Bold (PatrZDZ's vision)

**Cottage Life** is a Canadian English language discretionary specialty channel owned by Blue Ant Media. Operated as a brand extension spin-off of the magazine of the same name, the network originally aired a variety of programming focusing on the cottage and rural lifestyle genre within the core themes of DIY and design, food and entertaining, real estate, and outdoor living. It now primarily airs a limited slate of reality and engineering-focused programming.

The network originally launched in 2001 as Country Canada, which primarily focused on programming of interest to rural Canadians, including news and lifestyle programming. After the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation bought out Corus Entertainment's stake in Country Canada, the network eventually re-branded itself as Bold in 2008. Bold was sold to its current owners, Blue Ant Media, in April 2012; on September 4, 2013, Bold was re-launched by Blue Ant Media as Cottage Life.

## History

In November 2000, a joint venture between Corus Entertainment (70%) and the CBC (30%) was granted a television broadcasting licence by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to launch a channel called Land and Sea, presumably the name taken from the CBC original series Land and Sea. The newly licensed channel was described as "a national English-language Category 1 specialty television service for rural Canadian families, with a focus on adults 25-54. The service will provide information, interaction and entertainment from a rural perspective."

The channel was launched on September 4, 2001 as Country Canada; based on the CBC Television series Country Canada. The channel held true to its CRTC-mandated nature of service by focusing on rural news, information, lifestyle, and entertainment programming suitable for the whole family. Such programs that were broadcast on the channel included CountryLine, a call-in talk show discussing various topics of interest to rural Canadians; CBC News CountryWide, a national news program with both a morning and evening edition focusing on national news stories; Northern Exposure; All Creatures Great and Small; and the television rendition of Harrowsmith Country Life.

In July 2002, CBC announced it would purchase Corus' interest in the service, which was approved by the CRTC on October 24 of that year. The CBC took control of the service on November 1, 2002 and rebranded the service with a new logo and name, CBC Country Canada.

After the change in ownership, the CBC initially relied heavily on CBC Television programming to fill the channel's schedule, with a particular focus on news programs. This transition was the first step in the channel moving away from its mandate to focus solely on rural programming, instead, shifting towards a focus on general interest Canadian programming. New programming added to the schedule included rebroadcasts of 14 regional newscasts, Venture, CBC News Politics, amateur sports programming from CBC Sports, CBC News Saturday Report, and Cross Country Checkup.

After the initial change in programming after the rebranding, news, although still present on the channel, became less significant as the channel began to air more lifestyle, entertainment, and documentary programming such as Food Chain, an original program discussing various aspects of food; Greatdocs.ca, a series of various Canadian-made documentaries; Johnny Canuck Cinema, a series of various Canadian films; An American in Canada; and London's Burning.

On March 27, 2008 at 12:01 a.m. EST, CBC Country Canada was rebranded as Bold to better reflect the programming direction CBC Country Canada was moving in. In scheduling, the CBC would often refer to the channel as CBC Bold.

### Blue Ant Media purchase

On April 4, 2012, the CBC announced, that it would sell Bold as a measure to cope with the budget shortfall since the service's licence conditions no longer fit the CBC's strategy nor complement the other programming streams. On August 17, 2012, Blue Ant Media announced that it would purchase the channel for an undisclosed amount, later revealed at $10 million. As a federal crown corporation asset owned by the CBC, the deal also required approval from the Governor-in-Council, which was approved in February 2013. On November 17, 2012, the CRTC approved the sale of Bold to Blue Ant Media. As a condition of the acquisition, Blue Ant stated that it would fund the production of programming that reflects Canada's rural and non-urban regions.

### Rebranding as Cottage Life

In July 2011, Blue Ant Media purchased a 15% interest in Quarto Communications, with its intentions of launching several television channels based upon Quarto's magazine brands, in particular, Cottage Life. Later, in November 2011, Quarto was granted a license for a Category B service known as Cottage Life Television, which would be focused on programming dealing with cottage communities and lifestyles. Four months after it announced its intentions to purchase Bold, Blue Ant would later purchase the remaining shares in Quarto Communication and rename the company Cottage Life Media.

In April 2013, Blue Ant announced it would launch Cottage Life in the fall of 2013; it was speculated that the company would re-launch Bold as a Cottage Life channel, primarily because the rural-based nature of service complimented the subject matter that Cottage Life covered and bold had existing carriage deals on the majority of all digital television service providers in Canada due to its Category A status. However, Blue Ant did not confirm any rumours or its intentions for the channel.

Although still with no public announcement of the channel's re-branding from Blue Ant Media, it was indirectly confirmed through various television service providers (i.e., announcements on the respective TV provider's websites, statements confirming Cottage Life's television placement on the dial would be that of Bold's, etc.) that bold would be re-branded as Cottage Life on September 4, 2013. It was confirmed on August 22, 2013 by Blue Ant Media that bold would be rebranded on September 4 via a press release.