Vancouver Day 7: Ratings keep soaring and so does the hockey talk

NBC has already predicted a $200 million loss on the Vancouver Olympics.

The CTV-Rogers consortium won't make such predictions, but the general feeling in the Canadian broadcast community is that it will lucky to avoid millions in losses.

But there's no denying that these Games are a popular hit, which may allow both to raise the rates for unsold ads and cut those losses dramatically.

On Wednesday night, NBC did the seemingly impossible by outdrawing ratings king American Idol 30 million to 18 million. That's the first time in six years anything has topped the amateur hour show.

The draw was snowboarder Shaun White and skier Lindsey Vonn, which is incredible considering that Vonn's race ran about seven hours before NBC aired it. Maybe nobody in the U.S. has a radio or Internet access.

In the Great White North, CTV and friends averaged 4.5 million viewers in prime time. That's 45 million American considering we have one-tenth the population.

Daytime averaged 2.9 million, an incredible audience for a Wednesday afternoon.

As the games continue, with the big hockey games yet to come and many more Canadian medals to come according to predictions, there's little doubt the Games will be the ratings story of the century. Yeah, it's early in the century, but that's impressive.

Imagine what Thursday's grudge match against the mighty Swiss might do for ratings.

THE HORROR, THE HORROR: I'm not sure this was brilliant or complete overkill, but I found CTV biathlon analyst (much call for that?) Daniel Lefebvre's explanation of what skiers are going through fascinating. Here's how he put it: ``The quads are screaming, it tastes like stell in your mouth, you get the lactic acid and your tongue is swelling, it's hard to breathe, your muscles are spasming ... your boots feel there's lead in them ..." And on he went. Mamas, don't let your kids grow up to be skiers.

THE GOOD: Great call by Rod Smith on the women's 1000m speed skating Thursday. He captured all the excitement without sounding like he was pulling for the Canadians. ... The most amazing television innovation in these games by far is CTV's Super Bodies feature. ... The feature gives you a unique view of what an athlete's body goes through during a competition. And Dr. Greg Wells, who was chosen from among dozens of applicants, does a great job of explaining things in terms that those who didn't got to medical school can understand. ...  Canadian skier Kelly Vanderbeek has been a great addition to the CTV cast. ... It was a bit of a time-waster, but the sight of NBA star Steve Nash trying to do a figure-skating lift of Jamie Sale was absolutely hilarious, especially when the two apparently cracked heads during Nash's first futile try. ... CTV got a great shot of Charles Hamelin kissing girlfriend Marianne St-Gelais after she won silver Wednesday.

THE BAD: Somebody called The Toaster was wasting video in a Whistler bar Thursday in an attempt by CTV to add some fun to the proceedings. It didn't. ... Reminder to all announcers: Podium is not a verb. You hope to get on the podium, you'd don't hope to podiium. And while we're at it, medal is not a verb, either. ... Note to Jamie Campbell: Please retire that ``this great country" line. It's embarrassing. A note to Catriona Le May Doan, who does a great job on speed skating: Stop calling every second skater ``gutsy."  ... I'm more than a little confused by CTV's handling of Chinese and Korean names.  Han Jialing's surname, for example, is Han. Yet  Rod Smith  tends to introduce the skaters backwards. Jialing Hin, for example,That's like referring to himself as Smith Rod. Short-track announcer Rod Black calls the skaters mostly by their surnames but has used their first names at times. Let's be consistent. Wonder what they would have done with that former Olympian Yang Yang?  ... Here's a sign that things were either really dead Wednesday night or CTV is doing everything it can to promote hockey (as if that was necessary.) It aired more than five minutes of a Team Canada hockey practice Thursday. A hockey practice!. ... Brian Williams had a nice interview with short-track silver medalist Marianne St-Gelais near the end of Wednesday's proceedings. But why wasn't she interviewed right after winning her medal? .And why did CTV not show the victory ceremony? Surely, a Canadian silver merited breaking into halfpipe competition.

Vancouver Day 6: Big ratings, a big fall and dumb comments

Brian Stemmle is a very good ski analyst. The former Olympian knows his stuff, explains things in terms that non-skiers can understand and comes up with some great lines.

