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  • CRTC Report on Canadian Media and Communications Industry

6th August 2009

CRTC Report on Canadian Media and Communications Industry

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CRTCOttawa – The CRTC has released its report on Canadian media consumption, and while it appears that fewer people are listening to streaming radio stations, more are tuning in for podcasts. The Media Consumption Report contains broadcasting data for the year ended August 31, 2008, and telecommunications data for the year ended December 31, 2008. Due to the time periods covered by this report, any economic downturns currently being experienced by the industry are not reflected, and will appear in the 2010 report for 2009 consumption.

The CRTC is also reporting that the number of Canadians online has seen another increase in 2008 over2007. Apparently we Anglophones spent an average of 13.8 hours online per week (they obviously didn’t check out the usage at Village Gamer, because we blow that number out of the water). Francophones didn’t spend quite as much time online, coming in at an average of 11.1 hours online per week. The Francophone sector saw the biggest increase, with the 2007 average coming in at 9.8 hours, while Anglophones only increased their time online by 0.4 hours per week.

However, 18% of Anglophones and 16% of Francophones reported watching a television program or a clip from a television program online, while podcasts saw an increase in usage of 46% among Anglophones and 40% among Francophones. The streaming of AM and FM radio stations over the Internet has experienced a decline over the last few years. The percentage of Anglophones who streamed a radio station in a given month dropped from 23% in 2005 to 16% in 2008. Similarly, the percentage of Francophones who engaged in the same online activity decreased from 16% to 13% during the same period.

Canadians are also very connected, with 99% of all households having at least one telecommunication service, including residential, wireless or Internet telephone service.

Other report highlights:

Internet services

* Revenues from Internet services increased by 9.4%, growing from $5.7 billion in 2007 to $6.2 billion in 2008.
* In 2008, the number of residential Internet subscribers increased by 5.6% to 9.8 million, or 74% of all Canadian households.
* The majority of Canadians favoured faster Internet services, as 52% of all households subscribed to a broadband service that offered speeds of at least 1.5 megabits per second.
* As in past years, Canada led all G7 countries when comparing the proportion of households subscribing to broadband Internet services.

Wireless telephone services

* Wireless telephone services showed the highest growth among all sectors of the telecommunications industry, and now account for 40% of all revenues. Revenues increased by 10.5%, from $14.4 billion in 2007 to $15.9 billion in 2008.
* However, expansion in this sector slowed slightly when compared to the average annual growth rate of 14.3% achieved from 2004 to 2007.
* In 2008, there were 22.1 million wireless telephone subscribers, an increase of 9% over the previous year. In addition, 8% of Canadian households chose to subscribe only to wireless services, and did not have a land-line telephone.
* The penetration of smartphones nearly doubled in one year, from 12% to 21%.
* Among other investments, companies expanded the coverage of their advanced wireless networks (3G or 3G-equivalent) to 91% of Canadian households, up from 78% in 2007.

The full report was posted on August 5, and is available on the CRTC web site.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 6th, 2009 at 11:37 am and is filed under National News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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