The CRTC – Canadian Radio and Television Commision  (in their words “The CRTC is an independent agency responsible for regulating Canada’s broadcasting and telecommunications systems. We report to Parliament through the Minister of Canadian Heritage.”) released its annual report on Canadian Broadcasting on Tuesday this week. Here’s the news release with some highlights. Here’s the full report.

What I find interesting is that they monitor ‘new media’ – yup, the interet fits into their definition of a broadcast medium.

Quote: “The report reveals that this industry is continuing to expand and that new media are becoming an increasingly important part of Canadians’ lives.” – my bolding!

70% of Canadian households subscribe to the internet. There is a growth in internet subscription with a serious increase in high speed. From 51% in 2005 to 60% in 2006. What about 2007? We’ll need to wait till next year – but I speculate that it would show a greater increase.

The other big number was the advertising dollars being spent on the internet in Canada – $512 million in 2005 growing to $1Billion (yes one billion!) in 2006.

If your competitors are spending advertising dollars on the internet, including blogs and podcasting, can you afford not to?

That’s fanatasic! Here’s more:

“New media

• 70% of Canadian households subscribed to the Internet in 2006, which is 6% more than in 2005. The percentage of Canadian households with high speed Internet subscriptions also continued to increase, from 51% in 2005 to 60% in 2006.
• 22% of Canadians listened to radio over the Internet in 2006 and 6% watched television.
• In 2006, 58% of Canadians used a cellphone to access the Internet, 14% an MP3 player, 9% a Webcam, 7% an iPod, 5% a personal digital assistant (PDA), and finally, 4% used a BlackBerry.
• Advertising on the Internet totalled $1 billion in 2006, almost double from the $562 million in 2005. “