Heated Rivalry, the sensation produced by Canada’s Bell Media for its Crave streaming service and eventually scooped up by HBO Max, doesn’t dilly-dally.
Within the first seven minutes of the premiere episode of the gay hockey romance, Bell VP of Content Development and Programming Justin Stockman noted, there is a sex scene. “A lot of shows wouldn’t have done that,” he said. But Bell execs and the show’s creative team, he added, figured “this is a spicy show. People are gonna talk about it because there’s sex.”
Stockman and three other senior scripted programming executives examined the Heated Rivalry phenomenon, the dynamics of subscription streaming…