Hockey Night without the Leafs just ain't the same for CBC

While stories hit the news from time to time telling us that interest in the Toronto Maple Leafs is dropping faster than, well, the Leafs' playoff chances, the fact is the Blue-and-White still drive ratings no matter how bad they are.

Further proof came Saturday night in one of those rare instances when the Leafs are not the main attraction on Hockey Night In Canada. In fact, this Saturday they weren't even playing. Instead, the nation got the Montreal Canadiens and Ottawa Senators -- an all-Canadian matchup featuring one team with deep roots across the country.

It was a pretty good game, too.

The result? The lowest Game 1 rating on CBC this season. It drew 300,000 fewer viewers than the previously ratings dog and drew only 130,000 more than a Detroit-Toronto pre-season game.

It was almost beaten out by the Pittsburgh-Vancouver late game and finished behind three NFL playoff games. Actually, it was four because the 1,040,000 who watched Sunday's Jets-Chargers game included only those who tuned in to TSN. The game was on CBS, too.

For those who long for something other than the Leafs on Saturday night, keep longing. Despite the fact the Leafs are horrible, they still bring in the eyeballs.

Speaking of eyeballs, one team not bringing them in is the Toronto Raptors, who bring up the bottom of the weekend list -- behind bobsleigh in one case.

Here are the top English-Canadian sports ratings over the weekend, according to BBM Canada calculations.

1. NFL, Cowboys at Vikings, Sunday, CTV: 1,640,000

2. NFL, Cardinals at Saints, Saturday, CTV: 1,500,000

3. NFL, Ravens at Colts, Saturday, CTV: 1,200,000

4. NHL, Senators at Canadiens, Saturday, CBC: 1,169,000

5. NHL, Penguins at Canucks, Saturday, CBC: 1,085,000

6. NFL, Jets at Chargers, Sunday, TSN: 1,040,000*

7. NHL, Leafs at Capitals, Friday, TSN: 702,000

8. Figure skating, Canadian championships, men's free, Sunday, CBC: 676,000

9. Figure skating, Canadian championships, original dance/women's free, Saturday, CBC: 514,000

10. NHL, Hockey Night In Canada pre-game, Saturday, CBC: 396,000

10. Curling, Casino Rama final, Sunday, TSN: 396,000

12. Curling, Casino Rama semifinal 2, TSN, 388,000

13. NFL, Saturday pre-game show, CTV: 380,000

14. Figure skating, Canadian championships, dance free, Sunday, CBC: 375,000

15. Figure skating, Canadian championships, pairs free, Saturday, CBC: 338,000

16. NBA, Raptors at Knicks, Friday, TSN2: 215,000

17. Bobsleigh, World Cup, Saturday, CBC: 208,000

18. NBA, Mavericks at Raptors, Sunday, CBC: 205,000

* Viewers on CBS not calculated

OTHER STUFF: Not surprisingly, the folks in Vancouver are a tad upset over Ron MacLean's hatchet job on Canuck forward Alexandre Burrows. MacLean could easily use the insanity defence, though. His ``reading" of Burrows' lips as he lay on the ice in that one clip would convince anyone that MacLean had lost his grip on reality. ... Those keen on taking another look at Canada's top junior hockey players can catch the Top Prospects Game on Wednesday at 7 p.m. on Rogers Sportsnet. ... CBS announcer Jim Nantz had one of those d'oh moments during Sunday's Jets-Chargers playoff game. Doing a promo for 60 Minutes, he talked about a feature on athletes raising money to send to ``Haitia." Maybe watching another Norv Turner team collapse fogged his brain. `

Comments

[Josh]

The one point that you gloss over a little bit here Chris is that 99% of the time when the Leafs play on HNIC, they are not up against NFL playoff games in the same timeslot.

Also, minor thing: the Habs hosted the Sens. Your list has it the other way around.

[Anne]

Most nights there are at least a couple of games in the first time slot, often 3 games. If there had been a Toronto regional game on as well as the Montreal/Ottawa national game,I am willing to bet the viewership would have been the same as usual.

All those NFL championship games are naturally going to take a toll as well.

Still it would be odd if they had flogged one team at the same time slot every Saturday night for decades and not have a fall off in viewersip when the "home" team was not featured.

Just maybe its past time for HNIC to broaden their horizons.

No one is suggesting that Southern Ontario is not a huge market, and the Leafs are their team, but if HNIC wants to even pretend to the appearance of being slgightly more even handed and to do itself a favour when the playoffs roll around, they might want to make at least a few Leaf games a year regional,thus holding on to that market, and a few more Habs/Sens games national, exposing those teams to a wider audience.

