CRTC regulations making television a tougher business in Canada than radio
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By Glen Korstrom
Business In Vancouver
March 27th, 2015
New federal rules make operating a TV station in Canada more challenging at a time when owning a radio station is an increasingly attractive business.
On March 19, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) ruled that cable providers must give consumers more freedom to subscribe to individual TV channels by late 2016. The decision removed a crutch that supported TV stations by requiring consumers to subscribe to a bundle of stations even if they wanted to watch only one of its channels.
Canadian radio station executives, meanwhile, have watched their revenue growth outperform that of their video-laden competitors.
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Does this mean Jimmy will sell his TV stations?
“Does this mean Jimmy will sell his TV stations? ”
If he does, you can’t afford to buy them, so why ask ! LOL
This story is nothing new. Pattison has been buying a lot of radio properties over the last 10 years. He has not bought any TV properties – in spite of many TV stations that he could have purchased for a very low price. While I’m sure Pattison would sell if there was an offer for his TV stations (which there won’t be), that company will surely not start buying TV stations.
This has nothing to do with CRTC regs. This has more to do with how much content is out there and how expensive it is to produce or buy content. There is not a lot of room to make a profit in local TV stations in any markets but the majors in North America.
Over the air radio still has a significant and money making place in daily life. It just requires not having and over bloated management staff, and having a good sales dept. with good as well as endearing personalities be they DJ’s for music or compelling and insightful talk show hosts for talk radio.
That said many radio stations are mismanaging themselves into red ink, by going cheap with talent up to and including too much using of computer operated DJ’s or hiring lamo talk show hosts. Poor quality producers (cough, cough free interns) and creating lousy sales vessels forcing more commercials at lower rates.
I think it was this site that noted a link to a story of in the USA that regular over the air radio was by far the preferred listening medium for in car driving, something like 2/3rds of all users preferred listening to AM/FM radio first and fourmost.
Why?
It’s free, it’s easy to get, it has enough variety of choices in most markets and as such is easy for listeners to get comfortable with.
Properly managed, with a good format, a powerful sales team and good producers guiding either DJ’s for music or talk show hosts for news-sports-talk and you surely can make good money. Jimmy Pattison IS NO IDIOT! He did not become a billionaire by being stupid with money.
And televisions content while very expensive to produce in contrast to radio is not being consumed by the millennials in the same way it was by baby boomers so the numbers are so far off.
Like print, TV is dying a slow death while radio continues to challenge itself to stay relevant.