CTV's 'The Social' is set to become a video podcast as founding co-host Melissa Grelo departs - Toronto Star

After 13 seasons, the daytime TV show will be making some big changes, responding to changes in viewership patterns and industry trends.

The co-hosts of CTV’s “The Social” season 13, Jess Allen, Melissa Grelo, Cynthia Loyst and Andrea Bain, 2026. 

CTV’s long-standing daytime talk show “The Social” is making big changes ahead of its 14th season that will have it looking very different.

Bell Media announced Wednesday that it will “reimagine” the series. That means there will be no more studio audience, and the talk show is relaunching as a video podcast that will also continue to air on broadcast television.

Founding co-host Melissa Grelo will be departing the show, and will focus on her health podcast, “Aging Powerfully with Melissa Grelo.”

Bell Media’s announcement said “The Social” will continue to film on its existing Toronto set at the broadcaster’s headquarters on Queen Street West.

The reimagined version will stream live on YouTube at 1 p.m. ET daily, followed by broadcast of the episode on CTV at 2 p.m. ET and on-demand access through Crave and iHeartRadio Canada platforms.

The significant changes come just before the start of the new season on Sept. 9 and raise questions about how “The Social” will continue as a lifestyle program. Since its 2013 premiere, the show defined itself as a dynamic and lively hour-long program with cooking and fashion segments that rely on heavily on visual elements.

Video podcasts typically use limited cameras and situate the hosts and guests at a table with microphones.

Representatives for Bell Media declined to comment further on the changes.

Grelo posted a message on her Instagram account, saying that after 13 seasons on “The Social” and 18 years at Bell Media, “it is time to move on.” She called the show “one of the great privileges of my career.”

“But I’ve also always believed that when the world around you is changing, you can either hold tightly to what has been, or get curious about what comes next,” she wrote.

“The way we create, consume and connect through media is changing dramatically. I am enormously grateful to the network for saying yes to my idea all those years ago and for working with me to build what ‘The Social’ has become.”

“The Social” began airing in 2013 as Canada’s answer to “The View” and “The Talk,” two popular female-led lifestyle shows that tackled the hot topics of the day. In recent years, its daily program has been repurposed to be shared on social media, and distributed through streaming platform Crave.

Some of its original co-hosts have departed the program over the years, including Lainey Lui, Marci Ien and Traci Melchor. With Grelo’s departure, only Cynthia Loyst remains from the original four. She will continue to host the program alongside Jess Allen and Andrea Bain, who will also take on hosting duties for the revival of “Big Brother Canada,” which begins on CTV next summer.

Then-co-hosts of CTV’s “The Social,” Melissa Grelo, Marci Ien, Lainey Liu and Cynthia Loyst, with guest Jackie Burns in the centre, in 2018.

Paul Moore, a sociology and media professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, said the changes at CTV’s flagship daytime talk show are hardly surprising as the traditional broadcasters face audiences shifting away from linear television and advertisers putting their money elsewhere.

“It doesn’t just make economic sense, it’s also about recognizing where the viewers are,” Moore said.

“People are watching on YouTube, people are watching on their phones.”

CTV once touted “The Social” as one of its hottest homegrown programs. In 2015, the network said the show attracted 2.5 million viewers per week, a figure that climbed to 4 million viewers in 2017 after the broadcaster began airing the program on CTV Two and E!, as well.

But then the TV audience began to decline. By 2020, Bell Media was reporting 2.6 million weekly viewers. More recently, it has stopped releasing viewership figures for the program, simply calling it Canada’s “most-watched entertainment news program.”

The show has nevertheless found an audience online, albeit a smaller one. Its YouTube page has nearly 94,000 subscribers, while clips from the broadcast regularly pull in tens of thousands of views on the platform, in addition to its linear TV viewership.

Bell Media has been growing its selection of video podcasts, part of a wider industry trend led by the popularity of the format on YouTube and the recent entry of Netflix into the space.

Earlier this year, Crave began rolling out nearly a dozen podcasts to the service, including editions of rush-hour sports radio show “OverDrive,” gay Canadian pop culture series “Bestie, Listen” and a weekly best-of edition of its “Your Morning” morning show. All of the shows were already available on YouTube. “The Social” was already on the platform in its full video format.

“As the reach and influence of video podcasts grows globally, this evolution was the natural next step for ‘The Social,’ allowing the series to expand and reach Canadian and international audiences on the platform of their choice,” said executive producer Laura Scarfo in a release.

David Friend writes about arts and culture in Toronto and beyond. Follow him on Instagram and Bluesky.