Leafs Lose, Networks Win in Big Night of TV. So Why Is Brandon Really Being Shut Down?

Another huge night of numbers in Canada as Hockey Night in Canada body checked its way into the ratings race. Game One between old rivals Toronto and Montreal scored 2,508,000 viewers Thursday according to BBM Canada overnight estimates. That a lot of hockey fans even in a PPM world (where live news and sporting events seem to be bigger draws than ever before). Still, the sportcast–back for a 57th season!–was only the third most-watched program on Canadian screens last night.
No. 1 for the evening was CTV’s Grey’s Anatomy at 3 million-plus (on the CTV “Total” MMB score). Nothing was broken on the Broken Business Model network on this night: CTV Evening News at 6: 1,725,000 commercial. CSI at 8: 2,382,000. The Mentalist at 10: 2,273,000. The CTV National News at 11: 1,288,000.
Only CTV’s lone rookie, The Vampire Diaries, sucked on this night, drawing 790,000.
Global had a mixed night, scoring with evergreen Survivor Samoa (2,616,000) but The Office (667,000) and another one of lame Saturday Night Live timeslot fillers (375,000) seemed to get body checked by the hockey broadcast. 90210 at 10 underperformed as usual with 418,000 viewers, a bad number pre-PPMs.
More for CBC to cheer about: the west coast game on HNiC snagged another 1,377,000 and the pre-game at 7 brought in 1,708,000.
One other number to throw at you: this site drew a record 4,591 page loads yesterday, including 4,119 unique visitors. Mr. TV Feeds My Family thanks you and also thanks Pierre Bourque, who kindly threw a link or two this way from his popular news gathering site the Bourque Newswatch.
That’s where you’ll find this link to the CP story on the demise of CTV’s Brandon, Man., station, which shuts its doors after 54 years after tonight’s 6 p.m. newscast. Despite a wave of hearty if not record ratings across the network as new episodes return this fall, a deal with Bluepoint Investments to save the station collapsed yesterday. CTV CEO Ivan Fecan threw in the towel in a memo to staff that afternoon. The dis-missive took a swipe at satellite carriers that would not carry Brandon but find “plenty of room for foreign signals.”
It was the second time in three months CTV tried to give CKX-TV away for a dollar. Some might say the showy shutdown of a market it doesn’t value is all part of CTV’s relentless scheme to trick Ottawa into allowing it to pry carriage fee loot out of the hands of Rogers and Shaw. There was no mention in the memo of the tens of millions CTV overspent every year this decade importing American shows it sometimes kept on the shelf just to play keep-a-way with rival Global.
According to the CP article, 39 employees at the station are out of work.