An online survey of 1,682 adults run by the Canadian Media Research Consortium with Vision Critical, published in April 2011, asked Canadians which medium they would be least willing to lose. The home internet connection came first at 42 per cent, ahead of a television cable subscription at 24 per cent; the mobile phone and the newspaper subscription tied at the bottom on 17 per cent each.
On news specifically the picture was closer but pointed the same way. Television was still the preferred source by a slight margin, yet a majority of respondents — 52 per cent — said they generally found more news and information that interested them on the internet, against 27 per cent for television, 15 per cent for print and 6 per cent for radio. The report was careful about its own limits: because the sample did not include Canadians who were not online, the figures for the general population would be somewhat lower. It argued anyway that the migration of content out of print, radio and television was itself a strong indication of where news consumption was heading.
It was the second in a CMRC series on changing news habits in Canada. The first had found Canadians unwilling to pay for news online, and a third, on how Canadians used social networks, was due two weeks later.