Canadians consuming more content on traditional and new media platforms, CRTC says

Canadians are watching and listening to more content across both traditional and new media platforms, but still turn to TV and radio for the bulk of their media consumption, the CRTC said in an annual report released Tuesday. In the latest iteration of its Communications Monitoring Report, the CRTC said the average Canadian watched 28.5 hours of television and listened to 17.7 hours of radio each week in 2011, up from 28 hours of weekly TV viewing and 17.6 hours of radio listening in 2010. The commission added that Canadians watched, on average, 2.8 hours of “Internet television” each week, up from 2.4 hours a year earlier. Only four per cent of Canadians “report only watching television programming online, while 4% watched programming on a smartphone and 3% on a tablet” the commission added in a release accompanying the report. “Additionally, 22% of anglophones and 17% of francophones streamed the signal of an AM or FM station over the Internet,” the release said. The CRTC said 11.8 million Canadian households subscribed to a television service in the 2011 broadcast year, which ended Aug. 31, 2011. That figure represented a growth of 2.2 per cent over the year prior, the commission added. It said 70 per cent of those subscriptions were for cable TV, 24 per cent for satellite services, and another six per cent were for Internet protocol TV (IPTV) services. The report also said Canadians paid, on average, $2.13 more per month for their television services in 2011, up 3.6 per cent from the year prior. “This increase can be explained by higher monthly fees, a greater consumption of pay, pay-per-view and video-on-demand services, and consumers upgrading to digital or high-definition television services,” the commission said in the report. The commission said overall television revenues grew by 5.6 per cent in 2011 to reach $6.39 billion. The number was up from $6.05 billion the previous year. The CRTC noted that revenues for specialty, pay and pay-per-view TV services grew by eight per cent in 2011 to reach $3.7 billion, while revenues for private conventional TV stations did not change, remaining at $2.15 billion for 2010 and 2011. The commission added that public broadcaster CBC/Radio-Canada reported $500 million in advertising and other commercial revenues for 2011. The number was up from $450 million in 2010. The report said CBC increased its investment in Canadian programming by 3.9 per cent in 2011 to $709.8 million. It said private conventional broadcasters decreased their collective contribution to Canadian programming from $681.2 million in the 2010 broadcasting year to $562.9 million in 2011, but said this was primarily a reflection of $141 million in Canadian content produced around the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games. “Excluding these expenses, private conventional broadcasters spent 4.2% more on Canadian programming in 2011,” the commission said. Spending by specialty and pay TV services on Canadian programming “increased slightly” to reach $1.2 billion in 2011, the commission said. Of 1,183 radio services across the country, the CRTC said private radio stations captured 77.4 per cent of the weekly tuning share, while CBC held 13 per cent and other stations held a 9.5 per cent share. The report noted that revenues for private commercial radio broadcasters grew by 3.9 per cent in 2011 to $1.61 billion, up from $1.55 billion during the previous year. The commission said the commercial radio stations’ contribution to Canadian content creation grew by 17 per cent in 2011 to total $54 million. In total, the monitoring report said broadcasting industry revenues reached $16.6 billion, up from $15.8 billion the previous year. It said the “top 5 group of companies” captured more than 80 per cent of those revenues, while the top five broadcast distributors collected 90 per cent of the $8.58 billion that segment contributed to the industry in 2011. On the telecom side, the monitoring report said wireless service revenues grew to $19.1 billion in the year ending Dec. 31, 2011, up 6.2 per cent from $18 billion in the year prior. It said new entrants doubled their take of those revenues in 2011, claiming 4 per cent of the industry total in 2011, up from 2 per cent in 2010. The report said wireless revenues accounted for 45 per cent of the $42.7 billion in telecom revenues in 2011, which increased from $41.7 billion the previous year. It said the Canadian wireless subscriber base grew by 6.2 per cent in 2011 to reach 25.8 million, and added that 48 per cent of those subscribers had a mobile broadband Internet plan. The commission added that the average subscriber paid $57.98 per month for wireless services in 2011, up only marginally from $57.86 a year earlier. It said the 0.2 per cent growth was mainly due to increased data usage. Wireline telephony services did not fare as well as wireless services did in 2011 as the number of Canadian residential phone lines continued to fall, dropping 400,000 to 12.2 million at the end of 2011. “There was a slight decline in residential revenues, which came in at $4.57 billion, down from $4.73 billion in 2010,” the commission said. “In 2011, local and long distance services accounted for 28% of all telecommunications revenues, compared with 30% in 2010.” Internet service revenues climbed in 2011, the report said, growing 6.3 per cent from $6.8 billion in 2010 to $7.2 billion. It said Internet use was also up, as Anglophones spent 18.2 hours online per week in 2011—up from 17.3 hours the previous year—and as francophones spent 13.1 hours online each week—up from 12.8 hours in 2010. The commission added that the most common online activity of each linguistic group was watching online videos. “In 2011, Canadian households spent on average $181 each month on communications services,” the report said. “That figure accounts for approximately 4.1 per cent of total household spending, and is equal to the amount households spend on healthcare.” news@thewirereport.ca

Canadians consuming more content on traditional and new media platforms, CRTC says

Broadcast | September 4, 2012

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Canadians consuming more content on traditional and new media platforms, CRTC says

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