But what the heck was he thinking Wednesday when Sweden's Anja Paerson took a frightening fall in the women's downhill? The CTV-Rogers analyst made it sound like he was celebrating big air at the halfpipe instead of potentially serious fall.

If you didn't see it, Paerson was on pace for a medal when she somehow flew into the air like a ski jumper. Seconds after she skidded down the course after a rather hard landing, Stemmle sounded like he was having the time of his life.

``Wow!" he shouted, a chuckle in his voice. ``Unbelievable air ... Look how far she's gone in the air."

As cameras focused on a rather upset-looking Lindsey Vonn at the bottom of the course, Stemmle continued to celebrate the fall.

``That was incredible! Oh my! That was awesome. I can't believe she's even on her knees right now, even up on her feet."

At this point, announcer Gerry Dobson asked if Paerson was okay. ``That's the most important question right now," he said.

But that didn't slow down Stemmle.

``They didn't include women's ski jumping in these Olympics," he said with another chuckle. ``We just saw it right there."

He did criticize organizers for not making the gates safer, and later expressed concern when a Romanian skier took a more serious fall, but the damage was done.

Now, if anybody understands ski falls it's Stemmle, who almost died in one. So maybe he knew instinctively that Paerson wasn't seriously hurt. But viewers were left with the impression that he's a bit of a goof.

RATINGS SOAR: It's now official: Olympic fever has driven Canadians to madness, or possibly exposed us as a nation of sadists.

According to BBM Canada, an average of 6.1 million people watched Tuesday's men's hockey game between Canada and Norway. That's about the same number who watched the Super Bowl and Grey Cup.

But this was an 8-0 blowout in a game that could have sparked a Greenpeace protest. Even more amazingly, 9.1 million tuned in for the final minute. Let's hope they did so in anticipation of figure skating, not in hopes of seeing another Canadian goal.

That boosted the CTV-Rogers consortium's prime-time average to 5.7 million Tuesday, the highest of the Games.

In saner revelations, an average of 3.7 million watched Maelle Ricker's snowboard victory, an amazing number considering the event was run on a weekday afternoon.

BEST INTERVIEW: You've got to love those figure skaters, who seem to lead the Olympics in great quotes. There's American Johnny Weir and his daily missives. Then there's Russian Evgeni Plushenko, who tossed out a WWE-style slam to all competitors (that's you, Patrick Chan) who don't have quads in their programs. Here's what he had to say to CTV Tuesday: ``Without quadruple it's not, I'm sorry, it's not men's figure skating." Real men do quads, eh?

CANADIAN STARS ON NBC: There's a bit of a myth that NBC focuses solely on American athletes, but the truth is it does a better job of featuring foreigners than a lot of networks, including the Canadian ones. This time around, NBC is focusing a lot on, surprise, Canadians. You see Canadian fans, families of Canadian athletes and Canadian athletes. Tuesday night, Mary Carillo did a great feature on a figure skater. Yup, Patrick Chan. ... Canadian announcers are getting noticed, too. Pete Dougherty praised curler and NBC analyst Colleen Jones' candidness in the Albany Times Union.

GREAT STUFF: CTV opened Tuesday's prime-time show with a great tribute to hockey by Michael J. Fox, not Terry, ... It's still not as good as it could be, but CTV and family are doing a much better job of telling viewers what's on and where.

THE NOT-SO GREAT STUFF: That was some great figure skating coverage CTV squeezed in between commercials on Tiesday night. Could they have squeezed in any more? ... Shouldn't that Canada-Norway curling match included a ``do not adjust your set" warning considering what the Scandinavians were wearing. Are these guys really descended from Vikings? ... Before anybody gets too carried away with calling Jarome Iginla the reincarnation of Rocket Richard, did anybody notice it was Norway he scored three goals on?

Vancouver Day 5: Ratings records pretty much a sure thing

There is little doubt that the Vancouver Games will be the most-watched in Canadian history. And we don't mean the most-watched Olympics. They will be the most-watched anything.

