Top Chef Canada has been cancelled because of audience fatigue

Canadian tele-culinary connoisseurs have a taste for novelty, or at least that seems to be the takeaway from Food Network Canada’s recent cancellation of Top Chef Canada, which wrapped its fourth season in May. Last week, Shaw Media confirmed that Mark McEwan should start shopping for a new reality-TV gig because the show won’t be returning for a fifth season. “We watch audience trends very closely and, after four years, our audiences are telling us they’re hungry for new programs,” Shaw VP Christine Shipton said in a written statement.

As for the nature of Canadians’ evolving Food TV tastes, the list of new shows picked up by the network for fall provides some clues. It includes something called Carnival Eats, which seems fairly self-explanatory, and something else called Top Chef Duels, a brand-new show—and blatant Chopped ripoff—that condenses an entire season’s worth of Top Chef–style drama into each individual episode.