 Viewers Choice logo | |
| Country | Canada |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | National |
| Headquarters | Toronto, Ontario |
| Programming | |
| Picture format | SDTV 480i HDTV 1080i |
| Ownership | |
| Owner | Viewers Choice Canada Inc. Bell Media (70.06%, direct & indirect) Rogers Media (24.95%) ESPN Inc. (4.99%, indirect) |
| History | |
| Launched | September 5, 1991 |
| Closed | September 30, 2014 |
| Replaced by | Sportsnet PPV |
| Links | |
| Website | viewerschoice.ca (archive) |
Viewers Choice was a Canadian English language pay-per-view (PPV) and near video on demand service. It was owned by Viewers Choice Canada Inc., which at the time of its closure was majority-owned and managed by Bell Media, with minority partners Rogers Media and ESPN Inc., and had been carried by various cable and IPTV service providers, primarily in Eastern Canada.
Launched in September 1991, Viewers Choice was the first pay-per-view service permitted to operate in Eastern Canada (a counterpart in Western Canada also used the Viewers Choice brand name for several years), and was the sole English-language PPV provider in that region until 1999. However, it shut down on September 30, 2014, as the service's two main owners at the time, Bell and Rogers, had each gained full ownership of a competing general-interest PPV service (Vu! and Sportsnet PPV respectively). Viewers Choice said it would be working with its remaining partner service providers to transition to other pay-per-view services.[1]