The CTV-Rogers consortium reports another big audience for Monday's offerings, including 7.1 million watching Alexandre Bilodeau's medal ceremony. Prime-time coverage averaged 5.3 million, according to BBM Canada overnight ratings, which compares with the world junior hockey final.

The difference is that the world junior hockey final was about three hours long, We're talking about six hours here. Even more amazing, the daytime show averaged 4.5 million. That's on a Monday.

The consortium says 80 per cent of English Canadians and 71 per cent of francophones tuned in to some of Monday's broadcasts.

Those are pretty impressive numbers -- and the men's hockey tournament hasn't even started yet.

THE STANDOUTS: Several CTV-Rogers consortium announcers have stood out early in the Games. The best have included the afternoon hosting team of James Duthie and Lisa LaFlamme. Duthie brings the perfect mix of humour and tact to the job. LaFlamme's gap in sports knowledge show up a little too often, but her news training and credible delivery overcome them. Most important, they don't annoy, which is rather important when you're on the air for almost six hours a day. ... The figure skating crew has been superb. Viewers knew what to expect from old pro Rod Black, but Jamie Sale and David Pelletier have been a revelation. Pelletier, in particular, has stood out as the TV star of the Games. ... R.J. Broadhead has done a superb job on sports that don't usually stir hearts: cross-country skiing and biathlon. ... Rod Smith and Catriona Le May Doan have also been outstanding on speed skating. Smith can really make the most of the big moments. Le May Doan tends to talk a bit too much, but nobody explains the intricacies of the sport better. ... While I'm handing out laurels, James Cybulski's interview Monday with former speed skater Dan Jansen was fascinating as was Michael Landsberg's chat with skier Erik Guay.

SNOWBOARD NO-NO: Former Blue Jays announcer Jamie Campbell has been doing a pretty good job calling the freestyle skiing stuff, sports he's calling for the first time. But he could be a little slower to boost Canadian hopes and really has to stop calling Canada ``our great country." We know it's great, okay? And Tuesday's comment regarding Dominique Maltais' second run that ``suddenly, time is of the essence," was rather silly considering that it's a timed event in qualifying. ... Snowboard analyst Tara Teigen does a great job of explaining what the heck's going on out there, Too bad she used the term ``five-peat" on Monday. Normally, that would be considered a capital offence.

THE BAD: Please, please spare us any more of those cheesy promos for CTV shows, like those annoying etalk intrusions. Does anyone other than Walter Gretzky care where Wayne and Janet dined? ... Boy, is CTV having communications problems or what? On Tuesday, Duthie announced that viewers would be taken to the U.S.-Switzerland men's hockey game. Naturally, snowboarding showed up on the screen. That's twice the left hand apparently didn't know what the right was doing. ... Where are the leader boards during events such as snowboarding and speed skating? They're shown at the end, but it would be nice to see them a little more often. ... One thing that the CTV group has in common with CBC: Too many features, not enough action. These are the Olympics, not the Cannes Film Festival.

THE UGLY: One can only imagine how painful it was for NBC's Bob Costas to do a thinly disguised pitch for Dreamworks during leading up to snowboard competition Monday. What followed was a Dreamworks cartoon of a Viking snowboarder. Let `em buy an ad.

Vancouver Day 4: More record ratings and a little more information

There's nothing like somebody wearing a Maple Leaf while competing for a gold medal to pull Canadians to their TV sets. Or maybe it's the deep-rooted love of moguls skiing ...

Alexandre Bilodeau's gold medal victory in moguls Sunday night was watched by an average audience of 7.3 million Canadians -- about a million more than the number who watched the Super Bowl and Grey Cup. According to BBM Canada overnight figures, Bilodeau's winning run was watched by 9.7 million people -- practically one in every three people in the country.

And while bronze doesn't have quite the attraction of gold, Kristina Groves' bronze medal in speed skating attracted more than 5 million viewers.

