Traditional television revenues in Canada are steadily trending downward as the appeal of streaming services continues to climb, according to a recently released report.
TV revenues fell from $1.49 billion in 2022 to $1.38 billion last year, a more than 7 percent decline, according to Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) data, as first covered by Blacklock’s Reporter.
Traditional television viewership has experienced a consistent annual decline. In the past decade, the amount of time Canadians dedicate to watching television has decreased by 28 percent, the report found.
The downward trend of conventional television revenues has long been on the radar of the CRTC, the administrative tribunal that regulates and supervises broadcasting and telecommunications in the country.
The CRTC said in a 2022 report that the health of Canada’s television programming rights had suffered significant declines in the past five years and warned that the market was at “serious” and “imminent” risk.
“The next three years will determine whether the Canadian broadcasting system survives,” the report said. “How much time do we have? Best guess given current trends: three years. Three years for public policy to decide whether to continue to mostly sit on the sidelines or try and combat these trends.”
Online advertising revenue eclipsed TV ad sales for the first time in 2013, the report found, but the erosion in traditional advertising began even before that as advertisers increasingly looked to data-driven targeted options online.
“The Canadian owned and controlled television broadcasting system appears to be poised to reach a tipping point in the short term,” the report said. “To the extent that public policy makers plan to take corrective action, therefore, they should not assume they have more than a few years to do so.”
Bell Media has sounded the alarm in the past, saying traditional television is at risk due to the growing public preference for digital media. The company stated its concerns again earlier this year.
Bell CEO Mirko Bibic told the House of Commons Heritage Committee during testimony in April that his company had lost more than $100 million in television advertising revenues because viewers are switching to digital formats.
He said the media and telecommunications firm lost $180 million in 2023 compared to the prior year, noting that conventional advertising decreased by $140 million, while Bell’s news service had lost approximately $40 million.
Two months earlier, Bell Canada announced plans to cut 9 percent of its workforce and sell 45 of its 103 regional radio stations across the country.
The announcement marked the second major layoff at the company since last spring, when 6 percent of Bell Media jobs were eliminated and nine radio stations were either shuttered or sold.
Corus Entertainment, owner of Global News, confirmed in February it had laid off an unspecified number of workers across several stations. Unifor, the union representing some of the workers, said 11 people lost their jobs.
