Dina will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Corus Entertainment Q3 2021 annual investor conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the pound key. Thank you. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Doug Murphy, President and CEO of Corus Entertainment. Sir, please go ahead. Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Corus Entertainment's fiscal 2021 Q3 earnings call. I'm Doug Murphy, and joining me this morning is John Gossling, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before I read the cautionary statement, I'd like to remind everyone that we have slides to accompany today's call. You can find them on our website at www.corusent.com under the investor relations section. Now let's move to the standard cautionary statement found on slide two. Today's discussion contains forward-looking statements that may involve risks and uncertainties. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to materially differ from those in our forward-looking statements are contained in the company's filing with the Canadian securities administrators on SEDAR. I'll start on slide three. We promised eye-popping revenue performance this quarter, and we delivered it. Despite an unexpected third-wave lockdown, our results were strong, with impressive revenue gains across our entire portfolio, led by consolidated advertising revenue growth of 23%. As I mentioned on our last call, we have entered the spring-forward chapter of Corus' book of COVID. The economy is reopening, vaccine uptake is increasing, and Corus is ready as Canada gets back to business safely. These Q3 results clearly demonstrate strong operational momentum on all fronts. TV and radio advertising revenue grew double digits, realizing the ongoing benefits of our go-to-market revenue strategy. Another notable highlight of the quarter is our streaming business, which is on fire. Not to be outdone, the content business delivered double-digit growth for the fourth consecutive quarter. Our focus on free cash flow remains unwavering. Corus is steadfast in our determination to achieve the revised leverage goal announced last quarter of below 2.5 net debt to segment profit. We are well on our way. Key financial highlights for the quarter include consolidated revenues of CAD 403 million, consolidated segment profit of CAD 131 million, solid free cash flow of CAD 65 million, and improving financial flexibility with reduced leverage to 2.82 times net debt to segment profit. In addition to these outstanding financial results, I'm delighted to reveal these key milestones. There are now in excess of 600,000 paying subscribers to our streaming services, more than doubling over the past year. Second, our team successfully completed an important refinancing in the quarter, issuing CAD 500 million of new seven-year notes at 5%, with net proceeds used to pay down bank debt, and we extended our existing bank credit facilities to a four-year term. John will provide more details later in the call. Finally, we have secured a market-leading supply of premium video content to deploy across all of our platforms this coming year, which was unveiled at our upfront just a few weeks ago. Over to slide four, and a look at our primetime fall schedule on Global. Quite simply, it's one of the best schedules we've had in many years. This fall, Global will feature 18 hours of simulcast premium network television content every week, with an amazing lineup of new series and proven returning franchise hits. We are very excited about the long-awaited return of Survivor from Fiji. Now in its 41st season, this epic competition series has consistently delivered huge audiences, especially in the younger 18 - 34 demos. Gil Grissom and the original cast of characters from "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" return in the most talked about show of the season, "CSI: Vegas." Returning hits "9-1-1," "NCIS," and "FBI" flank new franchise expansions, "NCIS: Hawaiʻi" and "FBI: International." "The Equalizer," with Queen Latifah, the number one new drama on television this year, returns in the fall. These are just a few examples of our winning schedule. Over to slide five and our specialty lineup. This is our second year as the exclusive partner for Peacock content in Canada, available on all Corus platforms. "Bel-Air," the timely, provocative, and big-budget reimagining of the '90s sitcom, "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," is now a one-hour drama from executive producer Will Smith. "The Lost Symbol" takes us from page to screen, based on the bestselling third novel in Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code" series. The debut of high-octane action comedy "MacGruber," starring and executive produced by Will Forte. Over on W, we are ready to serve our passionate fan base the biggest lineup of Hallmark holiday movies ever this year with younger and more diverse stories and characters. Once again, we have Canada's favorite lifestyle shows, including the most-watched show on HGTV in Canada over the last 10 years, "Island of Bryan," and the number one new Canadian hit show on HGTV Canada, "Rock Solid Builds." Moving to slide six. Last month, our studio businesses unveiled exciting new production slates for the coming year. Let me provide a few highlights. First, Corus Studios announced 21 dynamic lifestyle and unscripted titles furthering our ambitions to become a much bigger content player globally. The slate consists of 13 returning shows, including HGTV Canada's blockbuster hit, "Island of Bryan," which is back for a fourth season and sees the Baeumler family build and run their resort in the Bahamas while adding on a whole new property in Florida. We can't wait to see their story continue. History's "Rust Valley Restorers" Season four and "Big