The media -Canadian and otherwise

For years the Canadian media has not been very profitable.In fact.a decade or so there was only one network-the C.B.C.CTV was merely a number of independent television stations.They decided to get a network licence and form a national network.Doing this meant that the individual stations would now get a share of national advertisers.This meant a big jump in ad revenues for a number of years.But advertising for non-subscription television started to plateau.Consequently for about three to five years before Global TV went bankrupt both networks and the smaller Chum broadcasting were making almost no profit.At that time there were few independent television stations.One was CHCH in Hamilton;it was going to be bought out by WIC broadcasting but I believe it went bankrupt.However it still is an independent but no longer very profitable.

American networks(according to the Broadcasting Act) could not own television stations in Canada.They could however distribute on the Canadian networks.They charged for the distribution based on audience coverage.The bigger the audience the bigger the fee.Audiences for American network shows started at first to rise and take over audience away from Canadian networks.Lately there are not the new and popular shows that keep coming onstream;their audience share seems to have plateaued.However Canadian network audiences  still declined as the new specialty channels picked up audience.Many of the new channels were owned by the cable companies;companies such as AMC,History and Discovery channels.

The first trend that emerged in this environment is consolidation of the smaller companies into fewer and bigger companies.For example,Bell Media bought  CTV and a chunk of Chum Broadcasting.It now owns also  a few specialty channels such as B.N.N.This also happened in radio as smaller stations got bought up by companies like Corus Entertainment.

The second trend that occurred is that Canadian television networks started to take donations from large donors such as governments.The idea behind donations is that ,of course,there are no strings attached.The media is free to voice it's own opinions but in many cases the money comes with strong viewpoints attached leaving many viewers scratching their heads at opinions expressed by the Canadian media.