I doubt there is another sports network anywhere in North America which has so identified itself with one team.Imagine if the only NFL or NBA teams on network TV week after week, year after year, were the ones from New York and the rest were locked out of a national audience.

Other networks try to promote the sport and not just one team.That the CBC is a publicly funded network makes it that much more ridiculous.

Anyway as HNIC has decided to live or die with the Leafs , such that they are virtually another version of Leafs TV,they have no right to cry when they arrive in post season without their beloved home team to promote and find that the fans of other teams prefer to watch their teams play on TSN or RDS or NBC.

[Peter Brown]

NFL gets four of the top six this weekend. Nice showing for what gets depicted as a fringe sport by anti-American CFL enthusiasts.

And if CBS viewers were measured for Chargers/Jets, it would have been a top-four sweep.

[Mullah_Kintyre]

Joe Buck had a bizarre "d'oh" moment this weekend during an NFL playoff game on Fox when he talked about a team assessed a penalty flag having the option to accept or decline, before finally realizing several minutes later that it's the other team that gets the choice to accept or decline.

I would prefer to hear the game instead of the announcers constant babble. It's 2010, not 1960. We can see what's happening for ourselves without someone describing it. We have HD TVs, and enough (perhaps too many) graphics on the screen to explain everything, even with the sound muted as it is on TVs in sports bars.

[Kyron]

I thought I was crazy when I heard Jim Nantz say "Haitia".

[Ryan]

This is BS IMO, how the heck does CBC know that I watched or (didn't) their Sunday Raptors game on (via HD antenna) .

[SportsFan]

Chris, it doesn’t look like you’ve counted the French language viewers in that number. Given that Montreal was playing there would have been a higher percentage of French speaking viewers watching that game, and Ottawa has a significant French speaking fan base as well. I suspect that the overall Canadian audience for that game will be about the same as other games, but that a higher percentage of them will have watched it in French.

[Dave]

If your a football fan you like both the CFL and NFL, but people like Anne, just love to bash the CFL, The fact that this tiny little Canadian league, gets the same rating as the might NFL and sometimes better rating then the NFL, just drive those NFL or nothing people crazy ( plus NFL or nothing people are not football fans). People like myself that like both leagues, get to watch football for allmost 9 months and i love every mintue of it. Go Jets and ARGOOOOOOOs

[Chris Zelkovich]

Hey Fan,
I don't include the French ratings as a rule and as far as CBC is concerned, they don't really matter. CBC sells its ads based on an English audience. There may have been a lot of Canadians watching, but as far as CBC was concerned there were only 1.1 million.
Chris Z

[Chris Zelkovich]

Hey Josh,
Good point, but last weekend there were NFL playoff games on and the early NHL game, which included the Leafs, drew almost 1.8 million.
Chris Z

[Julien]

Zelkovich, back on Nov. 28 the Leafs were not playing and 1.783 million viewers watched HNIC as was displayed in your Dec. 1 blog. There was nothing written about that as the Grey Cup audience figures was understandably the sole topic.

The figures for the Leafs being the solo HNIC game are not always impressive. On Dec. 5, the Leafs drew 1.453 million viewers (from your Dec. 7 blog). The Leafs do not bring in the high amount of eyeballs the CBC would like to think.

This past weekend's numbers audience numbers should not make Scott Moore use this as an excuse to have the Leafs at Florida game be nationally televised. The original six match up of the Rangers at Montreal has to be the nationally televised game and that "other" game to be regionalized to southern Ontario or Ontario, minus the Ottawa Valley.

[Josh]

Oddly enough, Julien, the CBC Sports website currently shows that Saturday's distribution will be:
Tor-Fla: national (except Quebec and BC)
Mtl-NYR: Quebec and BC.

Someone explain that one to me, please.

[Mark]

Chris
good job! What most folks here don't take into
consideration is how much money the Leafs generate
not only for CBC but for the rest of the league.
Win or lose the Leafs are CBC's golden child.

[Rick Grace]

Ah. Habs Sens doesn't include the French numbers on RDS.
Which I'm sure were close to the one million mark.

And I betcha a large number of viewers for the NFL games come from CFL strongholds like the praries and western Canada.
Because to me out west and in Quebec is football country in Canada.
Ontario is a football wasteland.

And at least the Raptors knocked off bobsleigh on the weekend.
As they say. No where to go but up.

