Highlights from the Canadian TV 2019-20 upfronts

Last week, Bell Media was the last of the major English-language broadcasters to present their fall schedules to the public and advertisers. The big sells are the new (mostly American) series they’re adding to their primetime schedules. I haven’t seen any of them, so let’s instead focus on everything else that was announced and that I find interesting:

CBC

• The big buzz is a Canadian version of Family Feud, airing four nights a week at 7:30pm starting in “late fall”, going up against Wheel of Fortune and Big Bang Theory reruns. It’s either a pointless Canadian adaptation of a brain-dead American game show, or an unfair use of taxpayer money to compete with private networks, or both, depending on your perspective.
  
  
• Also, Battle of the Blades is back.
  
  
• Other than that, a new Tuesday night sketch comedy and a drama, there isn’t much new here. Much of the new programming is planned for winter, including three new dramas, a documentary series, and four “factual entertainment” series. One of them is an original format (kinda) in which chefs have to make a meal using only what’s in a family’s kitchen, and another is You Can’t Ask That, a Canadian adaptation of an Australian series in which people with disabilities are asked the awkward questions that able-bodied people think but never ask. That series debuts on AMI TV June 20, and a French-language Quebec version recently aired on AMI-télé.
  
  
• Don’t worry, Coronation Street is coming back, too.