Looks like Shaw has their act together relatively speaking...
c/p from Cartt.ca
Fun with TV numbers as Commission releases BDUs' and broadcasters' aggregate financial data
September 29, 2009
By Greg O’Brien
THE BIG BROADCASTERS and BDUs fought this, but by September 14th, those companies had to file their aggregate financial data from their 2008 fiscal years with the Commission.
On the weekend, the CRTC posted the figures on its web site and since the industry it currently roiling over the continuing fee-for-carriage debate, we looked at the numbers largely through that prism.
After spending several hours examining a lot of the data, I can tell you the most lucrative place to work is Bell TV – which paid its 1,398 employees an average salary of $90,136 – or CTV, whose average remuneration was $86,428. At the other end of the scale, however, those working at Shaw Direct (the former Star Choice) made quite a bit less than their DTH counterparts averaging $53,800 a year, which was topped by Cogeco at an average of $58,992 per employee.
As for the rest of the numbers, those quoted for broadcasters below do not include specialty channels as the CRTC compiles those separately, and for the BDUs we mostly didn’t include their phone and data revenue, just TV.
• Shaw is the biggest BDU, of course, earning $1.97 billion in revenue from Shaw Cable and Shaw Direct ($1.32 billion and $650 million, respectively). Rogers is the biggest cable company, earning $1.6 billion from its cable TV ops.
• Shaw, you could say, is the most frugal, spending $304.3 million on its cable platform technical infrastructure to Rogers’ $371.7 million in 2008, despite nearly equal subscriber numbers (2.2 million and change). But where you really see it is on the sales and promotions side where Rogers reports spending $226 million and Shaw just $65.8 million, less than even Videotron’s S&P spend of $70.4 million on the Quebec MSO’s revenue line of $840 million.
• That sense of frugality comes through in other areas with Shaw as it spent $407 million on affiliate fees in 2008 for cable and $210.3 million on the Shaw Direct side. As a comparison, Rogers Cable paid $463 million in affiliate payments to specialty channels in 2008 and Bell TV paid $526 million.
• Where you really see it is on the PBIT line (profits before interest and taxes) where Shaw’s (cable plus DTH) is a whopping $870 million, compared to Rogers’ healthy $451.8 million, Videotron’s $120.8 million, Cogeco’s $95.8 million and BellTV’s negative-$65 million.
• Clearly, cable is a very good business to be in.
• On the broadcast side, it’s tougher. CBC TV (counting English and French together) counts the most revenue, coming in at $1.25 billion, most from its government appropriation. It also posted the largest loss in 2008 of any broadcaster coming in at -$32.5 million on the French side and -$15.3 million on the English.
• As for the two biggest private broadcasters, CTV lost $13.6 million on $840.1 million in revenue while Global TV took a smaller loss of $1.8 million on $584.7 million in 2008 revenue.
• Rogers’ Citytv and OMNI properties together lost $36.7 million that year on $206.7 million in revenue.
• Sticking with broadcasters, what I thought interesting was to note that CTV reported local ad revenue of $149 million while total expenses on local news and information programming was $143.5 million, meaning local advertisers managed to at least cover the costs of local content.
• In the Global submission, its local content cost $101.7 million to produce in 2008 (when they still owned the E! stations) with local ad revenue of $77.2 million helping there. But even then, if we take just 10% of the $474 million national advertisers spent with Global, that more than covers the costs of local programming (and national advertisers are still buying local news).
• Quebecor’s TVA was profitable in 2008, showing PBIT of $33.2 million on revenue of $248.5 million.
• As has been noted repeatedly by the likes of ACTRA and the CFTPA and the Writers Guild, lots of money flows into the States. Just counting these OTA broadcasters and large BDUs, the figures show that about $1.04 billion goes to U.S. broadcasters and producers. A total of $270.6 million was paid in 2008 to foreign (mostly American) cable channels while the large TV broadcasters paid $766.3 million for foreign (mostly American) TV shows.
• Not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you. We enjoy the likes of House and Grey’s Anatomy, along with Speed Channel and A&E, for example. And anyway, BDUs paid more than $1.8 billion in affiliate fees to Canadian services while broadcasters collectively invested $1.25 billion in Canadian content.
• The one glaring difference among broadcasters and BDUs? The amount spent technically. While BDUs in 2008 invested $1.3 billion in their networks in 2008 (granted, this figure does include data and phone services because the networks carry everything), or 15% of the collective $8.65 billion in revenue earned by BDUs for all that they offered in 2008 (BDUs earned 73% of that revenue from TV, by the way), broadcasters spent just under 5% of total revenues on technical operations, or $155.5 million. This is part of the reason why BDUs grow testy when broadcasters object to spending money on new digital OTA transmitters.
• Finally, the amount of money coming out of the five BDUs and going towards Canadian content in the form of community channels, the Canadian Television Fund, or other funds, totalled $318 million in 2008.
The figures can all be found here.
