Source: Canoe.ca

Investment in foreign programming by Canada’s specialty, pay-per-view and video-on-demand services surged last year, while spending on local content remained little changed, according to figures from the broadcast regulator.

These television sectors spent $528.8 million on acquiring foreign content in the year to August 2009, an increase of almost 37% from the year before, the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission said.

In contrast, investment in Canadian programming was little changed at $1.08 billion, the CRTC said.

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.

Canada’s broadcasting and acting unions are currently lobbying against government proposals to open up the telecoms sector to greater foreign ownership, saying it will also affect broadcasters as lines between the two sectors are increasingly blurred. One of their arguments is a loss of Canadian cultural identity in television content.

The CRTC figures also showed pay-per-view and video-on-demand services were the fastest expanding sector of the country’s television market last year.

Overall revenue in the pay-per-view, pay, VOD and specialty television sector rose 6% in the year to August 2009 to $3.1 billion, the CRTC said. A drop in advertising revenue was offset by an increase in subscribers, it said.

Specialty television took the lion’s share of the revenue at $2.4 billion, the CRTC said. However, VOD and pay-per-view services saw their share of revenue jump by 16.6% to $695.6 million, it said.

Specialty channels have fared better than conventional broadcasters during the ad slump that followed the 2008 market meltdown, with companies such as Corus Entertainment saying recently that the advertising market was rebounding.

Profit before interest and taxes at pay, specialty and VOD services rose to $728.7 million from $648.2 million the previous year. The profit margin improved to 23.5% from 22.1%, it said.

© Canoe.ca