CTV’s big name music variety show Spectacle: Elvis Costello With…took a fast fade in Week Two. Friday night’s overnight estimated audience came in at just 418,000 viewers across Canada on the BBM Canada “commercial” scale, losing more than half its audience in a week (it scored 858,000 April 3).
That’s shockingly low given Costello’s big name guests last Friday were Sting and the reunited members of The Police and following another impressive lead-in audience for Flashpoint (1,306,000). Spectacle tumbled from first to third in the tineslot in one week behind both Numb3rs on Global (792,000) and the CBC National News (573,000).
The numbers went CTV’s way last Thursday at 10 p.m. when two new imported series premiered opposite one another. Southland, the new NBC cop drama from ER producer John Wells, arrested 1.34 million CTV viewers in its premiere, easily topping Global’s pickup of CBS’s mystery drama Harper’s Island (893,000). It doesn’t hurt that CTV’s Thursday night lineup includes CSI, which scored another 2.27 million CTV Total viewers last week.
Viewers tuning in to Harper’s Island saw one of the biggest names in the cast–former L.A. Law star Harry Hamlin–get bumped off on a bridge. Given the serial nature of this drama, plus a pretty good creep factor, don’t be surprised if Harper’s doesn’t stalk and catch Southand over the next two months.
UPDATE ON SPECTACLE: Bill Harris at Sun Media has word that U.S. cable’s Sundance Channel has ordered a second season of Costello’s Spectacle, but that CTV has yet to committ to the series. Sundance launched Spectacle back in December. Read the full story here.
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