NAICS 5161Industry group · 4-digitnational market2 market records

Radio and television broadcasting stations

SoftwareLive Streaming & Broadcast Production Software

This industry group comprises establishments operating radio or television broadcasting stations for the programming and transmission to the public. Programming may originate in their own studio, from an affiliated network, or from external sources. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 1,189
Under 10 employeesA: 57%

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–436230%

5–931126%

10–1926722%

20–4915813%

50–99444%

100–199343%

200–49971%

500+61%

Of 1,189 Canadian establishments with employees, 57% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.

Where they areA

Ontario41034%

Quebec23720%

British Columbia14812%

Alberta14512%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Information, US · opened 2020

79.6%

1 year

59%

3 years

45.7%

5 years

30%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

No US figure is shown. County Business Patterns is coded to the 2017 US edition of NAICS; this code either does not exist there, names a different industry, or is outside the programme's coverage (most of agriculture, rail, postal and public administration are). A figure is attached only where both the code and the title agree.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 516, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

national competitionhigh capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 516 Broadcasting and content providers

Licensed broadcasting is consolidating and shrinking. Streaming and online content have no licence barrier and no distribution guarantee.

Who sets the price: Advertisers and distributors; regulators license spectrum.
The software it runs on: Broadcast traffic, playout and ad-sales systems.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Operating businessScreened

Commercial Radio Station LicenceOne thing must be true

binding constraint: growth quality

A small-market radio station is the enterable thing in this group: a CRTC licence, a transmitter, a few staff, and the merchants of one town as advertisers. 673 of Canada's 1,189 broadcasting establishments employ fewer than ten people [A], and stations change hands regularly. The pre-screen cut this on licences and spectrum. The screen finds the licence is the smaller problem. The revenue the licence protects is shrinking. Trade reporting of the CRTC's 2024–25 market report puts commercial radio at $1.06B, down 2.6%, and private conventional television at $1.17B, down 7.3%, on a PBIT margin of −40.4%, while online services took about 40% of all broadcasting revenue [B]. A licence is a protected position in a market advertisers are leaving, and the protection does not extend to the platforms taking the money. Stingray shows what it takes to stand still: its radio segment held $132.4M of revenue, flat, at a 31.3% adjusted EBITDA margin in fiscal 2026 [A], with growth in digital advertising only offsetting the fall in airtime sales. That margin is a group result — shared programming, national sales representation and engineering spread across a portfolio of stations. The single station has the same decline without the shared cost base, and its eventual exit is a sale to one of those groups at the buyer's price. Television is cut more simply: the sector's operating margin is deeply negative before an entrant has bought a camera. Streaming and online audio have no licence barrier and sit outside this group.

NAICS 51615 vendors named8 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

Vertical softwareScreened

Live Streaming & Broadcast Production SoftwareOne thing must be true

binding constraint: willingness to pay

Incumbent OBS Studio (free, open source) as the default; Streamlabs (Logitech) and StreamYard (Bending Spoons) as the paid layers

The customer here is 5161 as it now exists: licensed radio and TV stations, and the far larger number of creators, churches, schools and companies who broadcast online with no licence at all. The software does in a browser or on a desktop what a control room did: switch scenes and cameras, bring in remote guests, lay on graphics, send one programme to YouTube, Twitch, Facebook and LinkedIn at once, and, for audio, run an internet radio station's playlist, automation and stream. This record is the production tool; the licensed station itself is 5161-commercial-radio-station-licence, creator analytics and sponsorship tools are 5162-creator-economy-and-streaming-analytics-software, podcast hosting is 5122-podcast-hosting-and-monetisation-platforms, and post-production pipeline tracking is 512110-video-production-pipeline-software. The price of the core product is zero, and the platforms keep it there. OBS Studio is free and open source (about 77,000 GitHub stars) [A], and its sponsor wall lists Twitch, YouTube, NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and Logitech [C]: the platforms and the hardware makers pay to keep the default free. Twitch gave up its own tool, Twitch Studio, on 30 May 2024 because it carried under 4% of hours streamed, and pointed users to OBS, Streamlabs Desktop, XSplit, vMix and others [B]. Streamlabs is itself a free OBS-based desktop with paid add-ons; Logitech bought it in 2019 for about $89M cash plus up to $29M in stock tied to revenue targets [B], and runs it as part of Logitech G. The paid layer is held by owners with deep pockets and a habit of raising prices. StreamYard, the browser studio, was bought by Hopin for $250M in January 2021 and sold with Hopin's remaining products to Bending Spoons in April 2024, terms undisclosed [B]. Its pricing page now shows Core at $44.99/mo ($35.99 annual) and Advanced at $88.99 ($68.99 annual) [C]; reports of large post-acquisition rises come only from rivals and are UNVERIFIED. Restream (Austin; multistreaming plus a browser studio) raised a $50M Series A led by Sapphire Ventures and Insight Partners in 2020, claiming 2M+ streamers then [B]. Riverside, recording-first but with live, raised $47M to April 2022 [B]. Desktop switchers are owner-run and profitable-looking but publish nothing: vMix (StudioCoast, Australia; perpetual licences $60–$1,200) [C], Ecamm Live (Mac) [C], and Wirecast, still a Telestream product (footer: Telestream 2 LLC, 2026) [C]. Internet radio is the same pattern, consolidated into broadcasters. AzuraCast is free, self-hosted and open source [A]. RadioKing (3,000+ stations in 170+ countries) was bought outright by NRJ Group's towerCast in June 2023 [A]. SAM Broadcaster's maker Spacial says it was acquired in 2009, by Triton Digital per its earlier pages [C]. Live365 sits inside SoundStack and sells by bundling US music licensing (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, SoundExchange) [C], which is the real lock-in for a small station — the royalty paperwork, not the software. Centova Cast (a Canadian control panel sold through hosting resellers), Radio.co (UK) and mAirList (Germany) are small private vendors [C]. Willingness to pay decides it. Hobbyists and most creators use the free tool; the professional buyer who will pay is already served by four or five well-funded or corporate-owned products, and the internet-radio buyer pays for licensing and hosting, which broadcasters (NRJ, SoundStack) already bundle. The one open seam is a narrow one — a Canadian-licensing bundle for small internet stations (SOCAN/Re:Sound/CONNECT tariffs) analogous to Live365's US bundle — and it was not tested at screen.

