Advertising slowdown dropped local TV revenues to $1.8B last year, CRTC says
CBC News | Posted: May 4, 2015 3:37 PM | Last Updated: May 4, 2015
Canadian local television stations brought in $117 million less in advertising revenue last year
Canadian local television stations brought in $117 million less in advertising revenue last year, Canada's broadcast regulator said, which pulled their overall revenue down from $1.94 billion in 2013 to $1.8 billion in 2014.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission said Monday that for the fiscal year ended in August of last year, the private local television industry as a whole eked out a small profit, since expenses also declined, from $1.85 billion to $1.84 billion.
Private stations spent $619.3 million in the creating Canadian content during the year, which employed more than 5,900 people. That figure was up by 2.3 per cent from $605.4 million the previous year.
Within that figure, the money was spent in the following ways:
- $60.4 million for drama series,
- $5.3 million for feature films,
- $84.7 million for general interest programs,
- $361.1 million for news programs,
- $6.3 million for long-form documentaries,
- $29.3 million for other information programs,
- $22.3 million for music and variety shows,
- $1.1 million for sports programming,
- $19 million for game shows,
- $25.5 million for reality TV shows,
- $3.7 million for awards shows and
- $0.5 million for other programs.
Along the way, private local TV stations paid $138.6 million to Canadian independent producers.
The CBC is not included in that data, nor are cable and satellite companies, specialty, pay, pay-per-view and video-on-demand services, and AM and FM radio. Data for those latter entities will be released by the CRTC in a subsequent report.
But the public broadcaster's financial numbers reported $474.6 million in advertising revenues in 2014, a 43 per cent increase from the $331.1 million generated in 2013. "This increase is largely attributable to the broadcast of the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, the FIFA Soccer World Cup in Brazil, and an entire season of National Hockey League games," the CRTC said.
While taking in almost $500 million in ads, the public broadcaster spent $810.8 million on programming, 97 per cent of which — $789.8 million — was spent on Canadian content.