Power Rangers Samurai heads to YTV this Saturday, and Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers goes to Teletoon Retro in May
I thought Nickeledeon Canada wasn’t a big enough venue for Power Rangers Samurai, and it appears Corus Entertainment feels that way too. The latest Power Rangers series will make history, but debut in a relatively low key event this Saturday at 1PM EDT replacing Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds (which now only has a Tuesday at 7AM slot – I’ll get into the 4Kids and Yu-Gi-Oh! in Canada in a future post) premiere slot. Though YTV hasn’t advertised the show at all, it mysteriously had a Power Rangers Samurai section on its video portal days prior to schedule’s coming out confirming the show’s broadcast.
I only knew this because I was behind on Sidekick
Power Rangers Samurai reunites series creator Haim Saban with the Super Sentai franchise after a decade of Disney ownership. This decade of Disney ownership led the franchise to an almost exclusive broadcast history with Family Channel in Canada, who proceeded to shun the show to weekend mornings. Previously, the franchise had a broadcast history with Global when the franchise was still with Saban and FOX. However, Power Rangers’ first home was YTV. The channel picked up an initial 13 episode order of the series, and despite not actually being a part of the CBSC they obliged when the council cited parental complaints about violence and removed the series. This marks Samurai’s debut on YTV as a somewhat historical event.
While we’ve known Teletoon Retro will play host to the original Power Rangers franchise we’ve now gotten a solid broadcast date. The first series, Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers will premiere on Sunday, May 1 at 1PM EDT with a six episode marathon. However, the show’s regular broadcasts starting May 8 will air at 6:30AM on Sundays. Kind of a brutal timeslot…
Thanks to Anime Ash, and Jlaking for pointing these pieces of news in the forums.
I Miss Bionix 
MMPR airing at 6:30 am on Sundays just brings back horrible, horrible memories of the Family Channel Power Rangers airings.
Yeah, it’s not as though the channel has a tonne of content premiering right now for them to have to put it there. They’re just dumping it slowly.
We should at least get a decent marathon or two out of it. And I’m sure they’ll at least promote the MMPR airings in ads for the channel.
Today, if you go and check Saturday’s YTV schedule on YTV’s site, PR Samurai is not listed anymore. The 1pm timeslot is not even there.
More shenanigans I see. Time to set the good ol’ DVR and find out the old fashioned way.
YTV just trolled us. It’s NOT airing right now, as it’s the Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds or whatever on now.
(Not that it’ll matter since the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise is pretty much done…)
I don’t understand Corus/Astral’s goal here. Why acquire a 700-episode catalog, around 390 of which they can currently (legally) air, and then shove it into a single timeslot in the very early morning? They have no problems endlessly repeating their other shows. Did each episode only cost them 5 cents?
I was thinking it could perhaps be the 90% animation rule, but the French schedule has it slated for twice-daily, and Rétro’s license also says 90%. A quick check of my calculator shows that 23/24 hours is almost 96%.