CRTC to release broadcaster revenue data, aggregated by industry segment

The CRTC announced that it will publish the data collected in its Annual Digital Media Survey – covering 2020-2021 – aggregated by industry segment, audio and audiovisual. For the latter segment, the commission will combine revenues from digital media broadcasting undertakings (DMBUs) with those revenues reported by hybrid video-on-demand (HVOD) services. The Wednesday decision answers a key question posed by the regulator's February 2022 announcement of the survey, in which it asserted its authority to collect data from foreign-based streaming companies, but decided that it would keep the data confidential and only release it at a certain level of aggregation. (Domestic broadcasters had wanted the CRTC to collect the data, while foreign companies wanted the CRTC to wait until the government's update to the Broadcasting Act was completed.) In this week's decision, the commission wrote that it was faced with determining what level of aggregation it should release the broadcasters' data at, and whether or not it should include data provided by HVOD services operating under the regulator's Digital Media Exemption Order (DMEO). The regulator had to balance, the CRTC reasoned, the private harm of of the "risk of disclosure of confidential and sensitive commercial information and possible damage to the competitive position of one or more of the respondents" with the public good of allowing "members of the public, including those involved in the broadcasting industry, to better understand the Canadian broadcasting system." The commission ultimately decided that "given the high rate of response by DMBUs, the collected data could be aggregated such that the level of aggregation would mitigate the concerns raised by certain interveners that the publication of aggregate data would allow for the activities of individual survey respondents to be identified." When it comes to what level of aggregation to release the data at, the regulator came to the conclusion that releasing data grouped even at the broad level of country of origin would result in the disclosure of data collected in confidence. The commission did however find that because of the amount of data collected, aggregation by industry segment would allow the public to better understand the development of the broadcasting industry in Canada while preserving the most commercially sensitive information from public disclosure. As such the commission decided that it will publish data on revenue aggregated at the level of industry segment, but will keep confidential data collected on subscribers and programming expenditures. When it comes to revenue, the CRTC found that the data it collected was both accurate and substantially complete, and was readily comparable across the various respondents. Not so for data on subscribers and programming expenditure, according to the commission. The "reported subscriber figures for various services varied substantially by how they were reported," the commission wrote. "For instance, some entities operating a terrestrial broadcasting distribution undertaking (BDU) provide subscribers to that terrestrial BDU with access to a DMBU via mobile device applications. Of these entities, some reported all subscribers to their terrestrial BDU as also being subscribers to their DMBU while others reported zero subscribers to their DMBU." The CRTC added that even aggregated data would not meaningfully distinguish "services that are generally complementary to each other" from "services that are generally competitive against each other." For programming expenditures, the commission wrote that some respondents from both the audio and audiovisual industry segments were unsure of what to report or were unable to provide the requested data. "For instance, certain audio DMBUs indicated that they did not have any information regarding the ultimate distribution to Canadian and non-Canadian recipients of payments that the DMBUs made to copyright collectives and record labels, certain audiovisual DMBUs indicated that they had not been tracking expenditures devoted to CPE," the CRTC wrote, "and some respondents indicated that they did not know what would be considered a 'Canadian program' for reporting purposes." The CRTC thus determined that the data was too incomplete to be considered for release, and what was submitted was not comparable across respondents. For HVOD services, the commission determined that because of the small number of HVODs operating in Canada, the release of certain data could be easily correlated to specific services and would ultimately reveal confidential information. However, the commission also determined that because HVOD services and certain DMBUs can be broadly comparable, "combining these data sets in this fashion would mitigate the risk of disclosing confidential data." -Reporting by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca and editing by Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca.

CRTC to release broadcaster revenue data, aggregated by industry segment

News | 02/16/2023 4:43 pm EST

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