Calgary: in the marketing business, they call it ‘outcome measures.’ But at the crtc, if you want to describe the process of evaluating how well your policies are working, you set up ‘a broadcast monitoring framework based on performance indicators to measure the results and effectiveness of crtc policies.’

Despite the bureaucratic ring, the first Broadcast Policy Monitoring Report, presented by crtc chair Francoise Bertrand, is a very useful read. Along with detailed statistics, it relays good news for Canadian producers such as: ‘the average number of weekly hours tuned to Canadian drama/comedy programming in prime time is on the increase,’ up from an average of 2.3 million hours per week in 1994 to about four million hours per week by 1999. Also, the report says ‘the bulk of tuning to news and sports programming over the entire day continues to be Canadian.’ Of course, most of us spend most of our tuning time watching foreign shows.

The song says, ‘Video killed the radio star;’ popular opinion says Internet might do likewise for tv. While this report shows the end of tv is not yet in sight, it also demonstrates big gains for Internet in terms of ad revenue, the proportion of all households using ‘computer communications’ and the percentage of top-income households with Internet access.

Using stats pulled from Carat Expert and Panorama publicitaire, the bpm report shows tv ad revenues of almost $2 billion in 1996 compared with $2.36 billion in 1999. While ad revenues for tv have risen mildly, its share of those revenues has fallen mildly. tv took a 35.4% share of ad dollars in ’96, compared with a 34.1% share last year. On the Net, ad spending in ’96 is pegged at a mere $1.5 million but was fully 37 times higher in 1999 at $55.5 million.

Costs for ad time are pegged to audience sizes. The monitoring report follows trends in share of total audience. Predictably, conventional tv station groups broadcasting in English – both in and out of Quebec – except tvontario, lost audience share between fall 1992 and fall 1999. Outside Quebec, cbc’s viewing share fell to 7.5% from 12.6%, with a couple of little spikes. Outside Quebec, private conventional station groups lost 7.2% of viewing share over the period, ending at 37.7% last year. In Quebec, English cbc fell 1.1% while English privates fell 1.7%.

In Quebec, Radio-Canada lost 2% viewing share over the period while the private over-air casters actually gained 1%. Outside Quebec, changes in viewing share of French-language audience were minuscule.

As expected, much of the loss for conventional casters was pay and specialties’ gain. Outside Quebec, the 2+ audience viewing share for English broadcasters nearly tripled, jumping to a 16.9% share in 1999 from 5.7% in ’92. Change in the French-language viewing patterns, for pay and specialty casters outside Quebec was minimal. Within Quebec, a tiny share of viewers for English pay and specialties in 1992 – at 1% – rose to 2.3% by fall ’99. For French specialties, viewer share rose to 11.2% from 6.3% over the seven years.

Future health of a communications medium can be forecast in part by looking at the demographics of users, frequency of use and length of use over a given period. The report shows a ‘gradual’ decline in weekly tv viewing hours, for the 2+ audience, from 24 in 1995 to 23.7 in ’97 and to 22.6 last year. On the Internet, by contrast, the bpm document says while 16% of Canadian households were ‘regularly using the Internet from home’ in 1997, the figure was 28.7% last year. More than two-thirds of households spent at least 10 hours on the Web each month of 1999.

The higher the income, the more the Net use. People earning in the top income quartile in Canada accounted for 53.7% of those having Internet access in ’97, but 71.4% by 1999. The bottom income quartile accounted for just 19% of those having Net access – at home, work, school or library – last year. *

-www.crtc.gc.ca