Canadian internet TV, video-watching growing quickly

The average amount of time Canadians spend watching TV over the internet increased 42 per cent between 2013 and 2014, the CRTC reports.

Overall, nearly half of Canadians (46 per cent) 18 and over watched some video content over the internet in 2014, according to the third and final installment of the broadcast regulator's 2015 Communications Monitoring Report.

On average, they watched of 2.7 hours of television content over the internet per week in 2014, up from 1.9 hours the previous year. It still pales in comparison to the amount of time Canadians spent watching conventional television – an average of 27.4 hours per week, down slightly from 27.9 hours the year before.

But the slow slide in conventional television watching and rapid growth in online video watching are trends that appear in many other measures in the report.

The report found that between 2013 and 2014:

• The percentage of anglophones who watched internet video on a tablet grew from 20 to 26 per cent (a 30 per cent increase) and the percentage of francophones who did so grew from 16 to 26 per cent (a 63 per cent increase).
• The percentage of anglophones who watched internet video on a smartphone grew from 23 to 38 per cent (a 65 per cent increase) and the percentage of francophones who did so grew from 16 to 27 per cent (a 40 per cent increase).
• The percentage of Canadian households subscribing to cable, satellite or IPTV slipped from 83.7 to 82 per cent, despite a four-fold growth in IPTV over the last five years.

Despite the slight decline in conventional television viewing and subscriptions, broadcasting revenues grew 1.4 per cent to $17.3 billion.