sort of interesting thing that came through and blindsided everybody.

Max Tani:
Yeah. One thing that struck me while Sean was talking, and I think the big takeaway here is that, and this show has a big audience, but obviously this is still something that is hitting among a certain niche. I was reading before the show that much of the early audience was almost split 50/50 between men and women, but now the audience later on has become overwhelmingly women. And it’s particularly a hit among a certain kind of subset or cohort. And what I think that Sean really understood, and he was talking about it a little bit with his team’s research into these romance stories and search for romance IP, is that you can find very specific audiences now that can kind of propel you to having these cult hits. And as long as you don’t spend too much money on these shows and as long as you have a clear idea of maybe who you’re trying to reach, you can have this confident, steamy, gay, hockey hit at a moment when the Paramount’s of the world are trying to do these big masculine hits.

Ben Smith:
This was pretty masculine, Max.

Max Tani:
That’s true. And it was masculine, but in a slightly different... Yes, an alternate interpretation of masculinity, which a former GQ editor.

Ben Smith:
I mean, as you say, and this is honestly the kind of fun thing about talking just to veteran entertainment executives. And Sean’s been at A&E for 15 years, been kind of making TV and movies so long, that the way they talk about it. I mean, you can close your eyes, and the way he was talking was the way people in that industry were talking 20 years ago and 40 years ago and 60 years ago, just in terms of like, “We got some IP, we got a rabid fan base, plus add on people like hockey, plus it’s this sort of funny paint by numbers, we got this element and this element, let’s add a popular sport, cool, throw it all in there.” And then of course, usually it doesn’t hit. And then sometimes it does, but it’s this funny combination of a real kind of like hack-y paint by numbers, add together popular things, discover a subculture, and then you just sort of like have to have talented people and hope it hits and hope it works.

Max Tani:
What do you think is the best case for Bell Media here? Do you think it’s becoming like another version of kind of the BBC or Channel 4, or any of those places in the UK that produce these shows that they then license and become big hits overseas? It seems to me like that’s kind of the thing that Sean is trying to do. We didn’t get to talk about it on the show, but he has something called, this project that they call internally “Northern Lights”, of which Heated Rivalry is probably the best example where they are creating these shows that they can find their audience in Canada, but then maybe find a larger global audience that can kind of help their business back home.
Because I mean, I think the main challenge for them, it’s both a challenge and an opportunity, but it’s something that kind of puts a ceiling on them, is the fact that there is only 40 something million people in the country, right? So that kind of means that your audience is going to be kind of limited at a moment when they are competing with the YouTube’s and the Netflix’s of the world. As hard as that job might be, that task might be for companies like Paramount and NBC Universal in the US, there’s a much smaller audience in Canada and they’re still trying to compete with these big global tech giants. Do you think that the BBC is kind of the best model?

Ben Smith:
I mean, I think the British TV production industry is remarkable and has these sort of cost advantages right now and tax advantages that make American producers very excited to go there as the US industries and Hollywood are having all these problems.

Max Tani:
But isn’t that the same thing with Canada though? They do the same thing.

Ben Smith:
But also Americans are like deeply interested in British culture. And actually the sort of saddest thing somebody once said to me about Canada, it’s this famous saying, “That the Canadian border is the world’s longest one-way mirror and the Canadians spend all their time looking down at the United States and Americans look north, just see a reflection of themselves, don’t realize there’s a different culture up there.” And so I do think that these British companies are able to tap into this Anglophilia and foreignness and obsession with England that I do not think there’s a parallel with Canadian culture.

Max Tani:
Of course.

Ben Smith:
It’s sad to say. Although honestly, love Tim Hortons, love Montreal, no offense to my Canadian friends.

Max Tani:
There are definitely moments of peak Canada though. You have Wayne Gretzky, these types of... There are moments when it would be-

Ben Smith:
I mean, Mark Carney is the-

Max Tani:
No, but that’s what I mean.

Ben Smith:
... kind of resistance hero at the moment. But I just don’t think Americans... Americans are going to watch Downton Abbey because you can take a trashy soap opera and dress it up with a British manner and suddenly it’s sort of elevated culture. You can just put an English accent on anything and suddenly you’ve sort of meta enabled it and turned it into some kind of cultural masterpiece theater thing. I don’t think there’s a parallel with Canada. Sadly.

Max Tani:
Interesting. So you think you should tell Sean that you think it’s not going to work, the Northern Lights Project, because it’s a one-way mirror.

Ben Smith:
I mean, I wish him well. I mean, the other strategy is just if they can just make a bunch of hits, that works too.

Max Tani:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well, that is it for us this week. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of The Mixed Signals podcast from us here at Semafor. Our show is produced by Chris McLeod of Blue Elevator Productions and Josh Billinson of Semafor Media. With special thanks to Anna Pizzino, Jules Zern, Chad Lewis, Rachel Oppenheim, Tori Kuhr, Garrett Wiley, and Daniel Hoeft. Our engineer is Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Steve Bone. Our public editor is Jesse Brown. Jesse, Ben has some opinions about Canada. What do you think? Let us know.

Ben Smith:
And if you like the show, whether in Canada or the United States, please follow us on your favorite podcast platform and subscribe on YouTube.

Max Tani:
And if you want more, you can always sign up for Semafor’s Media Newsletter, which is out every Sunday night.