NBC’s ‘Dateline’ Headed to Canada

NBC’s Dateline, the top-rated true crime series, is getting a Canadian spin-off series north of the border from Nov. 26.

Keith Morrison, who got his start in journalism in his native Canada, will be in Toronto on Wednesday to tout the first international expansion of the Dateline franchise as part of a licensing deal with Rogers Studios. Dateline Canada on Citytv and Citytv+ will be hosted by Diana Swain, a former senior investigative correspondent for CBC News and host of The Investigators on the CBC News Network in Canada.

She left Canada’s public broadcaster in 2024 after 33 years with the CBC, where Morrison in part perfected his iconic Dateline voice. After starting out in Canadian radio in the 1960s, Morrison joined the CTV Network in 1973 as a correspondent, producer and eventually a news anchor.

In the early 1980s, Morrison became a co-host of the CBC Network’s The Journal flagship news and current affairs program. He joined NBC in January 1986 as co-anchor of the 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. news on KNBC-TV in Los Angeles.

Dateline Canada will premiere with a two-hour special revisiting the wrongful conviction of Robert Baltovich, who was jailed for the murder of then-girlfriend Elizabeth Bain after her disappearance in 1990. Baltovich spent nine years in prison until 2000, before an eventual acquittal in 2008 after prosecutors dropped all charges.

The Dateline Canada team, having reviewed police files on the case, claims to have uncovered an unreported police investigation. The long form true crime special will feature Baltovich, a retired Toronto Police officer who worked on the case and experts as it kicks off a Citytv series about sensational Canadian crimes and their victims and suspects.