OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Canada’s commercial radio stations held their own in the face of competition from satellite, online and mobile services, with revenues dipping slightly for the 2015 broadcast year, according to the CRTC’s statistical and financial results for this sector released Monday.
Commercial Radio 2011 – 2015 National Statistics, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Markets said that total revenues for the country’s 704 commercial radio stations decreased 0.7% to hold steady at $1.6 billion for the broadcast year ending August 31, 2015. These revenues enable commercial radio stations to offer a variety of programming to Canadians, to support established and emerging Canadian talent, and to provide employment to 9,547 individuals.
The bulk of commercial radio revenues came from local and national advertising, which amounted to $1.58 billion in 2015. Local advertising revenues decreased by 2.2% from $1.09 billion in 2014 to $1.07 billion in 2015, while national advertising sales increased by 2.3% from $497.4 million to $508.8 million.
Radio services in Ontario and the Prairies accounted for 63% of the total revenues generated in the commercial radio industry. Advertising revenues, which accounted for 98% of total revenues in 2015, were down in the Atlantic provinces (-1.4%), Quebec (-2.2%), Ontario (-0.6%) and British Columbia and the Territories (-1.1%). They were unchanged in the Prairie provinces.
Canada’s FM radio stations continued to generate the majority of total revenues at $1.32 billion, down $6.7 million from the previous year. Thirteen new FM stations were added in 2015, bringing the total operating in Canada to 580.
Revenues for English-language FM stations decreased 0.3% from $1.043 billion in 2014 to $1.040 billion in 2015, and those for French-language FM stations decreased by 1.8%, from $259.2 million in 2014 to $254.7 million in 2015. Revenues for ethnic FM stations increased by 2.1% to $21.8 million.
There were 124 AM stations in Canada in 2015, and their total revenues decreased by 1.7%, from $291 million in 2014 to $286 million in 2015.
Over the past year, the CRTC report says commercial stations decreased their expenditures by $14.2 million, for a total of $1.3 billion. As a result, profits before interest and taxes (PBIT) increased from $298.2 million to $303.4 million, resulting in a slight increase in the PBIT margin, which went from 18.5% to 18.9%.
The 2015 broadcast year marked the second year during which the CBC could sell advertising on its Ici Musique and CBC Radio 2 services. While advertising revenues increased 27.2% to $1.4 million, total revenues for CBC’s 69 stations decreased by 3.9% to $276.5 million in 2015 as parliamentary appropriations allocated to the public broadcaster’s radio services declined by 3.4% from the previous year. Expenses incurred by the public broadcaster’s stations amounted to $261.9 million in 2015, a decrease of 4.7% from the previous year.
Statistics are provided for a total of 29 radio markets, including 14 markets that were added to this year’s publication: Grande Prairie, Kelowna, Kingston, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Moncton, Peterborough, Red Deer, Regina, Saint John, Saskatoon, St. John's, Sudbury and Timmins.
