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BCE Inc.’s chief executive is calling on Canada’s broadcasting regulator to help the country’s media sector grapple with a challenging advertising market and competition from foreign giants.

During a conference call to discuss the Montreal-based company’s second-quarter results, Mirko Bibic said that “more needs to be done by the CRTC faster” to ease the pressures on the industry.

“The ecosystem in Canada is under severe stress and requires urgent government assistance,” Mr. Bibic said as BCE reported higher second-quarter revenue but a steep drop in its profit due to higher expenses.

“When massive U.S. companies with global scale and global footprints are having extreme difficulty contending with the difficult advertising markets, you have to ask how Canadian broadcasters are expected to navigate it when the regulatory playing field does not present an environment where the same rules apply to all,” he added.

In June, BCE’s Bell Media filed an application asking the CRTC to waive local news and Canadian programming requirements for its television stations.

Mr. Bibic added that he’s encouraged that the federal government is “trying to help out on the news side of things” and that the industry is “pushing back against the very aggressive moves by Meta and Google.”

Both tech giants have announced plans to block news content in response to federal government legislation that forces them to pay media organizations, with Meta already beginning to roll out the change.

BCE, the parent company of Bell Canada, had $6.07-billion in revenue for the three-month period ended June 30, up 3.5 per cent from a year ago as it added new wireless and internet customers. Its media division, which owns CTV, TSN, CP24 and a number of specialty TV news and radio channels, saw its revenue decline by 1.9 per cent year-over-year to $805-million due to lower advertising revenue.

Its profit fell sharply to $397-million, down 39 per cent from $654-million during the same quarter last year. That amounted to 37 cents per share, down from 66 cents per share.

The company attributed the decline to higher expenses, including a $377-million non-cash loss on its share of an obligation to repurchase at fair value a minority stake in one of its joint venture equity investments, as well as higher interest expenses, increased depreciation and amortization expenses and higher income taxes.

BCE also saw higher costs related to its workforce reduction initiative. The company announced back in June that it was eliminating roughly 1,300 positions as part of a significant reorganization and expects to see the financial benefits of that initiative in the second half of the year.

After adjusting for several items including losses on investments and severance, acquisition and other costs, BCE had $722-million in profit, down 8.7 per cent from $791-million a year earlier. The adjusted earnings amounted to 79 cents per share, down from 87 cents per share during the same period last year.

Analysts had been expecting 80 cents per share of adjusted earnings and $6.06-billion of revenue, according to the consensus estimate from S&P Capital IQ.

The telecom added 111,282 net new postpaid wireless subscribers during the quarter, up 33.8 per cent from a year ago when it added 83,197 postpaid customers. (Postpaid subscribers are those who are billed at the end of the month for the services they have used, whereas prepaid customers pay up front for wireless services.)

“We achieved these wireless and internet subscriber results against the backdrop of declining prices, demonstrating that our industry is delivering the highest quality services at decreasing prices despite persistent inflation,” Mr. Bibic said.

Desjardins analyst Jérome Dubreuil said BCE is slightly behind on achieving its financial targets for the year, but added that he is reassured that “that there has been limited impact on financials so far from lower wireless prices in the market.”

“BCE will have to report faster growth in the rest of the year to achieve guidance,” Mr. Dubreuil wrote in a research note.

BCE’s chief financial officer Glen LeBlanc said he’s confident that the telecom will deliver on its guidance.

“I know that historically, we probably have a smoother free cash flow profile than we have this year, but it really was a product of us taking the opportunity to spend heavily in the front half of this year,” Mr. LeBlanc told analysts during a conference call Thursday. “You make hay in this business when the sun shines.”

Scotiabank analyst Maher Yaghi said that although BCE’s subscriber growth in both its internet and wireless business was strong, its free cash flow, which decreased to $1.02-billion, was “weaker than anticipated.”

Mr. Yaghi also noted that although BCE’s Bell Canada subsidiary signed up significantly more wireless customers than it did during the second quarter of last year, its wireless loading trailed Rogers, which added 170,000 net new postpaid wireless subscribers during the quarter.

Shares of BCE declined by 56 cents, or nearly one per cent, to $55.61 on the Toronto Stock Exchange late Thursday morning.