Timber" Season two are also back with prior seasons of these popular shows licensed to Netflix for the international market. Lastly, we've hit our stride with three seasons of Food Network's popular competition shows, "Great Chocolate Showdown" and "Wall of Chefs," as they find new audiences both inside and outside of Canada. Our eight exciting new series include, among others, "Styled," "Wall of Bakers," and "Scott's Vacation House Rules," starring Scott McGillivray. We have just announced two additional green lights expanding our Corus Studios slate for the upcoming year to 23 titles. Excitement is building around the announcement of a new original series starring the one and only Pamela Anderson, as she returns to her roots on the coast of Vancouver Island to rebuild her family home with her new husband and local carpenter, Dan Hayhurst. Tentatively titled "Pamela Anderson's Home Reno Project," this show is certain to be hotly contested in the international marketplace. Corus Studios are creating value for our shareholders and our buyers alike, as we purposely build multiple seasons of our most popular shows to create franchise IP. This quarter, we secured yet another sale to Discovery for the latest seasons of "Island of Bryan," retitled "Renovation Island" on HGTV in the U.S., as well as "Scott's Vacation House Rules" and "The Big Bake." Over to slide seven. We currently have over 30 series in production or development at Nelvana, and this quarter, we have greenlit five new shows, including "Best & Bester," "Super Wish," and a second season of "Agent Binky: Pets of the Universe." Two of our Nelvana shows were nominated for Emmys just yesterday, underscoring our investment in the creative development pipeline. One was our preschool hit show, "Esme & Roy," and the second was the live-action series, "The Hardy Boys," which was picked up by Hulu in the U.S. and will soon air on YTV in Canada in 2022. Our merchandise licensing business is poised to benefit from the reopening of retail stores around the world. Spin Master recently confirmed on their earnings call that Bakugan is back in the game now that pandemic-related restrictions are starting to lift. We are thrilled to see this great brand once again engage children with collectability and group play. Our content production and merchandising strategies not only drive audiences on our Corus networks, but they accelerate our international revenue growth, as once again evidenced in this quarter. Moving to slide eight. Corus Television reaches 29 million Canadians every month, however and whenever they choose. Our strategy to build a diverse portfolio of digital streaming products remains a priority, generating new audiences and thus more advertising inventory and sales growth. When we look at STACKTV audiences, they are streaming the equivalent of 10 million episodes per month. Notably, almost half of the total STACKTV audience enjoys the experience of live television, which increases overall audience delivery and enhances our advertising revenues. At our upfront recently, we announced that dynamic advertising insertions for our video-on-demand viewers on STACKTV will arrive before the end of this calendar year. Once again, we are creating more digital advertising inventory and, in turn, more revenue. The new Global TV App, launched only 16 months ago, not only improves the value propositions for the subscribers to our channels business, it also offers us an opportunity to feature our premium video content online. There is an insatiable demand for premium digital video content from viewers and advertisers alike, and Corus is there to meet it. Let me double-click on the connected TV marketplace, which is a real opportunity for us. In addition to our existing connected TV platforms, Chromecast, Roku, Fire TV, and Apple TV, we are thrilled to announce the Global TV App will also be available on Samsung later this year. Yet another example of Corus putting more content in more places. Usage of the Global TV App continues to grow. With just over 1.5 million unique video devices accessing content, up 17% over the prior year. In addition to a growing user base, total time spent has more than doubled, up 115% over the prior year, with almost 12 million hours viewed in Q3 alone. In large part, this growth in viewership is driven by more content, both free, in front of the wall, available to all, and behind the wall, creating more value for the subscribers to our channels business and premium digital video impressions for our advertisers. Whether it's STACKTV or the Global TV App or the next new digital product in our pipeline, Corus is all over growth opportunities in the digital video marketplace. Moving to slide nine. Corus has invested more than CAD 50 million in transforming how we sell television since we acquired Shaw Media. Two of our strategic priorities, connect with audiences and help brands grow, are emblematic of our ambition to be a leader in the very important field of data-driven advanced advertising. Recently at our upfront and in partnership with ThinkTV, we announced the addition of seven new profiles to our industry-wide common audience segments. We now have 26 common audience segments in addition to our ability to build virtually any custom segment as desired by our advertisers. Corus is at the forefront of changing how TV is sold, improving its targeting, and driving results. With that, I'll now turn it over to John to discuss our Q3 results. John? Thanks, Doug. Good morning, everyone. I'll start on slide 10. This past April, we saw a compelling opportunity to access the credit markets and made the prudent decision to refinance a portion of our debt. We are extremely pleased with the depth and breadth of the response to our senior unsecured notes offering, with CAD 500 million of notes issued