Sony Pictures’ ad-supported streaming service Crackle is preparing to shutdown in Canada. The website has posted a notice stating that as of June 28, 2018 Sony Crackle will no longer be operational in Canada. A reason for the closure wasn’t shared.

The service originally launched in 2004 as Grouper, an independent peer-to-peer media sharing site that quickly evolved into a would-be YouTube competitor. In 2006, Sony Pictures purchased the company and renamed it to Crackle in 2008 to better reflect a shifted focus on professional material, rather than user-uploaded ones. This primarily encompassed content from the Sony Pictures library, though other studios have been involved. Initial content mainly consisted of material that was no longer viewed as lucrative through other platforms, or short form re-edits of more popular shows. As time has progressed, Crackle has moved to producing original films and shows, with the service available on wide array of devices. Earlier this year, it received a slight re-brand by changing its name to Sony Crackle.

Crackle debuted in Canada in September 2010, providing free access to movies and television shows. Rogers initially served as the ad sales agent, though that duty was most recently held by Cue Media, who were appointed just last August. Like most cross-border streaming services, there was a difference in content availability, though Crackle’s Canadian operations largely remained true to being a Sony library dump. It’s in more recent times where the disparity began to become apparent, with the U.S. service’s push towards original content.

Initially, Canada was included in the roll out of Crackle created shows and films, but that started to change once local players began launching their own services. Sony Pictures started selling off exclusive rights to Crackle Originals to Canadian players, first with the ill-fated Rogers/Shaw streamer Shomi (the aftermath of which has seen newer seasons of SuperMansion and The Art of More unavailable in Canada outside of home video), then Bell’s Crave TV with even Allarco’s Super Channel getting some of the shows. Sony Pictures recently signed a “ground-breaking new partnership” with Bell Media. Perhaps that has something to do with Canada’s Crackle demise?

At the start of this decade, Crackle made a concentrated push for anime on the service. Since there were few licensing overlaps, most of it was available to Canadians. In 2012, Sony introduced an Animax branded section of their site (marking the second time Animax was sort of available in Canada), devoted to anime just like the company’s international television channels of the same name. The early anime initiative saw shows like Humanoid Monster BEM, Nodame Cantible, Valkyria Chronicles, Viper’s Creed, Kurozuka, and Ultraviolet: Code 044 (among others) launch in North America for the first time. The last three even had their English dubs produced in Canada by Ocean Studios and Blue Water. This was buoyed by additional titles from the likes of Toei, Media Blasters, Aniplex, and other publishers. But over the years, that lineup has become anaemic, with the service currently offering a small handful of shows and features, though the constantly rotating nature of Crackle means you can’t really gauge that accurately. Fierce competition from other players, a seeming lack of interest from the part of Sony Pictures, as well as the decline of the Animax brand internationally (culminating in the dearth of fully original shows and English dubs produced for it) seemed like big challenges. Sony Pictures purchased Funimation last year, though thus far little collaboration has publicly gone underway beyond the inclusion of the Cowboy Bebop movie in Funimation’s upcoming Blu-Ray re-release of the series.

The closure of Crackle runs contrary to the current trend of video-on-demand streaming services. More and more are launching in Canada. The notable distinction is that those tend to be subscription-based services. Ad-based ones like Crackle need local scale to make the business model work, which isn’t easy in this country. Sony licensing out their shows to local broadcasters suggests they felt there was more money to be made that way than directly delivering it to Canadians through Crackle. We saw Crunchyroll prioritize paid subscribers over those using ads in 2016, when it disabled catalogue streaming for free members in Canada.

One of my favourite little anecdotes about Crackle came as a result of the Sony email hack a few years back. One of those emails revealed that Sony Electronics were interested in purchasing Crunchyroll in 2011. Sony Pictures discouraged the acquisition, as they viewed Crackle to be the bigger platform for anime and that at $30-50 million, Crunchyroll was overpriced. Sony Electronics walked away, leaving The Chernin Group to grab the site in 2013 for about $100 million. Sony Pictures paid roughly $150 million for Funimation last year. One of Funimation’s largest partnerships is with Crunchyroll. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

UPDATE (6/26/2018): The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that some of Crackle’s content will find its way to the new Bell video-on-demand services.

Via: Digital Home