Up here in Canada, the land of hockey and Tim Hortons another shot has been fired in the struggle over the remote controls in Canadian TV viewers’ hands.

In what can best be described as a major move, homegrown streaming TV service Shomi, the product of collaboration between Canadian broadcasters Rogers and Shaw is now available on Apple TV.

The Shomi app is now on the same screen right next to their hated rival Netflix.

It’s hardly surprising. This was both a predictable move, and a necessary one.

Netflix is already nearly ubiquitous on every imaginable platform; from mobile devices to set-top boxes of all stripes, to game consoles.

In order to compete with Netflix rival streaming apps need to achieve ubiquity themselves.

While in addition to mobile devices Shomi is accessible via Shaw’s HD-PVR the interface on PVR is almost painfully old-fashioned, and cludgy, as it comes into the box through the Video On Demand port.

TV viewers aren’t going to stand for that. After all, what century is this?

It’s interesting to see broadcasters flexing to the desires of their viewers for a change. People are electing to watch content online and via streaming boxes like Apple TV, so instead of trying to get viewers to come to them, broadcasters are going to the viewers.