at 5% for a seven-year term. Subsequent to this, we used the net proceeds of our notes offering to pay down a portion of our bank debt and successfully amended and restated our bank credit facility. Our term loan tranches were combined into a single facility of just over CAD 900 million, and along with our CAD 300 million undrawn revolving facility, the maturity dates were extended to May 31st, 2025. This longer-term mix of funding sources provides diversity to our balance sheet and represents a return to our discipline of having fixed-rate long-term bonds as part of a purposefully laddered debt structure. We could not be more satisfied with the outcome, and we'd like to extend an official welcome to our new fixed income investors who are with us on today's call. This refinancing is a demonstrable step towards our long-term goal of increasing value for shareholders and reflects our firm commitment to operate with discipline, which is one of our key strategic priorities. In the Q3, we made further progress on our new goal to get leverage below 2.5 times net debt to segment profit. We delivered CAD 65 million of free cash flow in the quarter and have repaid CAD 602 million in bank loans for the year to date, which includes the net proceeds of the CAD 500 million notes issue. That lets us achieve improvement in net debt to segment profit to 2.82 times. This was down significantly from 3.18 times at the end of fiscal 2020 and 3.02 times at the end of Q2. I'd also like to quickly highlight this morning we declared a dividend of CAD 0.06 per share for Class B shareholders, payable in September 2021. Now over to slide 11 and a review of our third quarter consolidated results. As Doug mentioned earlier, Corus' consolidated revenue was CAD 403 million for the quarter, that's up a whopping 15% over the prior year. This is what we meant by spring forward into growth. Consolidated segment profit of CAD 131 million for the quarter benefited from the top-line growth and was up a significant 17% versus the prior year. The current year quarter benefited from estimated government wage subsidy and regulatory relief of approximately CAD 5 million, and that's compared to approximately CAD 17 million a year ago. This was offset by the CAD 6 million impact of a stronger share price on share-based compensation expense. Moving forward, we do not anticipate receiving further meaningful wage subsidy benefits. We delivered consolidated segment profit margins of 32% for the quarter, and that was consistent with last year. Net income attributable to shareholders for the quarter was CAD 41 million or CAD 0.20 per share basic. Our free cash flow of CAD 65 million was down from CAD 91 million in the prior year quarter. As a reminder, the prior-year quarter benefited from government relief measures, including the cash income tax installment holiday, which had a CAD 22 million impact year-over-year, as well as lower programming rights payments and higher working capital contributions. Let's turn to our TV results for the Q3, and that's detailed on slide 12. Overall, TV segment revenues were up 15% from the prior year, and that was driven by a 22% increase in TV advertising revenue. This is an excellent result reflecting impressive advertising revenue recovery during the third wave lockdown. Our networks and sales teams were once again able to successfully balance ratings supply with advertising demand to maximize the value of our inventory. With our successful upfront reveals, our teams are fully focused on monetizing our strong summer and fall schedules with a head start compared to last year's pandemic delays. The runaway growth on STACKTV and Nick+ really shines through in our Q3, driving a notable 2% increase in subscriber revenues. We're making significant strides in growing this important recurring revenue as awareness of and interest in our streaming platforms build. For the fourth consecutive quarter, we delivered strong double-digit gains in merchandising, distribution, and other revenues, up 21% this quarter. This was driven by a rebound in Nelvana Merchandise licensing, including Bakugan and Kids Can Press book publishing sales, as well as strong animation software sales at Toon Boom. As a reminder, the prior year's Q3 and Q4 included a large sale of Corus Studios content to Discovery's flagship networks in the U.S., HGTV and Food Network. TV expenses in the third quarter increased by 11% over the prior year as program deliveries normalized compared to delayed deliveries in the prior year with the widespread pandemic-related production hiatus. Direct cost of sales increased 8% from the prior year, and that reflects higher program rights amortization and other costs of sales, partially offset by decreased film investment amortization. Our increased G&A expenses primarily reflect reduced wage subsidy benefits of almost CAD 4 million compared to CAD 14 million in the prior year quarter, as well as increased variable compensation costs commensurate with the revenue improvement. This quarter marks the beginning of a necessary path to return Corus to a more normalized cost structure. We continue to tightly manage discretionary spending as a partial offset to these returning costs. Overall, TV segment profit increased 21% in the Q3 as increased revenues outpaced the expense normalization. TV segment profit margins were 37%, and that is up from 35% in the prior year. Our new platform revenue and optimized advertising revenue performance metrics once again highlight the benefits of our revenue diversification strategy, as you can see on slide 13. Our team remains highly focused on the pursuit of attractive growth opportunities in streaming, digital, and video advertising, and the automation of advanced advertising initiatives. We are gaining meaningful traction. New platform revenues were