Joseph M. Park

In Canada, there is a need for research on media usage. Often Canadian media researchers rely on foreign data to understand the Canadian experience. Foreign sources, especially those from the United States, cannot account for the unique media environment that exists in Canada. This research seeks to address this need by describing and mapping the geographic distribution of television news consumption in Canada. In doing so, the influence of spatial autocorrelation is considered. Socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of Total, National, Local-Regional, and U.S. News audiences are profiled using linear regression analysis. Considerable regional differences in television news consumption are observed between French and English Canada along with significant positive spatial autocorrelation throughout much of French Canada. The consumption of U.S. news overall is much lower than expected, however, considerable positive spatial autocorrelation is found in the Windsor-Chatham-Kent area where proximity to and interaction with the United States are highest.