On March 3rd, 2017, the Canadian Press reported that Jean-Pierre Blais, chairman of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission wrote a letter to MPs Bob Nault and Wayne Easter. In that letter, Mr. Blais is now denying that there is any direct correlation between the order his CRTC issued last August removing simultaneous substitution for the Super Bowl and the precipitous decline in audience that the Canadian television stations airing the game experienced this year.
In his letter, Mr. Blais argues that the audience for the Super Bowl has been declining over the last two years and ratings were down for regular-season NFL games, too. He notes that there are more programming services than ever before competing for consumers’ attention and pointed specifically to French-language sports service RDS, which carried the game and saw its ratings increase year over year. These claims show a clear lack of understanding of the issue by what is supposed to be an expert regulator.
While the actual total number of Canadians that tuned into the U.S. broadcast of the Super Bowl is not known (only a handful of U.S. stations are measured in Canada), perhaps we can help connect the dots for Mr. Blais:…
Ron Lund – Special to Financial Post – March 16, 2017.
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