Beating Erica

How low can she go? Being Erica was down to 478,000 viewers last night, a new low for the second week in a row. That switch to Wednesday was supposed to give Erica a boost behind the more compatible female skewing reality series The Week The Women Went (720,000 last night). Instead, Erica continues to stumble dangerously close to the “more people live in Brampton” benchmark,.drawing just 196,000 25-54-year-olds across Canada last night.
This despite a constant barrage of on air promos for the series. Promo spots for Wednesdays episode began airing immediately after the previous Wednesday night episode ended and continued all week.
Erica is getting clobbered by a monster night of U.S. imports on CTV. More than 2,159,000 (once the CTV “Total” audience is added to the BBM/NMR overnight “commercial” estimates) saw the first three finalists named on American Idol last night. Criminal Minds (2.089,000) and CSI: New York (1.968,000) were almost as strong.
Global was competitive early in the evening with Bones (1,021.000), rookie drama Lie To Me (724,000) and the critically acclaimed but low-rated Life on Mars (334,000) in the mix.
Is all Lost for Erica on Wednesday nights? Being up against Lost on CTV’s A channels is part of Being Erica’s dilemma. In Toronto last night, the ABC drama drew 158,000 viewers opposite Erica‘s 109,000. Another 70,000 caught it on WKBW for a combined Lost tally of 228,000, second only to CTV’s Idol in the timeslot. In Vancouver, the A affiliate scores 189,000 Lost viewers to CBC’s 49,000 Erica take.