[acc-cca-l] Fwd: The CMCR Project’s 2019 Media and Internet Concentration in Canada Results

Daniel Paré daniel.pare at uottawa.ca
Thu Dec 17 06:26:17 MST 2020


[△EXTERNAL]


Forwarded on behalf of Prof. Dwayne Winseck, Carleton University

Begin forwarded message:

From: Dwayne Winseck <DwayneWinseck at cunet.carleton.ca<mailto:DwayneWinseck at cunet.carleton.ca>>
Subject: The CMCR Project’s 2019 Media and Internet Concentration in Canada Results


The CMCR Project’s 2019 Media and Internet Concentration in Canada Results



December 16, 2020



Today, the Canadian Media Concentration Research Project<http://www.cmcrp.org/> is releasing the second report in its annual series on the communications-internet and media industries in Canada. A downloadable PDF of the report can be found here<http://www.cmcrp.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Media-and-Internet-Concentration-in-Canada-1984%E2%80%932019-16122020.pdf>.

The main goal of the report is to investigate whether the communications, Internet and media industries in Canada have become more or less concentrated over time, and whether the fear of domination by a handful of global Internet giants such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and so forth is justified.

To address this issue, the report covers 20 sectors of the communications, internet & media industries in Canada over a 35-year period. It brims with data, analysis, commentary and policy recommendations regarding the fast-evolving place of Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Netflix, including the challenges they pose to Canadian players like Bell, Rogers, Telus, Shaw, Quebecor, and the CBC and their impact on the media landscape generally.

Here's a snapshot of what we cover:

 [cid:8c294579-fd76-4862-8b0e-88ed50096047]

The report concludes by outlining four principles for a new generation of Internet regulation drawn from the history of communications regulation in North America: structural separation (break-ups and divestitures), line of business restrictions (firewalls), public obligations and public alternatives.


Headline Findings

  *   Bell is the biggest communications, Internet and media player in Canada by far, with $24.9 billion in revenue last year—nearly three times Google, Facebook, Netflix, Apple, Amazon, and Twitter’s revenue in Canada combined. Bell single-handedly accounted for nearly 28% of the $91.3 billion network media economy last year.
  *   The top five Canadian companies—Bell, Telus, Rogers, Shaw and Quebecor—accounted for 72.5% of network media economy revenue last year; in contrast, the “big six” US-based Internet giants’ combined revenue in Canada of $9.3 billion gave them a 10% market share.
  *   Google and Facebook are now the fifth and seventh largest entities in the network media economy in Canada, respectively. Collectively, they accounted for 80% of online advertising revenue while their share of total ad spend across all media reached 45% last year.
  *   Mobile wireless remains very highly concentrated with Rogers, Telus and Bell accounting for 91% of the sector’s revenue last year—a figure that has stayed stubbornly stable despite policy and regulatory measures ostensibly designed to address such conditions.
  *   New mobile wireless entrants Shaw (Freedom), Videotron and Eastlink’s share of the wireless market rose to 6.8% in 2019. The most competitive mobile wireless market is in Quebec, where Videotron had 13% market share by revenue and 19% based on subscribers at the end of 2019—a small increase over the year.
  *   Incumbent telephone and cable companies still dominated the residential Internet access market in 2019, with 86% of the $12.7 billion sector by revenue (87% based on subscribers), although independent ISPs continue to claw out marginal gains in subscribers, revenue and market share for themselves.
  *   The steep rise in TV concentration seen between 2010 and 2014 is beginning to be reversed on account of the rise of online video services and the spin-off of several pay TV services by Bell and Shaw (Corus) to the benefit of smaller TV operators such as DHX, Stingray, Blue Ant, Channel Zero and CHEK. The “big 5” TV operators’ took 78% of all TV revenue (including Internet streaming) last year: Bell, Shaw (Corus), Rogers, CBC & Netflix.
  *   Netflix had revenue of $1.1 billion in Canada last year and a 12.1% stake of all television services revenues. On a stand-alone basis, the online video market is highly concentrated, but the trend is downward over time.
  *   As the crisis of journalism continues to deepen, large newspaper chains such as Postmedia, Torstar and Quebecor have spun off daily and community papers while consolidating their activities on a regional basis. As a result, the top four firms’ share of revenue on a national basis has fallen from 83% in 2010 to 62% last year. Rather than being a gain for diversity, however, the decline is taking place as even leading newspaper groups struggle to survive.
  *   Online, Canadians get their news from a wide plurality of news sources, both old (CBC, Postmedia, CTV, Toronto Star,) and new (National Observer), as well as domestic and foreign (CNN, CBS, BBC, NBC, Guardian, New York Times).



