Already established as a tasty confection on the BBC and Channel 4 in the UK, and on Netflix here in the U.S., The Roku Channel has cut itself a big slice of The Great British Baking Show and will launch a new FAST channel dedicated to the UK reality-competition series and its spin-off shows.
In a deal with Love Productions, Roku acquired the first seven seasons of the flagship series, which is known as The Great British Bakeoff in Britain. (Pillsbury has trademarked the term "bakeoff" here in the U.S., so it has to operate under "baking show".)
Additionally, Roku will debut to the U.S. the first 10 seasons of spin-off series Celebrity Baking Show, as well as seasons 1-3 of Baking Show: An Extra Slice. The Stateside premieres of Love Productions' Paul Hollywood Bread, Mary Berry Cooks, Liam Bakes and Chronicles of Nadia will also appear on Roku's new pastry-themed FAST.
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The launch of The Great British Baking Show Channel comes after Roku announced in August that it would take over U.S. spinoff The Great American Baking Show from ABC, an enterprise that starts with the soon-to-premiere The Great American Baking Show Holiday Special.
In all, Roku has acquired more than 150 episodes of British non-fiction shows themed around baking.
The Roku Channel is seemingly making new programming acquisition announcements several times a week these days -- it made a huge flurry of them on Tuesday alone, which are all broken down here.
As for Baking Show, it seems to have strong precedent for success as an ad-supported Roku offering.
The series began on BBC Two in 2010, became the channel's most popular show, and was subsequently moved to BBC One. Channel 4 poached it after BBC's deal with Love Productions expired at the end of season 7.
Netflix began acquiring the show in 2018, starting with season 8. Currently, seasons 8-13 are available on Netflix, labeled as "Collections 5-10." ■