A LITTLE SILENCE, PLEASE: One of the great things about coverage of Monday's men's downhill was getting to hear the skis cutting into the ice and snow. It gave you a pretty good idea of how fast these guys were going and how difficult it must be to make turns. Unfortunately, we didn't get to hear that often enough, which is the inherent problem in having two analysts. Brian Stemmle and Cary Mullen did an excellent job overall, but did we really need Mullen telling us, ``We've got a ski race on our hands now"? Uh, downhill skiing? We were kind of expecting a race. And how about this puzzler from Stemmle on a poor performance by one of the lower-ranked skiers? ``I thought this guy was going to be an underdog and not really living up to that underdog expectation." Underdog implies he wasn't a favourite, which meant he did live up to expectations.

WORST REPLAY OF THE DAY: Bad enough to show a slow-motion replay of a skier drinking water, but Monday we got a super slow-motion shot of just that. It seemed to last about two minutes. If there was a reason for this, I missed it.

WHAT'S GOING ON? CTV did a better job today of alerting viewers to the other events being broadcast, but it needs to get a lot better. Since the CTV-Rogers consortium is lumping in all the ratings together, it can't be because the bosses are afraid of sending viewers to other channels. On Monday, CTV left the cross-country event once the winners had crossed the finish line, but never told viewers to go to Sportsnet if they wanted to watch the Canadians still on the course. It would have been a pretty simple thing to do. They finally got the point around 5:00 and actually told viewers they could watch snowboard cross preliminaries on Sportsnet.  And what's the problem with giving times? James Duthie and Lisa LaFlamme mentioned that CTV would have medal ceremonies tonight but never said exactly when. Is Brian Williams the only one with a watch? Admittedly, I'm being a bit facetious here as the obvious reason is that CTV wants people to tune in at 6:00 in fear of missing the ceremony. That's how you keep up those ratings.

MEANWHILE, ON RADIO ... One of those radio quizzes on The FAN 590 Monday morning told you everything about what turns the cranks of the average FAN listener. The topic was the 1988 Calgary Olympics and it took some time for anyone to name the two Brians who battled for figure skating gold. More amazingly, one guy's answer when asked who won silver for Canada in the women's figure skating event: Catriona Le May Doan. Better keep the questions to hockey in future.

Day 3 redux: Golden moment coverage bang on

The true test of a television network is how it handles the big moments. In the case of the Vancouver Games first big moment, the CTV-Rogers Olympic consortium gets a gold.

Coverage of Sunday night's victory by Alexandre Bilodeau, which ended a somewhat embarrassing drought of gold medals on Canadian snow and ice, was superb. While the sights and sounds were pretty much bang on, what made the night was the way CTV cameras told the story of Bilodeau and his handicapped brother Frederic.

Now, this is a story that could have been milked beyond tolerance. As a heart-warming feature that aired before the event told us, Frederic has cerebral palsy. Alexandre calls his older brother his inspiration and the relationship between the two is something to behold.

But CTV played it perfectly, showing an excited Frederic in the crowd enough times to get the point across but not so often as to detract from the coverage of the event. The shot of Frederic's beaming face after realizing Alexandre had won melted even the most cynical hearts.

Heck,  watching it for the third time Monday morning still managed to put a lump in my throat. And I thought I was about as cynical as they come.

Announcers Jamie Campbell and Veronica Brenner managed to avoid homerism for  the most part, though Campbell was a tad premature in raising  hopes after two Canadians sat in medal position. ``That podium at the end of the night could be a busy place with Canadian flags," he crowed. Unfortunately, there were still half a dozen skiers to come and, as everyone should know, the best ski last.

He also didn't need to refer to Canada as ``this great country."

But other than that the pair did a great job of transmitting the event and its magnitude. Brenner's analysis was pretty much spot-on, though even with the super slo-mo replays it's difficult to tell who's good and who isn't.

Katherine Dolan's interview with Bilodeau, which included a question about Frederic, produced a wonderful emotional moment, too. Nicely done all around.

IT WAS BOUND TO HAPPEN: CTV host Brian Williams told viewers Sunday night that they were watching the Olympics ``on CBC." As he joked later, it was bound to happen. Hey, a 30-year habit is hard to break.

MOST POINTLESS REPLAY: During Sunday's biathlon, viewers were presented with a slow-motion replay of a competitor squeezing the trigger on his rifle. That now replaces slow-motion curling replays as the most pointless on television.

