Ten years on, Canadians love their Rick Mercer Report.
The series blasted back Tuesday at 8 p.m. with 1,256,000 overnight, estimated viewers.
CBC’s winning Tuesday continued with the 20th season return of 22 Minutes, which also broke a million at 1,009,000. The Dragon’s Den spin-off The Big Decision drew 480,000 at 9 p.m.
Mercer’s strong showing was the series’ first test without that Jeopardy! lead-in. The George Stroumboulopoulos early show drew 287,000 at 7, followed by a half hour of Coronation Street ( 658,000). The Lang & O’Leary Exchange at 6:30 managed 145,000.
CBC trounced the higher priced, much-hyped new imports Tuesday on Global, with Matthew Perry’s Go On drawing an estimated 747,000 and Guys With Kids–already a front runner in the first-to-be-cancelled sweepstakes–443,000. The season premiere of Parenthood drew 592,000 Global viewers at 10.
Highest rated on this busy night was CTV which got off to an explosive start with their Big Bang Theory strip at 7:30 (1,738,000) followed by The Voice (1,780,000), which gets drowned out when bumped to CTV TWO, and the official Canadian premiere of Charlie Sheen’s Anger Management (1,718,000).
I’ve been recapping episodes of The Voice for the Toronto Star; catch my take on last night’s show here.
Still, CBC’s comedy one-two may have been the big winners on a very competitive night, where a further 635,000 were watching Pawn Stars on History, 587,000 caught the finale of So You Think You Can Dance on CTV Two and 513,000 took the Highway to Hell on Discovery.
As for Jeopardy, it drew 205,000 at 7:30 on CHCH, beating everything else in Toronto except Big Bang on CTV.
