Canadian cable up 16%
April 28, 2009
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has released summaries for Canadian broadcasting distribution companies. Revenues in this sector of the broadcasting industry have climbed steadily over the past five years and surpassed $10 billion for the first time ever in 2008.
Total revenues for cable companies rose from $7.10 billion in 2007 to $8.24 billion in 2008, which represented an increase of 16.1 per cent. In 2008, the number of Canadian households that obtained basic-television service from a cable company totalled 7.9 million subscribers, an increase of 2.9 per cent from the previous year.
During the same period, the profits before interest and taxes (PBIT) of cable companies went from $1.5 billion to $2.1 billion. While expenditures increased by 7.8 per cent, the PBIT margin improved from 21.2 per cent in 2007 to 25.3 per cent in 2008.
Total revenues for direct-to-home (DTH) satellite distribution and multipoint distribution system (MDS) companies increased by 10.8 per cent between 2007 and 2008, or from $1.85 billion to $2.05 billion. The number of subscribers to basic service rose by 2.6 per cent in one year to reach 2.7 million.
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