‘Big Brother 17’ live feeds will not be available in Canada; why?

Here’s some sad news that we missed out on reporting yesterday, mostly in the midst of doing so many exit interviews for “Big Brother Canada”: The “Big Brother 17” live feeds are not going to be available in Canada. The last time that there was a momentary frustration in regards to this was when season 15 had some struggles with this right out the gate, but they were eventually corrected. This time around, CBS sent out an email to us and other outlets telling us that it will not be available period to Canadians this season.

So what is the logic behind this, if there is any? It’s tied to the CBS All Access app, which was launched as a competitor in some ways to all of the other streaming services. With this you can watch every season of “Big Brother” and many other classic shows, and in select markets you can also watch your local CBS station live. It’s a pretty useful app for certain cord-cutters or reality TV fans, and the price tag of $5.99 a month is pretty affordable as a whole.

Here’s the problem: Licensing. Because the live feeds are now packaged with the app, selling it in Canada would cause various rights disputes between the network and some of the Canadian broadcasters who provide episodes of some of the app’s other shows through their own online portals. That’s more red tape clearly than CBS wants to navigate through.

They say that they want to make a change on this in the future and maybe they will, but for the time being someone obviously seems to think that the cost and time of trying to arrange a way for Canadians to watch live feeds is not worth the money or good will that they would receive in return. We don’t necessarily agree with that perception, but it is what it is.

Ultimately, we just wish that both the US and Canadian version would learn that they don’t have to be so mutually exclusive to their local viewers. Since you know that there are so many people who are going to just try and pirate or find workarounds on some of your technology, why not just find a way to properly license it and build goodwill for the future?

We’ll have some other updates on this hopefully in the future. For now, this is just a way for us to pass along our own two cents.

If you do want to see all of our “Big Brother Canada” interviews, you can start by heading over to the link here! Also, you can sign up here to get some further TV updates on all we cover, courtesy of our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: CBS.)