Nearly four-in-five say levy would be inappropriate and/or unnecessary and end up being passed on to consumers.

TORONTO - On the heels of the new media hearings recently conducted by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), a new survey from Angus Reid Strategies indicates that a proposed levy on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to support the development of Canadian TV programming would be a tough sell to online consumers.

KEY FINDINGS
- 79% regard proposed levy as "unnecessary and/or inappropriate"
- 65% have viewed short videos online over the past month

From March 6 to March 9, 2009, Angus Reid Strategies conducted an online survey among 1,395 randomly selected Canadian adults who are Angus Reid Forum panelists. The margin of error—which measures sampling variability—is +/- 2.6%, 19 times out of 20. The results have been statistically weighted by age, gender and region according to Statistics Canada’s Canadian Internet Use Survey to ensure a sample representative of the entire adult population of Canadian Internet users. Discrepancies in or between totals are due to rounding.

In the online survey of a representative national sample, only 21 per cent of respondents feel such a levy would be “a worthwhile initiative to help ensure that there will continue to be high quality Canadian TV programming in the future.”
The vast majority (79%) submit that this type of levy would be “an unnecessary and/or inappropriate fee that would end up being passed along to consumers.”
The survey points to the communications challenges involved in pursuing the levy proposed by several stakeholders within the Canadian cultural community, and being considered by the CRTC.

Online Consumption of Video and TV Programming Becoming Widespread
The survey underscores the fact that the viewing of online video is rapidly becoming mainstream:

• Nearly two-thirds of Canadian Internet users (65%) say they viewed short videos clips on their computers that they downloaded or streamed from the Internet in the past 30 days.

• Although this figure is highest in younger demographics (74% among 18-34 year-olds), more than half of online consumers aged 35-54 (60%) and 55 or older (52%) have watched brief video clips from the Internet in the past month.

• Nearly one-third of respondents (32 per cent) report watching full-length TV programs or movies on their computers from online sources in the past month. Viewing of full-length shows and movies is much higher among 18-34 year-olds (53 per cent) than among 35-54 year-olds (23 per cent) and those aged 55 or older (11 per cent).