Millennials driving OTA growth in Canada: report

The over-the-air (OTA) market has been slowly growing over the past three years, according to data collected by Media Technology Monitor, a trend industry observers said doesn’t come as a surprise. According to a report released Wednesday by the CBC/Radio Canada research project, eight per cent of English-speaking Canadian adults indicated in a spring 2016 survey that they watched TV over-the-air. This was an increase from the seven per cent who said the same in the fall of 2015 and from six per cent in the fall of 2014. In the three years prior to 2014, the number remained stable at five per cent. Driving the increase appear to be millennials (aged 18-34), whose over-the-air TV connections have “nearly tripled in the past three years,” said the MTM report, noting 13 per cent of the demographic reported OTA connections, up from five per cent in 2011. In comparison, seniors aged 65 and older have reported a decrease in OTA connections, clocking in at four per cent in 2016, down from five per cent in 2011. “I’m not surprised,” Gord Hendren, president of Charlton Strategic Research, said in a phone interview. Millennials are the biggest users of over-the-top (OTT) services, Hendren said, “and over-the-air is free.” Since subscriptions to BCE Inc.’s Crave TV and Rogers Communications Inc. and Shaw Communications Inc.’s Shomi no longer require customers to subscribe to their respective pay-TV services, “there is actually an incentive for people to have — particularly in urban areas where it’s easier to puck up a signal — over-the-air and bundle that with a Shomi or a Crave or a Netflix to round out the programming that they can get,” independent consultant Kelly Lynne Ashton said in a phone interview. In areas where there are more signals to pick up, such as in Toronto, it is a growing alternative to pay-TV, Ashton said, with inexpensive set-top boxes or gaming consoles allowing viewers to access their OTT subscriptions. “So with those alternatives, there is a lot of programming you can get without having to pull down illegal content or buying actual programs through iTunes,” Ashton said. “I think it’s become an actual viable alternative.” Where the surprise lies for Gregory Taylor, an assistant professor at the University of Calgary’s department of communications, media and film department, was that the upward trend hasn’t happened sooner. “Over-the-air digital has been a very good way to get television in this country for quite some time; since the digital switchover, anyway,” Taylor said in a phone interview. Not only are channels relatively plentiful in big cities, but “the quality of an over-the-air signal is better than that which you can get on a cable or satellite,” Taylor said. As a result of its Let’s Talk TV proceeding, the CRTC “discovered that over-the-air viewers are a small, but vocal, group in this country,” he added. In its decision on that proceeding, the CRTC stipulated that broadcasters who shut down their transmitters would lose the ability to request simultaneous substitution for their programming. Those hearings reflected the level of awareness consumers have about the cost of TV subscriptions, Hendren said. “They think it’s too expensive. So this is an alternative,” he said. “Accessing OTT is an alternative, BitTorrenting is an alternative. This is a free and legal way to access content. I think just timely, that’s all.” Ashton, Taylor and Hendren all noted that the growth as reflected in the MTM report was nominal. “I don’t see this as a huge change, but it’s marginal growth,” Hendren said. “I don’t see it as a huge threat to the pay-TV world.” Even if you can get access over-the-air to 15 to 20 channels in an urban setting, that doesn’t give you access to speciality channels, Ashton said. “It’s a small, incremental increase,” she said. “There’s still a lot of people that don’t want to wait to watch Orphan Black.” The Bell Media show is first broadcast on the company’s Space specialty channel, with a later second run on CTV, which is available over-the-air. Curbing any future leaps and bounds is the market reality that “most of the major over-the-air broadcasters are owned by services,” Taylor said, arguing that the companies have “a strong economic incentive to strengthen their cable operations,” and not promote the OTA sector. “Do I expect to see a lot of growth? Not too much,” Taylor said. “As long as over-the-air providers are owned by BDU services we will not see the maximum value of the potential of over-the-air television in this country.” The MTM report was based on an online and phone survey of 4,349 Canadians conducted between March 14 and April 25 and April 7 and May 10, with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.5, 19 times out of 20. — With reporting by Charelle Evelyn at cevelyn@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Millennials driving OTA growth in Canada: report

Broadcast | July 20, 2016

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Millennials driving OTA growth in Canada: report

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