approximately 8% of TV advertising and subscriber revenues in the quarter, and that was a material increase from 5% in the prior year quarter. This incredible growth of 82% over last year highlights our continued progress in driving new sources of revenue as we further build our connections with audience wherever they are. Optimized advertising revenues, which reflect our progress in transforming how we sell television advertising, represented approximately 38% of total TV advertising revenue in the third quarter, that was a huge increase from 28% last quarter and 22% in the prior year. To put this in perspective, the result reflects 111% growth year-over-year. Next, let's turn to our radio results as outlined on slide 14. It was great to see growth in the radio segment revenues this quarter as we delivered a 31% increase. The broad improvement across key advertising categories is encouraging and demonstrates the resilience of our team. Radio continues to be disproportionately impacted by the pandemic-related restriction on local businesses, we are significantly outperforming the market. We have used the time to strengthen our rank position in several key markets and are well-positioned for recovery as businesses reopen. We are seeing ongoing growth in hours streamed across our music and news stations. Radio segment profit increased to CAD 1.3 million in the quarter, that was driven by the revenue improvements as we continue to navigate the challenging market conditions. Segment profit margin of 6% was up from negative 10% in the prior year as we continue to diligently manage costs during the recovery. Q3 represents an important milestone on our road to a new normal. The growth across all of our revenue streams this quarter provides an excellent start to our Spring Forward chapter. We are excited for the future and committed to advancing our plan to deliver consolidated revenue growth year-over-year over year. With that, I'll turn it back to Doug. Thank you, John. Finally, over to slide 15. As I reflect on this past year, I could not be prouder of nor impressed by our team. We have not only adeptly navigated the business through this most challenging environment, but we have also positioned the company to come out of the pandemic on a stronger strategic footing, as was our stated objective. We have confidence in our plan to deliver consolidated revenue growth year- over- year- over- year, and this quarter's results have hit the mark. Everything is working. We are especially excited about the year ahead. Global has the best fall schedule in many years, with 18 hours of simulcast premium network television content and a perfect balance of returning hit franchises and exciting new shows. Our sales team benefiting from a head start when compared to the timing of our upfront last year, has been booking a ton of business these last weeks. Well done, team. As of yesterday, 77% of Canadians over the age of 12 have received at least their first vaccine, with 32% now fully vaccinated. Restrictions are slowly lifting as Canada gets back to business. Canadians have over CAD 100 billion of available savings to be put to work once governments provide all clear. Corus will be there for our advertisers as they spring forward with us. Our streaming business is on fire and will start burning hotter still. A new season of "Rick and Morty" has just launched, driving new interest in STACKTV from that coveted younger demographic. We cannot help but marvel at how far we have come in only two years with our many digital video strategies at Corus. We are increasing the value of our content business for our shareholders through the creation of multiple seasons of hit shows to serve our networks in Canada, to benefit our international buyers, and to create intellectual property franchises. June marks a major milestone for Nelvana as we celebrate its incredible 50 years as a globally recognized producer, developer, and licenser of award-winning children's animated and live action content. From its humble beginnings in Canada in 1971, Nelvana has produced well over 4,800 episodes of programming, airing in over 180 countries around the world and earning over 70 major international awards, including multiple Emmys, with perhaps more to come given yesterday's nominations. Happy anniversary, Nelvana. At Corus, we are disciplined allocators of capital, and this is once again on full display this quarter as we successfully diversified our sources of financing, delivered solid free cash flow, and increased our financial flexibility. Corus represents a compelling investment with a multiple of under six times, a free cash flow yield of almost 25%, and an attractive dividend yield of 4%. Our shareholders will benefit both from the reopening of the economy, our disciplined capital allocation policy, and our commitment to deliver consolidated revenue growth in the years ahead. Throughout the COVID pandemic, Corus has demonstrated a commitment to protect the health of our people and ensure the continuity of our business as we meet the needs of all our stakeholders and support our communities. Last year, we helped raise CAD 21.6 million for over 500 charitable organizations across Canada. This year, in our Q3, through the efforts of our Corus Cares initiatives, our teams helped raise CAD 4.4 million for 344 community initiatives and provided 2,400 volunteer hours to local organizations across Canada. We are using the power of our portfolio for good and could not be more pleased with our team's dedication and passion for serving our local communities. In the coming months, as COVID restrictions ease, we are taking our learnings from the pandemic, along with extensive input from our people, to create an even better place to work for the future. As always, we will place the wellbeing and engagement