The ones for 2009,in which broadcasters bore the brunt of the recession, won’t be good and we feel for the folks working through that – and the ones who were let go after this not-too-bad 2008 was completed. We’ll keep you posted when those new numbers are released.
c/p from Cartt.ca
Fun with TV numbers as Commission releases BDUs' and broadcasters' aggregate financial data
September 29, 2009
By Greg O’Brien
THE BIG BROADCASTERS and BDUs fought this, but by September 14th, those companies had to file their aggregate financial data from their 2008 fiscal years with the Commission.
On the weekend, the CRTC posted the figures on its web site and since the industry it currently roiling over the continuing fee-for-carriage debate, we looked at the numbers largely through that prism.
After spending several hours examining a lot of the data, I can tell you the most lucrative place to work is Bell TV – which paid its 1,398 employees an average salary of $90,136 – or CTV, whose average remuneration was $86,428. At the other end of the scale, however, those working at Shaw Direct (the former Star Choice) made quite a bit less than their DTH counterparts averaging $53,800 a year, which was topped by Cogeco at an average of $58,992 per employee.
As for the rest of the numbers, those quoted for broadcasters below do not include specialty channels as the CRTC compiles those separately, and for the BDUs we mostly didn’t include their phone and data revenue, just TV.
• Shaw is the biggest BDU, of course, earning $1.97 billion in revenue from Shaw Cable and Shaw Direct ($1.32 billion and $650 million, respectively). Rogers is the biggest cable company, earning $1.6 billion from its cable TV ops.
• Shaw, you could say, is the most frugal, spending $304.3 million on its cable platform technical infrastructure to Rogers’ $371.7 million in 2008, despite nearly equal subscriber numbers (2.2 million and change). But where you really see it is on the sales and promotions side where Rogers reports spending $226 million and Shaw just $65.8 million, less than even Videotron’s S&P spend of $70.4 million on the Quebec MSO’s revenue line of $840 million.
• That sense of frugality comes through in other areas with Shaw as it spent $407 million on affiliate fees in 2008 for cable and $210.3 million on the Shaw Direct side. As a comparison, Rogers Cable paid $463 million in affiliate payments to specialty channels in 2008 and Bell TV paid $526 million.
• Where you really see it is on the PBIT line (profits before interest and taxes) where Shaw’s (cable plus DTH) is a whopping $870 million, compared to Rogers’ healthy $451.8 million, Videotron’s $120.8 million, Cogeco’s $95.8 million and BellTV’s negative-$65 million.
• Clearly, cable is a very good business to be in.
• On the broadcast side, it’s tougher. CBC TV (counting English and French together) counts the most revenue, coming in at $1.25 billion, most from its government appropriation. It also posted the largest loss in 2008 of any broadcaster coming in at -$32.5 million on the French side and -$15.3 million on the English.
• As for the two biggest private broadcasters, CTV lost $13.6 million on $840.1 million in revenue while Global TV took a smaller loss of $1.8 million on $584.7 million in 2008 revenue.
• Rogers’ Citytv and OMNI properties together lost $36.7 million that year on $206.7 million in revenue.
• Sticking with broadcasters, what I thought interesting was to note that CTV reported local ad revenue of $149 million while total expenses on local news and information programming was $143.5 million, meaning local advertisers managed to at least cover the costs of local content.
• In the Global submission, its local content cost $101.7 million to produce in 2008 (when they still owned the E! stations) with local ad revenue of $77.2 million helping there. But even then, if we take just 10% of the $474 million national advertisers spent with Global, that more than covers the costs of local programming (and national advertisers are still buying local news).
• Quebecor’s TVA was profitable in 2008, showing PBIT of $33.2 million on revenue of $248.5 million.
• As has been noted repeatedly by the likes of ACTRA and the CFTPA and the Writers Guild, lots of money flows into the States. Just counting these OTA broadcasters and large BDUs, the figures show that about $1.04 billion goes to U.S. broadcasters and producers. A total of $270.6 million was paid in 2008 to foreign (mostly American) cable channels while the large TV broadcasters paid $766.3 million for foreign (mostly American) TV shows.
• Not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you. We enjoy the likes of House and Grey’s Anatomy, along with Speed Channel and A&E, for example. And anyway, BDUs paid more than $1.8 billion in affiliate fees to Canadian services while broadcasters collectively invested $1.25 billion in Canadian content.
• The one glaring difference among broadcasters and BDUs? The amount spent technically. While BDUs in 2008 invested $1.3 billion in their networks in 2008 (granted, this figure does include data and phone services because the networks carry everything), or 15% of the collective $8.65 billion in revenue earned by BDUs for all that they offered in 2008 (BDUs earned 73% of that revenue from TV, by the way), broadcasters spent just under 5% of total revenues on technical operations, or $155.5 million. This is part of the reason why BDUs grow testy when broadcasters object to spending money on new digital OTA transmitters.
• Finally, the amount of money coming out of the five BDUs and going towards Canadian content in the form of community channels, the Canadian Television Fund, or other funds, totalled $318 million in 2008.
The figures can all be found here.
The ones for 2009,in which broadcasters bore the brunt of the recession, won’t be good and we feel for the folks working through that – and the ones who were let go after this not-too-bad 2008 was completed. We’ll keep you posted when those new numbers are released.