Vancouver Day 3: Lost in TV land

 It's wonderful that the CTV-Rogers consortium is giving us so many chances to watch the Vancouver Olympics. But it could do a much better job of directing viewers to what's on and where.

On Sunday, for example, CTV was showing the women's speed skating 3,000 metres event, which pretty much is the big event of the day. But at the same time women's hockey (China-U.S.) was airing on Rogers Sportsnet while OLN was carrying the men's luge event.

But you would have needed a TV schedule or a fast-working remote thumb to know that. The assumption the CTV folks are making is that everybody has a computer and knows all about the broadcast strategy. Only once during the day did CTV air a notice about what was on other channels. If you weren't watching at that moment, you were on your own.

How about one of those crawls from time to time?

OVERZEALOUS INTERVIEW: There's nothing worse than those softball interviews that pollute the airwaves during too many sports events. But sometimes the interviewer goes a bit too far in trying to avoid lobbing marshmallows. A good example of that came Saturday night when Katherine Dolan made it sound as if moguls skier Jennifer Heil had somehow failed by winning silver. She basically asked her how tough it was to lose gold. Heil was obviously disappointed, but there had to be another way to phrase the questions -- especially when Heil lost only because American Hannah Kearney skied perfectly.

BEST INTERVIEW: It's not really clear what Michael Landsberg's role is, beyond doing his rapid-fire interview shtick, but he scored a coup with a guerrilla interview with U.S. vice-president Joe Biden. Risking the wrath of bodyguards and a rather stern publicist, Landsberg actually got the v-p to answer a few questions about sports. The man who's one heartbeat away from the Oval Office is picking the U.S. to win the women's hockey gold, if you're wondering.

TYPO OF THE DAY: During a post-event interview with moguls skier Chloe Dufour-Lapointe Saturday night, a CTV graphic identified her as ``Fufour-Lapointe." Who said close only counts in horseshoes?

MORE EXPLANATION, PLEASE: It's great when analysts explain what's going on and why, say, ski jumper A is better than ski jumper B. But I'd like to see an explanation of hand signals. With jumpers flashing a varied combination of fingers at the cameras, I have no idea if they're celebrating their jumps, sending messages to ski jumping gangs in Finland or telling us to take a flying leap.

PLEASE, NO MORE CLOSEUPS: As if watching biathlon wasn't enough of a challenge -- anyone who can figure out who's leading deserves a medal -- the cameras don't make it any easier. During Sunday's ski-and-shoot sprint, CTV gave us a slow-motion close-up a guy horking out a pretty significant wad of saliva after crossing the finish line. Another good reason to avoid HD.

SEPARATED AT BIRTH: Rod Smith and Steve Armitage. They don't look alike, but Smith calling speed skating sure sounds an awful lot like the old CBC guy. Have they ever been seen together in the same broadcast booth?

Vancouver Day 2: Record ratings for opening ceremony

It may have run a little overtime and the ending was a bit of a letdown, but Friday's Vancouver Olympics opening ceremony was the most-watched event in Canadian TV history.

Records have to be taken with a bucket of salt these days, what with all of them soaring since a new measuring system was brought in last summer, the numbers from Friday are truly staggering. According to BBM Canada overnight ratings, an average of 13.3 million Canadians watched the three-hour broadcast. That's better that one in three people in the country.

Overall, more than 23 million Canadians watched some or all of the broadcast on CTV and 10 other broadcast consortium channels. That's 78 per cent of the population, if you're wondering.

By comparison, that 13.3 milliion average is more than double the audience of the Super Bowl and Grey Cup. The previous record was 10 million for the 2002 Olympic gold medal hockey game, but that was based on the old ratings system. With the new one, a Canadian gold medal victory this time could easily approach 20 million.

OPENING A HIT FOR NBC, TOO: Friday's opening ceremony scored a huge rating for NBC, up 47 per cent from Torino and the most-watched Olympic costume drama not held in the U.S. NBC reports it was watched by 67.5 million Americans and an average of 32.6 million.

