Pick-and-pay popular with viewers

Canadians apparently have an appetite for the $25 skinny television packages the federal broadcast regulator mandated last year, but they’re even hungrier for the ability to buy standalone channels.

Twelve per cent of Canadian TV subscribers said they bought the basic packages the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission required TV providers to offer as of Mar. 1, 2016, according to new research from Media Technology Monitor, a product by CBC’s research department.

Even more subscribers opted to use the pick-and-pay system mandated as of Dec. 1.

Nearly one third (29 per cent) have purchased standalone channels, with 65 per cent of skinny basic subscribers doing so, according to MTM’s spring survey of 4,168 Canadians.

Although the vast majority of subscribers continue to buy larger packages, MTM’s research suggests a massive jump in interest in the smaller packages.

The CRTC introduced them in the name of consumer choice after a public consultation where people complained about buying dozens of channels they never watched. The smaller, cheaper packages were also meant to help TV providers keep occasional watchers considered to be at risk of cutting the cord in favour of online streaming services such as Netflix.

Fewer than 100,000 people signed up in the first couple months after the packages were mandated, according to CRTC data, putting initial uptake at less than one per cent of Canada’s 11 million TV subscribers.

Based on MTM’s survey, that number has ballooned to over one million subscribers.

It appears Canadians were quicker to flock to a la carte channels, which had been around for less than six months at the time of MTM’s survey.