Border No More Secure After Final Draw

The third season finale of CBC’s The Border did 506,000 Thursday night. That won’t be enough to stem speculation that the show is a toss up to return for a fourth season.
As it has been all season since being switched to Thursday nights, the homeland security series, starring James McGowan (above) as major Mike Kessler, was up against some stiff competition. CTV’s Grey’s Anatomy, which airs opposite The Border at 9 p.m., was No. 1 for the night with 2,267,000 viewers (according to BBM Canada overnight estimates). CTV’s The Mentalist was right behind with 2,139,000. Next came CTV’s always potent local supper hour newscast (1,804,000) and a new episode of Bones on Global (1,729,000). CTV`s CSI at 8 p.m. (1,670,000) rounded out the Canadian Top-5.
Helping to knock The Border down to 25th for the night was a Leafs game on TSN, which drew 1, 066,000. A Nature of Things lead in (485,000) didn’t help, nor did Private Practice (807,000), airing opposite on A channel. City at 9 went with back-to-back 30 Rock (417,000 and 405,000).
The Border was up slightly over last week’s 479,000 and at one point in October got as low as 410,000 viewers, slipping below the MPLIB level (More People Live In Brampton). It really was sent on a suicide mission this fall and winter and hopefully will be judged accordingly when CBC programmers announce their 2010-11 schedule in June.
The good news for the CBC Thursday night was the relatively high score for The National, with 729,000 catching the news at 10 in the wake of the disaster in Haiti.