I would not presume to speak for Rogers officials. We are a little surprised by their position. For a number of years now in Canada, North America and throughout the Western World, general interest television networks, the pillars of the broadcasting systems in various countries, have seen their audiences shrink. The same is true for print media. The number of newspaper issues sold, along with advertisements and revenues, is also declining. These are certainly not the signs of a company or industry enjoying strong growth.
Why are fewer people tuning in? The answer would be that the Internet provides alternative forms of news and entertainment. It is impossible to deny the existence of the Internet. In fact, I frequently use this medium too. When we acquired Vidéotron, we had fewer than 100,000 Internet subscribers. Today, we have over one million subscribers. The Internet service that we offer to one million subscribers in Quebec is used for a variety of purposes, not simply to send e-mails. For a given age group, we find that people use the Internet to get information and to entertain themselves. Hours that were once devoted to the only information vehicles available at the time, namely television and the print media, are now devoted to Internet use.
The two media pillars, namely the print media and general interest television, are taking the brunt of the impact of technological change and audience fragmentation.