The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) today released statistical and financial summaries for Canadian specialty, pay and pay-per-view television services, as well as video-on-demand (VOD) services. The report provides information on the profitability, revenues and expenditures of these sectors of the broadcasting industry for the period of September 1, 2008 to August 31, 2009.
Profitability
In 2009, these services experienced a decline in advertising revenues that was partially offset by an increase in subscriber revenues. Total revenues grew by 6% from $2.9 billion to $3.1 billion, while expenses rose from $2.2 billion to $2.3 billion.
As a result, profits before interest and taxes (PBIT) improved to $728.7 million, up from $648.2 million in 2008. These services posted a PBIT margin of 23.5%, which was slightly better than the previous year’s margin of 22.1%.
Sources of revenues
The total revenues of $3.1 billion were generated from the following sources:
$1.4 billion from cable television subscribers
$624.1 million from direct-to-home satellite subscribers
$982.2 million from national advertising
$18.2 million from local advertising, and
$53.1 million from other sources.
When compared with the 2008 results, national and local advertising revenues declined by 2.4% and 11.1%, respectively. At the same time, revenues from cable and satellite subscribers increased by 12.9% and 3.6%, respectively.
English-language services earned $2.5 billion of the total revenues, while French-language services brought in $501.4 million.
Revenue by sectors
Specialty television services captured the largest share of the total revenues, $2.4 billion, which included:
$2.08 billion from 49 analog services
$100.6 million from 18 Category 1 digital services, and
$223.9 million from 77 Category 2 digital services.
Pay, pay-per-view and VOD services saw their share of revenues increase by 16.6%, going from $596.4 million to $695.6 million in one year.
Canadian programming
In 2009, these services spent $1.08 billion on Canadian programming, which was roughly the same amount as the previous year. Of the overall programming expenditures, $357.1 million was paid to independent producers to acquire Canadian programs.
Spending on Canadian programming included $163.1 million for news programs, $226.8 million for other information programs, $302.6 million for sports programming, $194.7 million for drama, $47.5 million for musical and variety shows, and $73.7 million for general-interest programming.
Although investments in Canadian programming were essentially at the same level, these services directed $521.8 million to foreign programming. This represented an increase of 36.7% from the $381.6 million reported in 2008.
Employment
In 2009, specialty, pay, pay-per-view television and video-on-demand services employed 5,306 people and paid a total of $402 million in salaries. In comparison, they employed 5,514 people and paid $405 million in salaries the previous year.
More information and additional documents can be found on this page on the C.R.T.C.’s website.
