Thanks, Colette.
OMNI is operating, as you probably know, in an extremely competitive environment that is being transformed daily by the introduction of new and unregulated digital platforms, changes to video consumption patterns, and shifts in advertising revenue to digital platforms.
In order to understand OMNl's financial situation, it is important to understand the over-the-air television sector. Advertising on conventional television is declining at a torrid pace. This is not just a couple of years. This is not cyclical. This is a structural change, and, unfortunately OMNI, as the smallest and the most niche player in the marketplace, feels the pain. Since 2011, OMNl's advertising revenue has dropped from $80 million to this year's advertising revenue of about $22 million.
OMNl's business model has been very simple over the past number of years. The U.S. programming, the strip programming, i.e., Two and a Half Men and The Simpsons, has been the reason for OMNI's success. It has funded all the ethnic programming. For example, in 2011 there was $55 million in advertising revenue from the U.S. programming against $30 million in costs. We were making $25 million on the U.S. programming and we allowed that to be spent on the ethnic programming. Now the industry has changed and the way people are consuming has changed dramatically and with that advertising revenue gone away, we can no longer fund the ethnic programming in the way we did. The U.S. programming is not generating that type of margin any more, so we have had to significantly change.
OMNI was also hit hard by the extension of CTV Two in the marketplace. OMNI is facing intense competition not only from over-the-air and the piracy challenges that the broadcast industry is facing but also because Canadian distributors now carry over 130 foreign ethnic specialty services. This, unfortunately, as I've said over and over again, is not 1979 any more.
I know we're running out of time here, so I'm going to just pass it to Susan quickly to talk a little bit about some of the regulatory challenges we have faced with OMNI.