Canadian Heritage Committee on Oct. 25th, 2011

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

I just want to go back to the subject of eyeballs. Every network is struggling to come to terms with the changing watching habits of audiences. Television as we know it is pretty well on its way out, with the number of choices that people have. Even the physical televisions themselves are coming out with built-in point of access, video on demand, or that type of thing per channel.

It has been said that you're losing eyeballs to your news programming. But the numbers, as I understand them, are pretty well staying true because of the cross-platform diffusion of those programs or the news.

Can you elaborate a bit on how you track that? What mechanisms do you have in place to track those numbers?

[Christine Wilson]

Goodness, it's D-Day every day at about 1:30, when the numbers come in to tell us how we did the night before. That's just in terms of the program audiences. In addition to that, on a weekly basis we look at ourselves and the competition. We're constantly looking at the environment and how it's changing, not just on television but across platforms. Radio now has portable measurement, so they have daily measurement as well. We're watching that.

First of all, people are watching as much conventional television as they ever did. I don't mean they're watching TV, but they're watching it in other places. There hasn't yet been a reduction in the amount of television that people watch.

Second, they're watching TV in other places as well, and that's the kind of behaviour we're seeing. It's still a niche behaviour. Among people like us or our kids it might be a prime behaviour. My children certainly don't watch a lot of conventional television any more, but in the homes of John and Jane Q. Public, television viewing is still what's done. That's still the main way that people are getting these kinds of programs. But that is changing, and that's the wave we're all on. That's the direction we're going.

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

It's starting to be recognized by the advertisers. They will follow more numbers than simply the numbers we have on a particular evening program on the number of eyeballs that watched. It allows us to try to maximize, as we follow the people in their viewing habits, some of the revenues for CBC/Radio-Canada.

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you to our witnesses for appearing before us today. We appreciate that. Thank you for your video presentation. We look forward to great things to come.

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

We'll be happy to come back.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

That's wonderful. Thank you.

The meeting is adjourned.