PASADENA, CA–There’s an ugly rumour down here that Canada somehow lost the World Junior Hockey Championships to those Ruskies. Something about a last period collapse. That explains all those birds falling out of the sky and fish dying in the seas.
Los Angeles may be in the dark about the shinny tournament in Buffalo but Canadian TV viewers were glued to it in record numbers. Wednesday’s final game drew an astounding 6.23 million viewers to TSN according to overnight estimates. That is a record for the network, up from the 5.4 million who watched last January.
Imagine how many would watch if Canada would actually win this thing.
Coupled with the RDS audience, the final game drew 6.9 million viewers across Canada. TSN’s post game show drew 3,558,000 viewers. Close to two million saw the pre-game show. The earlier USA/Sweden Bronze medal tilt pulled in another million plus.
As expected, Canada’s broadcasters all took a hit opposite the World Junior Hockey Death Star. Except for Law & Order SVU (just under 1.3 mil.), CTV, CBC and Global were all held under a million, with the People’s Choice Awards on Global drawing 971,000, a Dragon’s Den episode fetching a well below average 835,000 on CBC and a results show of that awful new Paula Abdul series Live to Dance getting 793,000 on CTV. Modern Family managed 751,000 on City Wednesday and Human Target drew 611,000 on /A.