of our people and the long-term sustainability of our business as our top priorities, building a strengthened, purpose-led organization focused on delivering strong execution against our strategic and financial priorities. Over to you, operator. As a reminder in order to ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press the pound key. One moment, please, for our first question. Our first question comes from the line of Drew McReynolds from RBC. Your line is open. Yeah, thanks very much, and good morning, Doug and John. I guess being first in the queue, I'll ask about TV pacing in Q4. More broadly, as we look at post-lockdown dynamics, how do we look at Q4 and Q1 in terms of ad categories that you expect to come back? Maybe some may wane. How do you see audiences through the summer into the fall as people start traveling again? Second question on TV margins when we look into fiscal 2022, I guess for you, John, I know a ton of puts and takes and moving parts, is there anything you can help us square off what that looks like perhaps relative to fiscal 2021 or perhaps even pre-COVID fiscal 2019? Thank you. Thank you, Drew. I'll take the first one, John, you can take the second. Listen, we're thrilled with the momentum in the advertising pacing at the moment, and we have no reason to believe it won't continue going forward. Q4 was a stronger quarter relative to Q3 last year, so it's a bit of a higher hurdle on a comp basis. The reference I would draw you to is international markets, Drew. We're lagging behind in Canada, which in some ways for your models gives all of you a chance to look at U.K., look at U.S., look at Australia, and those markets, well, some of them had recent setbacks, but those markets have had pretty strong returns. Let's take the entertainment category. One example, "Fast & Furious 9" just did CAD 70 million at the box office last weekend. That's the highest box office performance in the U.S. since the Star Wars release in December of 2019. That portends a return of theatrical marketing, right? At the end of the day, despite all the conversations about releasing movies on streaming platforms, all of the big budget tentpoles are with talent that is paid on gross points. These studios will release aggressively theatrical movies and market them aggressively. In fact, in the fall, I know in Canada, as we get all clear, there's a really strong schedule of big tentpole releases coming, and that will bring with it advertising investment. I think, in areas like travel, accommodation, direct to consumer travel, like Expedia, trivago, that's still sort of clearly dependent upon getting the airlines working again in Canada. We're not there yet. In the U.S., there's so much demand. They've got supply and capacity constraints. I think we have every reason to expect tailwinds for the number of quarters ahead as not only do Canadians get back to some degree of the next normal, but also as companies invest to take advantage of both positioning their brands in the front of consumers once they're coming back to economic activity and to take advantage of all this dry powder that's sitting out there to be spent. I guess the third thing I'd note, we're coming into this with a great position given our schedule. We'll be able to serve our advertisers as Canadians watch our great shows. John? Thanks, Doug. Drew, on the margins, I know it's a question you like to ask pretty consistently. Obviously, as Doug has just mentioned, there's some pretty good revenue tailwinds coming, and that's into Q4 and then into Q1. In terms of what might normalize on the expense line, couple things. One is, as I said, we're out of wage subsidy now for the most part, that has been almost CAD 13 million this year that we won't see next year. The second one would be programming costs. We ran pretty light on programming in the H1 of the year. We're catching up now in Q3. We'll likely be looking pretty flat in 2021 on that line compared to 2020. Of course, both of those years were pandemic impacted. You can and should expect some increases in programming costs as we get into kind of a more normal year in 2022, especially in Q1 as we've got the full slate that Doug just mentioned. Those are kind of the moving pieces. It's a little early to tell. The upfront was just a couple of weeks ago, but so far so good. I think we're feeling pretty good. As I say, at this point, it's just a little bit early. Drew, I didn't address your ratings over the summer questions. I'll do that now. Let's put it this way. We know the Olympics are coming. We know that the Canadians are in the Stanley Cup finals. That's bringing people back to television from streaming. That's a good thing for people viewing television in aggregate. We feel really good about our summer schedule. The big money's in Q1. I would say that it's hard for me to predict the audience delivery over the summer, given this most unusual pandemic and such. The return of sports in aggregate helps the overall television viewing universe, which is a positive sign. Our schedule has been designed to accommodate for the Olympics. Lastly, John mentioned this in his remarks about matching demand with supply. One of the brilliant outcomes of our Peacock deal is that content can be deployed on whatever platform has the most demand, whether that's digital, which is growing like crazy, or on traditional channel business, if there's demand there. We have a lot of flexibility to position great shows and thus impressions if there's demand and audience. That's great. Thanks very much. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Adam Shine from National Bank Financial. Your line is open. Thanks a lot. Good morning. Doug, maybe you can start with just reflecting on some of the step-up function that you saw in optimized advertising revenue. It was certainly a big jump from the prior pacing. Sure. Thrilled with the growth of the business, 38% total now. That's up 82% over the same quarter last year. Every agency and most advertisers of ours are participating in the targeting and in the automation. What we're seeing is that the more that they participate in the optimized advertising experience, the more investment they further follow up with. There definitely is, we're moving past trial now into adoption. We continue to make investments, Adam, in this very important part of our business strategy, which is to improve targeting, improve automation, and continue to be data-driven in terms of how we serve the demands of our advertisers. I'm thrilled with the 38% metric this quarter. We're going to continue to keep the pedal down. Just in regard to pacing, you guys, I think, did a pretty good job tamping down some of the year-over-year expectations going into Q3. Obviously, you got your growth, but it wasn't quite as good as it could've been given the context of evolving government restrictions. When we think about the move into the H2 of the year, particularly into that seasonally important sort of September into November timeframe, do we start thinking about unused marketing dollars from H1 manifesting themselves a lot more significantly in the back half of the year? Or do we need to temper our expectations a little bit just in regard to how marketing budgets may evolve through the course of this year? Yeah, that's a great question. From the conversations that we've been having with CMOs and agencies, I would say there's a strong sense of, I would say, confidence and positiveness about the fall season, the spending, the consumer return season. I think the other thing I would offer is that there's a lot of brands that want to get back in front of consumers, whether they're retail, dining, multi-unit dining operations. I mentioned theatrical earlier. Travel and accommodations, hotel. All of those segments have dollars that, as you rightly note, have been held off from investing because they couldn't go to work. Now they will be able to, as the government gives us permission, open up and return. Those dollars will flow back. Will we get back what we missed in the pandemic? It's the old economic haircut theory. If you don't get a haircut for six months, are you going to get six haircuts each week going forward? Probably not. I do believe that there is a lot of demand out there. Again, you're seeing it in other markets. Whether or not it's the H1 shifting into H2 or not, I would say that there's every signal out there that investment is coming. Just quickly. Sorry, go ahead, Doug. Just as an example of that kind of phenomenon. We did see that in December last year. In Q2 for us, December was a big growth month. I think really what you were describing did happen, and it wasn't just on sports because we certainly got a big piece of it as well, and it happened across the industry. I think there's an ability for that to happen. It's just hard to know how much people are holding back right now. Adam, quickly on the marketing- Okay. We have almost 400 advertisers on the audience segment selling now, and about half that much using the automated platform, Cynch. That's up significantly. There's real momentum building in the uptake of our targeting and automation products. I think that's very evident in this particular quarter. Just lastly, quickly on STACKTV and Nick. Obviously, we're seeing some real evolving traction. Is it still sort of an 80/20 split in regards to the two streamers? Yeah, that's about right. Okay, I'll leave it there. Thanks a lot. Thanks, Adam. Our next question comes from the line of Aravinda Galappatthige from Canaccord. Your line is open. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I will start with two headline questions. First of all, John, on the programming cost, I was wondering if you can give us a little bit more color on how you see that shaping up. Obviously, Q3 was up year-over-year, not dramatically. Maybe just any kind of assistance you can give us in terms of how that will shape up into Q4 and early 2022. On the Nelvana and Corus Studios, the other revenue component, we are seeing some pretty good consistency now in terms of top-line growth. First of all, can you give us a sense of the outlook going forward? Secondly, are you at a stage where you are considering breaking that out to perhaps make the value a little bit more evident there? I'll let John hit the first one. Yeah, I'll take the second one. John? Okay. Aravinda, on programming, this has been a bit of a moving target all year, as you can imagine, especially with the way the first half turned out. You're right, we're up a little bit in Q3. I think we'll be up a little bit again in Q4. I'd say right now, a good assumption on programming for the full year of 2021 is it'll be down slightly over 2020. Going forward, as I mentioned, Q1 is going to have the full Global schedule at normal timing. Expect Q1 to have a pretty significant increase in programming, just given that that's the pay-per-play model. As we get those deliveries, we will be picking those up and expensing them right away. That's really the view on programming at this point. I think we've been a little surprised that it's continued to run at the lower levels right now, but that is going to pick up. The good news about that is it's going to pick up to provide inventory and audiences when there's a ton of demand coming. That's precisely when you want to have that investment hit in the books. On the content segment, yes, it's been fantastic. The teams have been putting some big numbers up the last four quarters. We expect that to continue. We have a tough comp in this Q4, which the team's working to address. The comment I really wanted to make sure that