Flashpoint hit its target and then some in its fourth season opener Friday with 1.4 million viewers across Canada. In even better news, the Toronto-based cop drama (featuring Hugh Dillon, right) had a strong return in simulcast on CBS, where it drew 6.23 million viewers. That ranked it ahead of a repeat of CSI: New York (5.96 mil.) and right behind a Blue Bloods rerun (6.58 mil.) as the biggest draws of a soft summer night. ABC’s quasi-Can-con entry Shark Tank (4.09 mil.) and NBC’s second last episodes of Friday Night Lights (3.0 mil.), were opposite Flashpoint in the States.
By way of comparison, Flashpoint Friday outgunned Thursday’s ABC airing of similar cross-border cop entry Rookie Blue (5.68 mil.).
A huge hit in Canada, CBS treats Flashpoint like a utility player, bringing it in off the bench to spell pricier America-made starters and work innings in the summer months. The Canadian executive producers of Flashpoint, Anne Marie La Traverse and Bill Mustos, know their role and are willing to accept it as long as CBS keeps asking for more. Six more new episodes of Flashpoint will simulcast on CTV and CBS this summer Fridays at 8 ET before the series switches to Tuesday nights this fall on CTV. A fifth season has been ordered by the Canadian network; CBS, as usual, will make everybody sweat it out until the very end of September before renewing their commitment–a hardball tactic that keeps the price down.
The strong fourth season return should show CBS prez Nina Tassler and company that the fan base is not going anywhere and perhaps growing thanks to exposure on Netflix and other platforms. For more on this complicated cross border success story, check out this feature I wrote last week for The Canadian Press.
2 Comments
How do I start this. I’m not a great writer. However I do know how I feel and felt about FLASHPOINT from the very beginning. Yes NCIS and all those other shows on CBS are very good but FLASHPOINT is in a class by themselves. You don’t have to have bloody guts like an autopsy all over the place or have someone always get killed. They have very good scripts written by people that have a gift for the imaginary and for the realistic. You want to know about TEAM ONE on the job and in person. And the people playing this team are magnificent at their craft. If CBS’ prez Nina Tassler and company do not understand this by now they never will.
I greatly admire Hamilton’s CHCH attitude here. They moved up the Smallville repeats to its two part finale last week against the Flashpoint premiere at 8 O’clock. Unfortunately it had a dud series finale! (part 2 is a little less ‘dud’.) Better to have left it with any of its other very solid 10th season episodes. Unless that ‘dud’ move was dictated via The CW.