I’m in San Francisco, just back from a full day tour of George Lucas`Skywalker Ranch. It’s all in aid of promoting Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the animated series, which begins Season Two Oct. 5 on Teletoon in Canada.
I’m a guest of Teletoon, one of the networks that caters to children that has seen a leap in ratings ever since the new BBM Canada PPM’s were introduced at the end of last month. All those kiddies and parents who were previously too busy to log in every time they had the set on are now counted automatically. Teletoon’s Saturday Morning shows in particular are through the roof.
One week ago, on Sept. 16, they had seven shows tilt over 100,000 viewers, with Johnny Test pulling 243,000 and Ben 10: Alien Force at 246,000. A Season One episode of Clone Wars drew 186,000 the same day–close to what it was getting Sundays on CTV last season.
Family Channel has been getting even bigger audiences with its stable of Disney sitcoms. Sept. 16 on Family: Wizards of Waverly Place 473,000, Hannah Montana 361,000, Phineas and Ferb 451,000, Suite Life 370,000. That`s a decent night on CBC.
Look at YTV`s Sept. 16 numbers, too: SpongeBob SquarePants 352,000, iCarly 281,000, Fairly Odd Parents 274,000.
MuchMusuc, which scored huge with the recent MTV Video Awards, has seen a ratings surge, too. All those passive viewers who threw MM on in the background just for the soundtrack are now being counted. A few pub numbers, now part of the overall tally, have probably added to the MM total, too.
Sports, news and live event television have generally all seen a bump thanks to the PPMs. The return of Survivor on Global last Thursday opened to 3.1 million viewers, the biggest audience for the reality series in six seasons.
The PPMs haven’t been kind to everybody. Here’s a shocker—folks aren’t watching decade old reruns on TVTropolis or TVLand quite as often as was previously reported.
TV numbers have been trending downward on broadcast networks in recent years but not this week in Canada. Old favourites have come roaring back with huge numbers. Global scored over 4.2 million Monday with House (including a colossal 2,186,000 in the demo), it`s biggest audience ever and CTV nabbed over 3 million the same night for the return of CSI: Miami. CTV’s National News scored 1,428,000 later that night. CTV`s Sunday Emmy Award coverage pulled 2 million+ over the three hour broadcast.
Not everything has been super sized thanks to PPM`s. Heroes returned Monday to Global with 597,000 viewers, a fraction of its huge House lead-in. CBC’s National News pulled under a half million viewers to start the 10 p.m. hour and lost 160,000 viewers by the 10:30 mark.
Over on City, The Jay Leno Show started its second week with 462,000 viewers at 10–4th in the timeslot (although in Toronto/Hamilton, he`s No. 2).
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