OTTAWA–GATINEAU – Despite a decrease in expenses, Canadian conventional television stations saw profits continue their downward slide in 2015, according to the CRTC’s latest statistical and financial report for this sector released Wednesday.
According to Conventional Television – Statistical and Financial Summaries 2011-2015, profits before interest and taxes (PBIT) for private local TV stations declined from -$138.7 million to -$140.9 million, and the PBIT margin decreased from -7.7% to -8%.
Revenues fell by 2.6% (or $46.6 million) from $1.8 billion in 2014 to $1.76 billion for the broadcast year ended August 31, 2015. While revenues from the sale of local advertising declined 1% from $333.6 million in 2014 to $330.1 million in 2015, national advertising revenues for private conventional television stations remained virtually unchanged at $1.2 billion in 2015. Expenses in that same period went from $1.85 billion in 2014 to $1.82 billion in 2015, a decrease of 1.6%, the report continues.
Investments in Canadian programming have grown consistently over the last five years as private conventional televisions stations spent 16% more in 2015 than in 2011. These investments increased 5.4% (or $33.5 million) from $619.3 million in 2014 to $652.8 million in 2015, accounting for 49.8% of total programming expenses in 2015, up from 43.6% in 2011. Of note, these stations spent $60.9 million less on foreign programming in 2015 compared to 2014, primarily due to a reduction in spending on drama.
(Ed note: It's worth noting this data does not include what the private broadcasters are spending on content for OTT platforms such as CraveTV and shomi, nor does it reflect the revenues being earned by those platforms.)
Broken down by category, private conventional television stations invested $49.6 million on Canadian drama series, $5.3 million on films, $86.7 million on human interest programs, $369.6 million on news programs, $7.3 million on long-form documentaries, $30 million for other information programs, $17.1 million for music and variety shows, $21.5 million on sports programming, $17.3 million on game shows, $45 million on reality TV shows, $2.7 million on awards shows, $358,000 on animation programming and $343,000 on children’s programming. As part of these investments, these stations paid $142.1 million to Canadian independent producers, up from $138.6 million in 2014.
In 2015, there were 93 private conventional television stations in operation in Canada employing 10,995 people. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation/Société Radio-Canada employed 5,205 people.
The CBC/SRC reported total revenues of $1.1 billion in 2015, down 16.6% (or $220.9 million) from the previous year. In 2015, the national public broadcaster reported advertising revenues of $220.1 million, down 53.6 % from the $474.6 million generated in 2014, largely attributable to the absence of major sporting events in 2015 coupled with the loss of the NHL television rights.
The CBC/SRC's program expenditures totaled $687.3 million in 2015, and $557.2 million was related to Canadian programming expenses. In particular, spending on news ($190.9 million) and drama ($144.1 million) accounted for 60.1% of its total expenditures on Canadian programming, and it also spent $9 million on animation programming, and $33.8 million on programming targeting children.
The amount of Parliamentary Appropriation allocated to the CBC/SRC's 27 conventional television stations rose by 4.4% to $757.9 million in 2015.
