Public Benefits or Private? The Case of the Canadian Media Research Consortium

Abstract

The broadcasting regulator Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission established its Public Benefits program in the late 1970s. It eventually came to require a minimum 10 percent of the value of acquired broadcasting licences to be devoted to worthwhile initiatives. A portion of a CAD $230-million Public Benefits package in 2000 was devoted to funding a Canadian Media Research Consortium (CMRC) established between several universities. Mandated to “focus on the development of Canadian data for use in media planning,” the CMRC issued its first report in 2003, which was criticized for flawed methodology and cited as an example of “administrative” marketing research performed to the benefit of media owners rather than to the benefit of the public. The CMRC issued a five-year retrospective study in 2008 that addressed some of the earlier methodological flaws and perhaps, as a result, reached different conclusions.