OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Canadians are spending less time watching television and listening to the radio, but revenues continue to climb for both media, according to the CRTC’s annual report on Canadian broadcasting.
In 2006, Canadians watched an average of 27.6 hours of TV per week, less than the 28.1 hours they spent in 2005. Nearly 78% of all TV viewership last year was to Canadian services. Revenues for conventional television were up by about $100 million, to $2.6 billion last year. Revenues for specialty channels, pay, pay-per-view, and video-on-demand services rose by about $300 million, to $2.5 billion in 2006. Expenses for the pay and specialty sector ballooned to $890.5 million in 2006, compared with $724.7 million the year before. The digital tier earned $248 million, representing 5% of the TV sector’s revenues, and both category 1 and 2 digital channels decreased their losses in 2006, the report says.
On the radio side, Canadians listened to the radio for an average of 18.6 hours per week last year, down from 19.1 hours the year before. Revenues for private commercial stations totalled $1.4 billion in 2006, which is an increase of 5.7%, or $75.9 million, from 2005. More than 80% of total radio tuning was to private commercial stations, followed by the CBC at 11.6%, satellite radio at 1%, and the Internet at just 0.3%.
Could Canadians be spending more time with other media? The CRTC report says that the penetration of Internet connections rose 6 percentage points to 70% in 2006. Some 60% of households have a high-speed connection, up from 51% in 2005.
The Internet, while likely siphoning off some listeners and viewers and certainly ad revenues (which nearly doubled for Websites in 2006 to $1 billion), is at least helping repatriate some losses to broadcasting: some 22% of Canadians listened to the radio over the Net in 2006, and 6% watched TV online, the report says.
More Canadians are accessing the Internet through means other than a PC or laptop: some 58% used a cellphone in 2006, 14% used an MP3 player, 9% a Webcam, 7% an iPod, 5% a personal digital assistant, and 4% a BlackBerry.
BDU penetration continued to rise, with 7.4 million Canadian households subscribing to cable (up from 6.8 million in 2005) and 2.6 million subscribing to direct-to-home satellite and multipoint distribution systems (up from 2.5 million). The number of households with digital services rose 10% to 5.8 million in 2006.
Canadian BDUs saw revenues climb to $7.7 billion in 2006, up from $6.4 billion.
Canadian broadcasters spent more on Canadian content. Private conventional TV stations spent $623.7 million on Cancon in 2006, up from $587 million the year before. Canadian radio stations paid nearly $23.9 million in Canadian talent development in 2006, up from $21 million 2005. This was partly due to the number of new radio stations and the benefits paid by new owners of existing stations as part of the transfer of ownership.
The full report is here.
