Growth of the Network Media Economy in Canada, 1984-2017

The report examines the development of the media economy over the past thirty-three years. We do so by examining a dozen or so of the biggest telecoms, internet and media industries in Canada, based on revenue. These include: mobile wireless and wireline telecoms; internet access; cable, satellite & IPTV; broad- cast, specialty, pay and over-the-top TV; radio; newspapers; magazines; music; and internet advertising. We call the total of these sectors “the network media economy”. Our method is simple: we begin by collecting, organizing, and making available stand-alone data for each media industry individually. We then group related, comparable industry sectors into three higher level categories: the “network media” (e.g. mobile wireless, internet access, broadcast distribution), the “content media” (e.g. television, newspapers, magazines, etc.) and “internet media” (e.g. internet advertising, search, internet news sources). Ultimately, we combine them all together to get a bird’s-eye view of the network media economy. We call this the scaffolding approach.