[Steve G]

These #'s are also another indication that a significant portion of Leaf fans are not hockey fans.

[chris]

And so now, if what you say is true Rickey Boy, the folks out in the prairies should be considered bad Canadians for watching the American NFL instead of ignoring it like the loyal good Canadian CFL fans they should be, according to the Book of Rick, eh?

Or, are you just being your usual trolling self?

[Rick Grace]

No I'm not Chris/MIke/PeteBrown and whatever else you call yourself.
I'm saying the real football fans in Canada are out west and in Quebec.
They're CFL fans first and foremost.
But they will watch other football when the CFL is done.
They know and support the game.
Unlike in Ontario where no level of fooball is supported.
I just don't like people like you tryin' to tell me that their game is superior and more popular in Canada.
Because it ain't.

[JH]

Huge amount of football fans in Ontario.....I'd say more NFL than CFL (and don't get me started on why the Bills in Toronto thing hasn't' panned out - NFL fans from Toronto aren't idiots..
1. We're not Bills fans (maybe 1 in 10)
2. We know when we're being ripped off. I can drive to Detroit, Buffalo and Cleveland all within a few hours and see the NFL for $60 a game - why would I pay Rogers $250?
3. I'm used to watching my team on Sunday ticket...(who's ratings don't count BTW)

[Mike]

For the record, I'm not chris or Peter Brown or anyone else posting. Unlike Rick Grace, who I'm pretty sure at this point is joeknowsit and a few other trolls who come about. Not everyone needs to stoop to your level.
So now the only "real football fans" are outside Ontario? Are you in Ontario Rick (or joe or whoever)? Does that mean you're not a real fan?

[Julien]

That is very odd that HNIC would have BC being the only other province watch the Canadiens game. No explanation was given when I phoned and asked for the reasons why. Looking at the standings, the Leafs and the Panthers are not in a playoff spot. The Canadiens are close to a spot and could be in 8th place prior to Saturday's game and the Rangers will be in 6th or 7th place. A bad decison by Moore.

A bizarre coincidence that the Leafs did not play on the NFL's divisional playoff weekend last year, Sat. Jan. 10. I wonder how low the ratings were for the Leafs HNIC game on the NFL's divisional Sat. game on Jan. 12, 2008?

[chris]

And I don't like people like you, Ricky Boy, putting down other sports because they're not "Canadian" enough for your tastes. Then trolling around sites like this flaming to others how sports like basketball, baseball, and the NFL are inferior because more Canadians watch hockey and the CFL. In case you hadn't noticed, this is a free country where people have the right to follow whatever sport they choose no matter where they're originated from. The fact you come here going "ha-ha, nobody watches the Raptors because Canada hates the sport" tells us you are, at the very least, an insecure jingoist feeling threatened by anything not perceived not to be Canadian. Or perhaps you don't really think that way, but just like to get a reaction from people. You need to get a new hobby.

[Rick Grace]

Oh yeah.
Huge amounts of football fans in Toronto.
I've heard even most highschools don't have teams.
And what do you draw for York or the U of T? Ten people?

And of course all the excuses why the NFL isn't drawing.
All this talk about expensive ticket prices.
But I mean you could have got seats for 10 bucks near the end.
And they still had to end up giving them away.
You know what they say eh?
Excuses are for losers.

[JH]

What's your point?
That no one goes to UofT or York football, so no one likes Football?
Please consider..
1. There are precuios few High School Hockey Teams now too
2. No one goes to UofT or York Hockey Games either
3. No one goes to Junior Hockey Games...
So I guess no one likes hockey in Toronto either?
I'm wondering why you feel the need to be so "Canadian" in your sporting choices? Do you close your eyes when there is a US team playing? Do you cringe when a CFL 'Import' Wide Receiver catches a ball from an 'import' QB? Do you only watch Canadian programming..or did you sneak downstairs and watch a bit of the US Networks?
Give me a break. We live in North America...choose what you like and watch it. Don't put anyone down for enjoying the NFL, NBA, MLB or that other US League, the NHL. ..all have strong following in Canada.

[chris]

And how many high school and university students are they drawing out west for football, Ricky Baby Boy? Do you have the data to back that up? Or are you just finding an excuse to support your hateful, jingoistic flaming attitude like the giant loser you are?

[Mike]

So how come Calgary didn't sell out for a CFL playoff game then? And Winnipeg didn't sell out last year for theirs either. Those are the real fans right?

Oh and remember "Excuses are for losers."