Private television profit margins dropping
The CRTC has released its “state-of-the-nation” report on private conventional television, reporting on the industry’s revenues, expenditures and profitability from 2002 to 2006.
While television station revenues held steady across Canada, expenditures rose by 7.8%, which reduced profits before interest and taxes (PBIT) from $242.2 million in 2005 to $91 million in 2006. The PBIT margin also decreased from 11.02% in 2005 to 4.14% in 2006.
From 2005 to 2006, revenues from the sale of local advertising grew by 3.4% to $375.4 million, while national sales remained the same, at $1.5 billion. In 2006, conventional television stations generated $2.2 billion in revenue.
Expenses were up, from $1.9 billion in 2005 to $2 billion in 2006, mainly due to a 10% increase in total expenditures on Canadian and foreign programming. In particular, spending on foreign programming increased 12.2% in one year, climbing from $613.2 million in 2005 to $688.3 million in 2006.
Canadian programming expenditures recorded a more modest increase of 6.3%, from $587 million in 2005 to $623.7 million in 2006. Of this amount, $144.7 million was paid to independent producers to acquire Canadian programming, an increase from the $138.5 million paid to them in 2005.
In 2006, broadcasters spent $73.9 million on drama and $101.6 million on general interest programming. Spending on other Canadian program categories included $328.1 million for news programs, $66.3 million for other information programs, $35 million for musical and variety shows, $9.3 million for sports programs, and $5.7 million for game shows.
In 2006, the private conventional television industry employed 8,197 people and paid a total of $593.6 million in salaries.
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| The CRTC, The Media Landscape |
Of the increased expenditures, I’m sure that buying equipment in preparation for HD is in there somewhere. Also I’m guessing there must be still digital channels out there which are still new, and not yet profitable.
The CRTC report also contains data on the number of CBC employees, which is the only public source for that information. As of August 2006, CBC had 10,784 employees, an increase of about 50 from the previous year. Total salaries and benefits amounted to $930,393,000 in 2006.
[...] CBCer who’s now a consultant) was drawn to some other information in that same report, and posted a comment… The CRTC report also contains data on the number of CBC employees, which is the only public [...]
The CBC staff is highly unionized.
So, in addition to being a heavy draw on the taxpayer’s teat, they’re very inefficient.
Must be nice to have the government force your customers to pay for your service whether they want it or not. I wonder how these thousands of people would make it in the (real world) private (competitive) sector.
Some of the CBC employees and associated personnel already did quite nicely in the private sector, last I knew. But they decided to work either at or with CBC anyway.
And as a listener and viewer, I still think I’m getting my money’s worth. Union workers’ output included.
I personally took a salary hit of about 12% to work here, and I could probably get about 20% more right now in the private sector – that said, the vacation time is competitive (if I ever took it all), and the benefits are almost as good as my last private sector job, although the lack of a drug card is annoying.
The one difference is that I do more reasonable hours here thanks to union regs, but I can say from experience that 70+ hour weeks are not worth doing anyway, as most of what you do past hour 50 is rubbish. Crunch time is a sign there’s something wrong, and not being able to do it too easily is probably more of a help to efficiency than not.