The CRTC took relatively strong steps to address the realities of persistently high levels of media concentration and sky-high levels of vertical and diagonal integration between 2012 and 2017 but that resolve appears to have crumbled under its current chair and as the Liberal government reverts to a stance of regulatory hesitance and vacillating policy positions.



About the CMCR Project

The Canadian Media Concentration Research Project<http://www.cmcrp.org/> is directed by Professor Dwayne Winseck, School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University. The project was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council between 2012 and 2018, after which the Faculty of Public Affairs at Carleton University stepped in to provide bridge funding for the next two years of the project. The overall objective of the CMCR Project is to develop a comprehensive, systematic and long-term analysis of the telecoms, Internet and media industries in Canada to better inform public and policy-related discussions about these issues.

Professor Winseck can be reached at either dwayne.winseck at carleton.ca<mailto:dwayne_winseck at carleton.ca> or 613 769-7587 (mobile).

 Open Access to CMCR Project Data

CMCR Project data can be freely downloaded and used under Creative Commons licensing arrangements for non-commercial purposes with proper attribution and in accordance with the ShareAlike principles set out in the International License 4.0. Explicit, written permission is required for any other use that does not follow these principles. Our data sets are available for download here<http://www.cmcrp.org/about/archived-data/>. They are also available through the Dataverse, a publicly-accessible repository of scholarly works created and maintained by a consortium of Canadian universities. All works and datasets deposited in Dataverse are given a permanent DOI, so as to not be lost when a website becomes no longer available—a form of “dead media”.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Ben Klass and Han Xiaofei, both doctoral students in the Ph.D. program at the School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University, for helping enormously with the data collection and preparation of this report. Ben wrote key aspects of the wireless section and helped immensely with the online games, gaming downloads and apps and in-game purchases section of the report. Sabrina Wilkinson, a graduate of the MA Program at the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University and currently a Ph.D. candidate at Goldsmiths University in the United Kingdom, has also made valuable contributions to the sections on the news media. Agnes Malkinson, another Ph.D. candidate in the Media and Communication program at Carleton University, is responsible for the look and feel of the reports, does all the visuals, and keeps the project’s database in good working order.



sincerely,
Dwayne

Professor, School of Journalism and Communication and Director of the Canadian Media Concentration Research Project,
Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
Phone: 613 520-2600 x.7525
Mobile: 613 769-7587
Follow me on Twitter: @mediamorphis
Visit my blogs: www.cmcrp.org<http://www.cmcmp.org/>; https://dwmw.wordpress.com/


This email contains links to content or websites. Always be cautious when clicking on external links or attachments. If in doubt, please forward suspicious emails to phishing at carleton.ca<mailto:phishing at carleton.ca>.

Daniel J. Paré, Ph.D.,
Associate Professor / Professeur agrégé
Department of Communication<http://arts.uottawa.ca/communication/en>,
School of Information Studies (ÉSIS)<http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/>, and
Institute for Science, Society and Policy (ISSP)<https://issp.uottawa.ca/>

Graduate Program Co-ordinator, ISSP<https://issp.uottawa.ca/en/education/master>
University of Ottawa / Université d’Ottawa
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