TORONTO – CanWest Global will pull the skateboard out from under its alternative sports channel, Xtreme, on October 9th.
The seven year old channel wasn’t doing too badly, though, when viewed in the context of the Canadian digi-net landscape. According to CRTC filings, it turned in a $990,000 pre-tax profit in the 2007 broadcast year, ended August 31, 2007, after losing money for its first five years of existence. That was on 2007 revenue of $3.3 million.
The channel is dedicated to extreme sports like skateboarding, wakeboarding, dirt biking and so on.
It also had over 860,000 subscribers. However, according to a spokesman, Xtreme didn’t make the cut as Canwest is currently reviewing the bottom line on all of its assets. “Our priority is to strengthen our balance sheet to see if (all Canwest brands) are performing as they should be,” John Douglas, vice-president, public affairs, told Cartt.ca.
This review led to the cancellation of jazz-based digi-net CoolTV, which went dark for good in July.
However, according to sources, while the balance sheet seems decent, viewership of Xtreme is so low, Bell TV (formerly Bell ExpressVu) is about to pull the plug on carriage of the digi-net (where it is currently packaged with NHL Network, ESPN Classic Canada, Fox Sports World and Raptors TV).
This would have caused a precipitous drop in the number of subscribers and cut the channel’s revenue by more than half. According to CRTC figures, Xtreme got $1.8 million of its 2007 revenue from DTH subs (and it’s not carried by Star Choice).
“We tried to grow that audience for about seven years now and it remains one of our smallest channels in terms of ratings and revenue,” added Douglas, when asked for details. “The growth opportunity was very limited.”
Cutting Xtreme won’t lead to any job losses at Canwest, he added.
One wonders then, too, about the future of Canwest’s other sports digi-net, Fox Sports World, given that its revenue and subscribers are only slightly better than Xtreme and it posted a pre-tax loss of $197,000 in the 2007 broadcast year. Douglas, however, said that channel is part of the overall company-wide review and he declined to comment on it specifically, when asked.
– Greg O’Brien
