American Idol roared back in Canada last night, drawing 2,926,000 viewers on CTV. While that’s probably good enough to rank as the No. 1 show of the week, it was proportionally off from the estimated 33.2 million viewers who saw it on Fox in the U.S.–where it registered its lowest series debut in four years.
The two hour return of Idol was a major setback for the new CBC dramedy jPod, slashing its ratings down to 250,000 viewers across Canada–a steep decline from the 472,000 who caught the debut one week before. Losing almost half your audience in one week is not good.
Unscathed head to head with Idol at 8 p.m. was the Rick Mercer Report, which actually went up last night to 832,000 viewers. (Last week it drew 810,000).
Meanwhile, Monday’s second episode of The Border was seen by an estimated 599,000 CBC viewers, just 15% off last week’s solid debut and more than the CBC National News drew that night (596,000). Not bad considering the stiff competition: CTV’s Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (1,114,000 in Canada and an even bigger hit in the U.S. on Fox) and the Drew Barrymore movie 50 First Dates on Global (946,000), as well as City-TV’s savvy pickup of American Gladiators in the Toronto market.
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