people heard was a couple of comments, actually. The first is multiple seasons of hit shows creates franchise IP, and it increases the value for our buyers, whether they're streamers or broadcasters or both internationally. This is where Corus has a Corus advantage. It's a distinction that very few other companies have except for the big majors. That is that we control the green light. To the extent to which the shows are working on our networks, we can keep making them. The more seasons we make, the more follow-on sales we get. Witness the Discovery U.S. HGTV second season sale of "Island of Bryan," now titled "Renovation Island" for them. It really begins this flywheel of high-margin content. Controlling the green light and making multiple seasons of hit shows is really a strong and lucrative strategy. As for continued growth, I expect the same. There will be volatile quarters, Aravinda, as you know well. It doesn't go up in a straight line in the content business, despite the impressive results of the last four quarters. The team is hitting it on all marks, and much of what's happening here is a result of an increase in our development investment two years ago strategically. We decided to put more CAD dollars in the development funnel so there were more projects at better states of development, so we could add new content. We're thrilled about this Pamela Anderson project. It's going to be a very exciting and hot show. That's just an example of making those creative development investments. Net multiple seasons builds franchise IP and margin, and then we're continuing to really invest in creative and development. Thanks, Doug. I wanted to give you a chance to also comment on the Discovery-WarnerMedia transaction. Obviously, you have a very good relationship on the Discovery front. Does that sort of merger maybe create some worries for you down the road, or do you feel comfortable that the current programming arrangements would hold, given the equity positions they have with respect to some of the channels as well? No, I'm not worried about it. I think it's another example of the importance of consolidation in this space. We do have joint venture relationships with many of our partners in the U.S., including Discovery. As I said many times before, Canada is a very lucrative licensing market, and these companies, they have to balance their ambitions to grow streaming with their desire to hit their quarterly results on both earnings and cash flow. Because of Canada's unique market structure, again, we've discussed this before, Aravinda Galappatthige, where 73% of Canadians still enjoy the channels business, the penetration of the channels business is almost 100% in Canada, should you desire to have a subscription to the channels business. It's a regulated market with simulcast. The economics in this market really provide us a chance to work in concert with these big majors to ensure that we're able to access the content we need and pursue our strategies. We always have conversations depending on which way each partner is going, and no partner is the same, I'll tell you, in terms of their ambitions for streaming. There's lots of different ways that we can work in concert or not with them, depending on what they choose to do. I would just say it's a lucrative licensing market which is valued by our international global partners. We have a resilient channels business in Canada, and Corus is acknowledged as being very innovative in our pursuit of digital video audiences. In many cases, they're reaching out to us to get our opinion on strategy. I think it's kind of really business as usual, even though there's lots of developments out there. We're not confused about the disruptive marketplace, but we're also confident in our position in it. Great. Thank you very much. That's all for us. Thanks, Aravinda. Our next question coming from the line of Jeff Fan of Scotiabank. Your line is open. Hi, good morning, Doug. Good morning, John. I just want to follow up on the comment made earlier about balancing the supply and demand related to your ad inventory. What's your outlook for CPM? Could that be a pretty big driver, especially in the near term, given where supply is and given some of the reopening, especially in the service sector? Just want to get your thoughts there. The other question is related to your new platform revenue mix. It's at 8% now, looks like it's stable from quarter- to- quarter. Wondering if you can talk a little bit about identifying the key initiatives, maybe the top few that's going to really drive that percentage up, and whether you have any kind of long-term milestones that you want to share with us with respect to where that percentage should be over multiple years. Thanks. Okay. Just on the new platform. Actually, let me do the CPM one first, and John and I can do the new platform together. On the CPM, I'm sure you've been reading the trades for the U.S., Jeff, because I know you study that. Let's just say that everybody is holding out for the highest CPMs that we can get. To the extent to which CEOs of media companies are getting phone calls from CEOs of consumer packaged goods companies yelling at them. I think it's important that television recognizes its very important role in the media mix, and we stand our ground on price. I'm not going to give you any specific CPM numbers. I can reassure you that we share the insight in your question, is that is there a chance to get pricing here? Absolutely. We're going to dig in. We know we've got some fantastic schedules in the fall, and it gives us, I think, a real opportunity. It's always a bit of a balancing act, right? You've got to manage sellout, you've got to manage everything else along the way. That's my first comment. New platform revenues, I'll invite John to color in anything here that I may have missed. That is a top priority of us, and maybe John you can speak to the 8% sort of calculation in the quarter because that's a little bit dependent upon the ad recovery. From a strategic perspective, we continue to invest a lot of time, energy, and thinking into how big is big on STACKTV, how big is big on Global TV App, what other opportunities do we have to pursue other avenues that I've alluded to in my comments, the in front of the wall available to all opportunities, which we think is a real lane for us to consider pursuing. 