Crave (TV network)

Crave (formerly The Movie Network or TMN) is a Canadian premium television network and streaming service owned by the Bell Media subsidiary of BCE Inc. Launched in 1983 as the national service First Choice, early difficulties and a subsequent industry restructuring led to its operations being restricted to Eastern Canada from 1984 to 2016; it then held a regional legal monopoly on movie-based premium TV services in its territory until the launch of the present-day Super Channel in 2007. The service changed its name to The Movie Network in 1993. In 2016, when Movie Central (which previously held a similar monopoly in Western and Northern Canada) wound down its operations, TMN resumed national operations and subsumed the former service's subscribers. In 2018, TMN merged its operations with the over-the-top (OTT) streaming service CraveTV; both services would be rebranded as Crave. With these changes, the streaming service added a premium tier, "Movies + HBO", which includes access to the premium content that was previously exclusive to the TMN and its Canadian HBO multiplex. Likewise, the television version of the service distributed by providers featured access to the on-demand library of the former CraveTV service as part of their subscription. As such, the service was often sold by providers under the name Crave + Movies + HBO, until programming from both tiers was collapsed into a single library in October 2021. Since then, the Crave service sold by TV service providers has been equivalent to the Crave Total (now Crave Premium) ad-free OTT plan. For regulatory purposes, the Crave streaming service and specialty television service are considered to be separate operations.