The Canadian Screen Awards televised gala will air May 31.George Pimentel/Supplied
In a landmark display of co-operation between this country’s media empires that underlines the cultural sentiments of the current “Elbows Up” era, this year’s Canadian Screen Awards will be simulcast on CBC, CTV and Global, as well as live-streamed on those broadcasters’ respective streaming services, CBC Gem, Crave, and STACKTV.
The partnership surrounding the gala, set to air May 31 at 8 p.m. ET, is a pronounced change from Canadian Screen Awards tradition. For the past 13 years, the televised gala celebrating the best in homegrown film, television, and digital media aired exclusively on CBC.
In 2025, the CSAs initially lost the CBC’s linear television network as a partner, with the show set to only be live-streamed on CBC Gem as a result of a conflict with the network’s commitment to airing the NHL playoffs. But after the playoff season concluded earlier than anticipated, the CSA gala ended up being aired on CBC television, where it was watched by 929,000 people, up 45 per cent from the previous year. (On Gem, views were up 91 per cent from 2024, though the streaming service does not offer exact viewership figures.)
“The real catalyst to this change was audience – viewership has really changed,” said Tammy Frick, the chief executive officer of the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television, which oversees the CSAs. “These are broadcasters who are competitors, but once we sat down with Bell and Chorus to explain the vision behind it, they came onboard very quickly. They understood right away that we need to make the show feel bigger.”
While the alliance between CBC, Bell Media (which operates CTV) and Corus (which owns Global) is not wholly unprecedented in Canadian broadcasting history – the spring 2020 Stronger Together, Tous Ensemble benefit concert held during the early days of the pandemic was simulcast by CBC, CTV, Global and Citytv – there is a sense that this new partnership is emblematic of the current moment, in which Canadian culture feels under threat from the political rhetoric coming out of the United States.
“I think a lot of Canadians are having these ‘aha’ moments where we want to take ownership of our culture – this is a moment that all of us can say is ours, that it belongs to us,” said Frick. “There are a lot of moving parts to it, but it’s wonderful that our broadcasters can all work together to promote this cultural moment.”
This is, however, one major Canadian media player missing from the CSAs partnership: Rogers Media, which operates the Citytv television network and the streaming service Citytv+. Frick says that while there was outreach to the Rogers team, the broadcaster was not in a position to participate for this year’s edition of the show. “They were open to having the conversation, so the hope is we’ll re-engage for 2027,” Frick added.
This year’s edition of the CSAs will be hosted by Canadian actor and comedian Andrew Phung, an eight-time CSA winner himself for his work on the CBC sitcoms Run the Burbs and Kim’s Convenience. Further details about the broadcast, including whether it will be aired live or consist of previously recorded footage, will be revealed closer to the launch of Canadian Screen Week, which will run from May 27 through May 31 in Toronto.
The simulcast is not the only shift coming to the CSAs this year. In the wake of last year’s awards, during which three of the top acting prizes were awarded to non-Canadian performers (Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong for the Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice, and Cate Blanchett for the political satire Rumours), the Canadian Academy tweaked its eligibility rules. Going forward, “all categories honouring certified Canadian productions will be restricted to Canadian citizens or permanent residents only.”
“We have a really intense conversation after each edition of the awards with the industry, so that was a response of people across the sector saying, hey, hold on a minute,” said Frick. “Those are the big changes made after last year, and we’ll gather again after this edition to see what needs to be tweaked and what we can improve upon.”
The nominees for this year’s CSAs will be announced March 25.