If you've been watching CBC for the past couple of weeks, you've most likely have seen an ad for CBC Gem, the CBC's new streaming service. When I first saw it I was pretty excited, I was hoping that with the recent digitization of the CBC's Archives we would be getting some older content, but nope. Although there is nothing really "Vintage" in their show library, they still have a pretty good variety.





What I liked

Gem has a ton of content, almost everything that is on the CBC station at the moment you can find on the platform, along with some of their older and seasonal shows like Banished, Canada a People's History, Being Erica, Kids in the Hall, Mercer Report, Best Laid Plans, and the Royal Canadian Air Farce. Along with TV shows, you also get a kinda small but nice collection of Documentaries, and lots of the CBC's Children's Programming (like Arthur, and Fred Penner's Place).





What I didn't like

Although Gem has a great selection of shows, lots of them don't have much to watch, for example, the Air Farce series has over 300 episodes from a span of 1994 to 2008, but only their yearly new-years specials are available to stream, same with Canada, a People's History, you only can watch 2 out of the 21 episodes made, which is quite stupid considering the 2 episodes are labeled on the site as #33 & #34, why would I start at 33? This series isn't exactly easy to find legally. And one thing that really bothers me, why can't we get more vintage shows? As far as I am aware, the CBC owns the distribution rights to a lot of their older programming, what's stopping them from putting up a few episodes of King of Kensington?





Still, despite my criticism, it is still a decent service, it has a lot of content, and is sure to please the regular CBC viewer, I'll probably be using it.