CANADIAN-AMERICAN SWITCHEROO: So, guess who directed the world feed for Friday's opening ceremony? Greg Breakall, a Canadian. Who directed CTV's coverage? Louis Horvitz, an American. Not to sound like a toque-wearing homer who was drinking Molson and eating dill-pickle chips while watching, but NBC's coverage looked a tad crisper to me. From what I hear, CTV didn't use many world feed shots while NBC did. You do have to wonder why CTV cameras kept focusing on the Governor-General's stand, which early in the proceedings resembled the coat-check room at a Legion smoker.

AND THE OLYMPIAN KNUCKLEHEAD OF THE DAY IS ... Sportsnet anchor Don Taylor, who opened Saturday's show with a juvenile reference to the technical glitch that messed up the finale of the opening ceremony. ``I really appreciated it, as a man over 45, when the hydraulics didn't work on the cauldron. I really appreciated it. I felt it was dedicated to me." That might have received a few laughs in a bar. But on national TV?

TRAINING SECRETS: We always assumed that Canadian Olympians trained on the most nutritious food, watching every calorie, carbohydrate and protein. But, according to a McDonald's commerical, we now know they spend their lunchtimes scarfing down Big Macs and fries. Who knew?

UGH: Sportsnet anchor Evanka Osmak produced Saturday's first clanger, telling viewers that Canadian athletes were ``hoping to podium." Podium is not a verb. Neither is ``medal."

Whotheman.com: Sports talk TV, web-style

Necessity has been called the mother of invention and in this case it was some fans' need for more air time that gave birth to an Internet sports business.

It was the spring of 2007 and the Toronto Raptors were battling in the NBA playoffs. Basketball nuts Ali Ghafour and Jesse Moeinifar tuned in to a FAN 590 post-game show to do what basketball nuts like to do: express their opinions. But the lines were jammed, time was short and they didn't get on.

``All we could get was a busy signal," says Moeinifar. ``So we're sitting there thinking there's got to be a better way to do this."

Thus was born whotheman.com, an interactive online forum for sports nuts.It's call-in radio -- actually TV -- on the web. But this isn't just one of those message boards that usually degenerate into name-calling by BigDoggy17 or Studmuffin69. The debates on this website, spurred by the site's latest news offerings, are done by video.

They keep score, too, with members voting on which side of the debate won them over. Should Jose Calderon stay or go? Should Brett Favre retire? They're all fodder for members, some of whom provide some pretty creative videos.

While much of it involves Joe looking into a webcam and professing his undying love or hatred for a certain athlete or team, many go way beyond that. One guy offers his opinions apparently while making pizzas in a restaurant. Others are just very funny.

There are tournaments, too, with members deciding who moves on to the next round.

``They'll challenge each other to a battle, then members vote on who's right," says Moeinifar. ``It's no longer about the person with the loudest voice. It's about the voice of the collective. It's very democratic."

The beauty of the video approach is that people tend to be a bit more civilized than those on message boards.

``They don't come across as nasty as they do on message boards because their faces are up there," says Moeinifar. ``They're not using their real names in most cases, but things are more civilized when it's your face out there. And there are a lot of people doing the debating.

Since launching last August, it's getting more than 20,000 visitors a day from 70 countries. Ghafour and Moeinifar believe this is only a start.

The two have so much belief in the concept they quit their jobs -- Moeinifar was selling real estate and Ghafour was working in IT -- and invested more than $100,000 in the business.

They believe they're only a few months away from turning a profit, but not in the usual way. While the site has a few ads, they plan to license the news-gathering and video technology that drives the site.

``We're pleasantly surprised to find we're the only ones out there," says Ghafour.

Ali Ghafour, left, and Jesse Moeinifar want to be the call-in show of the web. 

 

Super ratings show strength of Grey Cup and World juniors, too

Not surprisingly, the Super Bowl scored big in the ratings Sunday and has become the new high-water mark for Canadian television. It was a game filled with great storylines and featured the two most attractive teams in the NFL.

An average of just over 6 million people watched the game on CTV and another 650,000 saw it on French-language RDS. That's small potatoes compared with the 106 million who watched the game in the U.S., but the Canadian total of 6.7 million is pretty impressive.

