OTTAWA – Lower-cost shows like reality and game shows may be one reason why Canadian producers’ revenues from TV productions continue to fall, Statistics Canada reports.
In 2004, film and video producers reported TV sales of $1 billion, down 10% from 2001, the agency says. Overall production revenues from all sources also fell by 10% in that time. Television productions therefore kept their same share of the total production revenues, accounting for two-thirds of them.
TV revenues may also be falling because of increased competition from other entertainment sources, and from a trend away from more costly productions, like movies-of-the-week, Statscan said.
A handful of players take a big chunk of revenues from all sources, as only five production houses earned a total of 42.5% of all revenues in 2004. Still, this was lower than in 2001, when they grabbed 47.8% of the market. “This reduced concentration was due to scaled-back production activities by some producers, while others got out of production altogether,” Statscan noted in its report on the industry’s 2004 performance.
In all, Canada’s 688 film, video, and audio-visual producers saw overall revenues rise 10.9% from 2001, to $2.9 billion in 2004. Their expenses were kept in check thanks in part to falling interest rates, so the industry’s profit margin was 4.6%, well above the 1.2% level of 2001.
The industry’s workforce is changing, as it hires more full-time employees but also uses more freelancers. Employment fell 3.6% in 2004 compared with three years earlier, though the number of full-time workers rose by 6.8%. The number of freelancers ballooned by 18.8%, to almost 31,000. The workforce had a total of nearly 42,000 people that year.
Labour costs in those three years rose a substantial 29.3%, to $771 million in wages, freelance fees, and benefits.
Not surprisingly, film production was dominated by companies in British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec, and there were marked regional variations. In three years, revenues for B.C. film houses rose a whopping 29.4%, while those for producers based in Ontario plunged 19.2%, and Quebec companies remained largely unscathed, seeing only a 2.4% drop in revenues by 2004.
