While closing the Freedom Mobile acquisition buoyed Quebecor’s finances in the second quarter, the company continues to face an uphill battle in its media segment.

Media revenues were down 4.1% year-over-year in the three months ended June 30, with a 5.3% decline in ad revenue on both TVA and the company’s specialty channels. Subscription revenue was also down 5.5%, which includes dips in specialty channels, newspapers and magazines. For the year-to-date, media revenues are down 5.1%, with ad revenue down 1.5% and subscription revenue down 4.7%.

In addition, “other” revenues are down 11.2% through the first six months of 2023, largely due to decreases in production and audiovisual work.

Overall, however, Quebecor’s revenue grew 25.4% year-over-year in Q2, largely due to the 31.6% increase in telecommunications revenue that came with closing the Freedom Mobile and VMedia acquisitions. Freedom Mobile added 1.8 million mobile and 20,000 internet subscribers to Quebecor’s customer base, while previously independent telco VMedia added 41,000 internet subscriptions and 17,400 television service subscriptions.

While he was bullish on the outlook in the telco market, Pierre Karl Péladeau, president and CEO of Quebecor, was pessimistic about the media industry in his prepared remarks. A restructuring plan announced in February has yet to generate enough savings to offset the decline in the advertising market or declines in foreign productions in the company’s film production and audiovisual services segment.

“Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe the situation will improve in the short or medium term, in view of the conditions throughout the entire North American broadcasting industry,” Péladeau said.

Despite this, Péladeau said the company’s continued investment in content helped improve TVA Group’s market share in television to 42.7%.

“However, in order to be able to continue investing in programming and news content, it is imperative that we have a legislative and regulatory framework that applies to the web giants and requires them to contribute financially to Canada’s broadcasting system,” Péladeau said.

Quebecor was the first media company to announce it was pulling its ad spending from Meta platforms in response to the tech company’s plan to remove news content from Facebook and Instagram. On the regulatory front, Quebecor is among the major broadcasters that recently applied for amendments to its broadcast licenses from the CRTC. In addition to eliminating local weekend newscasts at its TVA station in Quebec City, Quebecor has applied to eliminate local news quotas at all of its TVA stations, as well as eliminating local programming requirements at TVA Montreal and reducing the local programming requirements at TVA Quebec City.

Péladeau also reiterated his stance that advertising should be removed from CBC Radio-Canada, which has an “unfair” advantage in competing for advertisers, as it also receives government funding.