OTTAWA – The CRTC today released financial results for the Canadian specialty, pay, pay-per-view television and video-on-demand services industry, which took in $2.7 billion in total revenues last year. This is an increase of 9.1% over the $2.5 billion in total revenues achieved by the industry in 2006.
Profits before interest and taxes (PBIT) rose by 13%, coming in at $647.1 million in 2007, and the PBIT margin grew to 23.75% in 2007 from 22.92% in 2006.
The total revenues of $2.7 billion were generated from the following sources: $1.2 billion from subscribers of cable distribution services; $574.8 million from subscribers of direct-to-home satellite services; $928.8 million from national advertising; $19.8 million from local advertising; and $44.3 million from other revenues.
Looking at the financial results by sector, total revenues broke down as $2.2 billion for specialty television services, $349.7 million for pay TV services, $119 million for pay-per-view TV services, and $78.8 million for video-on-demand services.
Within the specialty TV services market, the breakdown of revenues was as follows: $1.9 billion from analogue services; $78.9 million from Category 1 digital services; and $154.3 million from Category 2 digital services.
The CRTC also examined the amount spent by specialty and pay TV services on Canadian programming. From 2006 to 2007, spending on Canadian programming increased by 3.3%, rising to $917.9 million from $888.4 million. Of this amount, $319.1 million was paid to independent producers to acquire Canadian programming.
Spending on Canadian programming included $148 million for news programs, $210.2 million for other information programs, $230.6 million for sports programs, $168.3 million for drama, $45.6 million for musical and variety shows, and $67 million for general interest programming.
In addition, $323.2 million was spent on foreign programming, which represents a 10-per-cent increase from the $293.8 million spent in 2006.
Finally, the CRTC looked at employment figures within the industry and found that 5,490 people were employed in 2007, with salaries totalling $407.8 million. In comparison, in 2006 the industry employed 5,264 people and paid a total of $374.6 million in salaries.