8% we think will be double digits in the next print, in part because it's a smaller quarter and the mix of sub versus ad is different. It doesn't mean I wasn't thrilled with the result in this quarter. I think it was up 112% year-over-year in the same quarter on that absolute dollars metric. Rest assured that it's a prime focus of ours. Look at the total subscriber number print this quarter. The slow decline we're seeing in the channels business is being offset and then some by the pursuit of these digital video subscribers. John, anything to add on that? No, I think you've covered that well. It is really about the high demand Q3 on advertising. I wrote down stable, Jeff, when you said that because we are up 82% year-over-year. I will get you a sequential increased number as well from Q2 because it is growing quite rapidly. That 8% sort of masks the growth just because of the way it is calculated on a much bigger denominator in Q3 and then in Q1 as well will be the same. Jeff, you might want to think about it'll step up in low demand quarters, and it'll hold in the high demand quarters is probably how you can think about modeling it. Yeah, that makes sense. Maybe just a follow-on strategic question. Your balance sheet is in pretty good shape. You got the debt deal done. Is there anything strategic that you think would be a good use of excess cash to maybe accelerate some of these very important areas? I'm wondering just for your thoughts there. Well, first of all, we're just delighted with the refinancing in the quarter. That's a seminal moment for the company in terms of having the right laddered debt structure versus just a big term facility. We love our bank friends, of course, it's nice to kind of diversify our debt balance sheet structure. We're going to continue to invest organically. That's one of the things in the capital allocation conversation that we've been really focused on is encouraging and challenging our team to come back with ideas for growth. An example that we're thrilled with, we haven't talked on this call about because it's still sort of germinating, is our development investment with Duncan Studio in L.A. We've got a couple feature film projects there that are coming along really quickly. That sets up an opportunity, we think, for sort of a new line of business on the content side of the equation. Embedded in your question, I think you're probably thinking about M&A. I would say that selective small tuck-in strategic M&A is a consideration. Nothing big. We don't have any interest at all in a big swing. We believe that we can execute organically without having to take any more risk. We still believe that there's a lot of great ideas that our team is bringing us that we can invest in. As far as other financial opportunities, share buybacks, dividend hikes, and de-leveraging, our bias is going to remain to get towards that 2.5 times net debt to segment profit. That's sort of the sweet spot, which should come relatively soon. In the meantime, we'll just continue to execute the strategy. Thank you, Doug. Thank you, Jeff. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, simply press star then one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from the line of David McFadgen from Cormark Securities, your line is open. Hi. Yeah, 2 questions. First of all, I was wondering if you could comment on your upfront market. When you read the trade press down in the U.S., they talk about actually CPM increases and amount of business being booked. I was wondering if you can give us any color on that for your upfront. Secondly, when we look at the optimized ad revenues up to 38% in this quarter, I was wondering what's really driving that? Is that Cynch or is that ABB or what's the combination there that's really driving that number up? Thanks. Hey, David. I'll go back to front on that question. What's driving the 38% is significant increases in participation on behalf of advertisers and agencies in both the audience-based buying or linear optimization. That's one and the same definitionally. In addition, a significant portion of those audience-based buyers are also using Cynch, the automated platform. As I said earlier, we're moving beyond the trial phase into the wholesale adoption phase, and that is precisely where we want to be, because we're getting people that are seeing the results of what we're able to provide from a targeting and automation perspective. On the CPM piece, all I can say, I'm not going to give you numbers or anything metric wise, but what you saw and heard of in the U.S. is basically what we're seeing and experiencing now here in Canada, all of the broadcasters in Canada. Everybody's going after CPMs, getting price, holding their ground. There's a ton of demand for television. We're super pleased with the momentum. It's been a very, very strong upfront for us this year. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn it back to Mr. Doug Murphy for the closing remarks. Thank you, operator. Thank you everyone for joining us today on our Q3 results. Always great to hear from you and from your questions. Please feel free to reach out to us and follow up with anything you may have. In the meantime, have a happy Canada Day. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.