The Canadian film and TV production industry in 2012 increased its production volume to almost $5.9 billion.

That’s according to the Canadian Media Production Association’s annual economic report, Profile 2012: An Economic Report on the Screen-based Production Industry in Canada.

The report, published in collaboration with APFTQ and the Department of Canadian Heritage, also  stated that Canadian production, foreign location and service production and broadcaster in-house production together sustained 132,500 full-time jobs in 2011 – 2012.

According to the report, total film and TV production in Canada hit a ten-year high of $5.89 billion in 2011-2012, up 5.6% from $5.58 billion in 2010-2011.

The industry’s overall growth was due largely to higher levels of Canadian production, the report said.

Foreign location shoots dropped 10.6%, to $1.68 billion (down from $1.87 billion in 2010-2011).

But Canadian television production increased 21.3% to just under $2.6 billion in 2011-2012. And Canadian theatrical production hit a ten-year high of $381 million, up 14.1% from 2010-2011.

The report noted that the number of theatrical projects actually decreased in 2011-2012 (from 114 to 100), so the volume increase was due to higher budgets, which were accompanied by a flux of foreign financing.

Profile 2012 reported that Ontario saw the lion’s share of homegrown film and TV production volume, at $1.42 billion, followed by Quebec at $928 million and B.C. at $381 million.

FLS production in Ontario rose sharply by 71% in 2011-2012, from $224 million to $382 million, due in large part to higher-budget feature films.

B.C., meanwhile, which had gained traction in the FLS market over the last decade, saw its production volume fall by 19.2% to just over $1.1 billion (from $1.36 billion in 2010-2011).

The report said that the decrease was due to both reduced FLS feature film production and lower levels of FLS TV production.

The report noted that almost all genres of film and TV production experienced growth in 2011-2012, including increases in Canadian fiction, children’s and youth, documentary, lifestyle, magazine programming and animation production over 2010-2011. Canadian animation showed a strong rebound after it dropped by 35.6% in 2010-2011 (to a ten-year low of $142 million) – the report indicated $208 million in Canadian animation production in 2011-2012.

Profile 2012 also revealed stats related to the Canadian digital media production sector. The games-development sector of the digital industry generated more than $1.7 billion in economic activity in 2011, according to the report. And convergent digital media production – that is, digital media components of TV projects – accounted for $34.6 million in 2011-2012 production volume.

And in the battle of the traditional set-top TV box versus digital screens, the report said that traditional TV viewing remained relatively steady in 2011-2012 over the previous year (an average of 28.5 viewing hours per week in 2011-2012 versus 28 hours in 2010-2011). Canadians (18+) watched an average of 0.7 hours per week watching TV on the internet (up from 0.5 hours in the previous period), while typical weekly user of internet television watched an average of 2.8 hours per week.