NAICS 516117 vendors namedOpen →

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Companies in this industry · 32

Every company this research names that is filed here or beneath — the operators, and the vendors that sell to them — largest disclosed revenue first. The rank is within the company’s own six-digit industry.

Company	Filed under	Revenue	Rank
StreamElementsPrivate	Radio and television broadcasting stations5161	—	1/32
StreamlabsPrivate	Radio and television broadcasting stations5161	—	2/32
AzuraCastPrivate	Radio and television broadcasting stations5161	—	3/32
Bell MediaPrivate	Radio and television broadcasting stations5161	—	4/32
CastrPrivate	Radio and television broadcasting stations5161	—	5/32
Centova CastPrivate	Radio and television broadcasting stations5161	—	6/32
Cogeco MediaPrivate	Radio and television broadcasting stations5161	—	7/32
Corus EntertainmentTSX:CJR-B	Radio and television broadcasting stations5161	—	8/32
Ecamm LivePrivate	Radio and television broadcasting stations5161	—	9/32
Golden West BroadcastingPrivate	Radio and television broadcasting stations5161	—	10/32
Harvard MediaPrivate	Radio and television broadcasting stations5161	—	11/32
Jim Pattison Broadcast GroupPrivate	Radio and television broadcasting stations5161	—	12/32
Live365Private	Radio and television broadcasting stations5161	—	13/32
mAirListPrivate	Radio and television broadcasting stations5161	—	14/32
OBS StudioPrivate	Radio and television broadcasting stations5161	—	15/32

And 17 more on the companies page.

Who works here

The occupations employed in Information and cultural industries, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Tagged to this industry

Technical occupations in motion pictures, broadcasting and the performing arts

Concentrated in this sectorA

Managers in communication (except broadcasting) One industry 77.8%

Librarians, archivists, conservators and curators One industry 74.8%

Technical occupations in motion pictures, broadcasting and the performing arts Mostly one sector 43.1%

Library, correspondence and other clerks Mostly one sector 41.3%

Photographers and support occupations in arts and culture Mostly one sector 31%

Managers in art, culture, recreation and sport Mostly one sector 30.4%

Technical occupations in libraries and public archives Mostly one sector 29.5%

Support occupations in art and culture Mostly one sector 23.6%

Graphic and interior designers Mostly one sector 14.1%

Computer, software and Web designers and developers Mostly one sector 10.3%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Technical occupations in computer and information systems Across the economy 12.8%

Customer and information services representatives Across the economy 6.1%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 4.3%

Survey, statistical and data entry occupations Across the economy 3.9%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 3.1%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 2.9%

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 2.2%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 2.1%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 2%

Administrative, property and payroll officers Across the economy 1.1%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.

All 162 occupations →

Inside this industry

2 rows sit directly beneath 5161, and 4 in all once every level is counted. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
51611	Radio broadcasting stations	931	screened at 5161
51612	Television broadcasting stations	258	screened at 5161

Alongside it, under 516 Broadcasting and content providers

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
5162	Media streaming distribution services and other media networks and content providers	449	Creator Economy & Streaming Analytics Software DRM — Digital Rights Management & Content Protection Music Streaming Services