'Murdoch Mysteries' Season 19 Sets October Return to Ovation

It took until the 2020s for traditional networks to get on board, but in the last few years, one of the benefits of streaming has been making shows once geolocked to their respective countries available worldwide. The obvious headliners of this sector have mainly been sports and live events, where traditional behaviors, such as delaying airing the Olympics to start at 8 p.m. ET when they occur a full day earlier, or only putting the Oscars on broadcast with no streaming alternative, are no longer viable options. However, the same is true of TV shows with international fan bases, such as the long-running Canadian series Murdoch Mysteries.

Murdoch Mysteries had been running for so long that it predates streaming. Its early seasons were only available in Canada for years, until Ovation finally picked up the show in the U.S., renaming it The Artful Detective. However, Ovation wouldn't start airing new seasons until the show was halfway over in the north, and then they would air until the summer was nearly over. When Acorn TV finally picked up the show to stream, it also did not debut the new season until the first episode had been out in Canada for a full 120 days.

Again, this is somewhat untenable, and Acorn TV will have to renegotiate its contract with the CBC to address this issue. But for now, fans at least have Ovation, which, faced with the prospect of becoming a zombie cable network, has made itself relevant again by renegotiating its contract and bringing the now-unrenamed Murdoch Mysteries to the U.S. on the same day they debut in Canada. The series will debut both in the U.S. and in Canada on the first Monday in October, as it has done for nearly 20 years now.