TV Talk: Westmoreland County native Joe Kenda’s new series will help launch discovery+ streaming service

Investigation Discovery star Joe Kenda, who hosted “Homicide Hunter” on ID for nine seasons, will be the face and voice of a new series that will be available exclusively on discovery+, a new streaming service Discovery Networks will launch on Jan. 4.

Kenda, who grew up in Herminie near Irwin before attending the University of Pittsburgh, drew from his own case files with the Colorado Springs, Colo., police department for “Homicide Hunter.”

For the new series, “American Detective with Joe Kenda,” Kenda will introduce the stories of other homicide detectives’ work.

discovery+ will cost $4.99 per month with ads or $6.99 per month for an ad-free version. Verizon will make the new streamer free for its customers for a year depending on their plan.

Kenda’s “Homicide Hunter” aired original episodes from 2011 until earlier this year. In 2019 Kenda said “Homicide Hunter” was ending because he’d exhausted his personal case files.

“The cases that remain are either too simple or too gruesome or involve dead children or babies and I won’t do those and ID won’t do them either,” he said, “so it’s time to call it an end.”

Kenda’s new show will be one of ID’s original contribution to discovery+, which will also boast original series from other Discovery networks, including HGTV, TLC, Food Network and content from non-Discovery networks AE, History and Lifetime.

Discovery CEO David Zaslav said discovery+ will go online with 50 original series, the most originals of any streaming service at launch.

Chip and Joanna Gaines’ next iteration of “Fixer Upper,” “Fixer Upper: Welcome Home,” will premiere on discovery+ before the launch of their network Magnolia next year.

TLC will offer three “90 Day Fiancee” spin-offs – “90 Day Bares All,” “90 Day Diaries” and “90 Day Journey” – and “The Other Way Strikes Back” along with “Long Island Medium: There in Spirit.”

discovery+ joins an increasingly crowded streaming marketplace that includes Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Netflix and Amazon’s Prime Video, although discovery+ will have the reality/unscripted/non-fiction space largely to itself aside from CuriosityStream.