But in most respects, the size of that audience highlighted how successful the World junior hockey final and Grey Cup were. The junior final scored 5.3 million on TSN while the Grey Cup audience was 5.1 million. While those numbers are lower than the Super Bowl, remember that they were on TSN and it has a smaller reach than CTV.

In addition, neither of those events benefited from continent-wide publicity. The last I checked, there were no Grey Cup promos or world junior ads on NBC or CBS. The fact that the total Grey Cup audience, including RDS, was 6.1 million is something the league can use against those who say interest in the game is dying.

The only down side to the numbers was what happened in the Toronto-Hamilton region. The Super Bowl drew an average of 2 million viewers there. The Grey Cup audience in that coveted region was 900,000.

That's why reviving the Toronto Argonauts is so essential to the CFL.

But the Super Bowl wasn't the only thing Canadians watched on the weekend. Women's curling scored big numbers for TSN and the NHL's 29th best team drew big numbers for both CBC and Rogers Sportsnet.

 Here are the top weekend sports ratings on English-Canadian television, as complied by BBM Canada:

1. NFL, Super Bowl, Sunday, CTV: 6,025,000

2. NHL, Senators at Leafs, Saturday, CBC: 2,080,000

3. Curling, Tournament of Hearts final, Sunday, TSN: 1,200,000

4. NHL, Leafs at Devils, Friday, Sportsnet Ontario: 834,000*

5. Curling, Tournament of Hearts semifinal, Saturday, TSN: 800,000

6. Curling, Tournament of Hearts Page playoff, Friday, TSN: 737,000

7. NHL, Penguins at Canadiens, Saturday, CBC: 718,000

8. NHL, Bruins at Canadiens, Sunday, CBC: 646,000

9. NHL, Oilers at Avalanche, Saturday, CBC: 632,000

10. NFL, Super Bowl pre-game, Sunday, CTV: 573,000

11. Skiing, World Cup cross-country, Saturday, CBC: 437,000

12. Curling, Tournament of Hearts tie-breaker, Friday, TSN: 393,000

13. Golf, PGA Northern Trust Open, Sunday, TSN: 248,000

* Ontario only

Super Bowl gets Toronto flavour and the Argo cheerleaders

The Argo cheerleaders finally get to a championship game, at least on a Super Bowl graphic.

The Toronto Argonauts cheerleaders didn't get to go the Grey Cup this year or even to the CFL playoffs, unless they bought tickets. But they're going to be part of the Super Bowl.

And while the Grey Cup didn't grace the streets of Toronto this year, the Vince Lombardi Trophy did spend a few days in Toronto.

The trophy and some of the Argo dance crew posed for the main  graphics that CBS will use during Sunday's Super Bowl, which were once again produced by Toronto's Big Studios.

The production company has been doing NFL and Super Bowl work off and on since 1998. The difference this year was that CBS didn't approach the Toronto firm until pretty late in the game.

``We usually start working in late summer, but this year things were put together late," says owner/partner Jocelyne Meinert . ``It ended up being left to the last minute. There were a lot of long hours."

A warehouse was rented and soon a 22-foot-high Super Bowl logo was being built along with a 12-foot NFL on CBS logo. The Lombardi trophy, accompanied by security guards, arrived during the two-day shoot.

The company has received several Emmy nominations for design and has won three: two for Super Bowls and one for Monday Night Football. It has also done graphics for the MLB Network, ESPN and CTV's Olympics package.

 The current graphics will be used on CBS for next season.

Meinert's team consisted of senior producer Michael Moore and designers Shannon Wong, Santosh Isaac and Jordan Greenstein.

MORE SUPER STUFF: If you don't have an aerial or an illegal satellite dish, there are two ways to watch the American Super Bowl commercials. One is to move to Quebec and subscribe to a Videotron specialty package that will show the unadulterated CBS feed. That might be a tad expensive. The other is to wait until the game is over and log on to www.cbssports.com/ads. They'll all be there in widescreen format. You could move to Buffalo, too, but that seems a tad extreme. ... The NFL Network is airing an 8 1/2-hour pre-game show Sunday while CBS keeps things relatively short with only six hours.