The 25th Annual Gemini Awards got slammed into the boards Saturday against a powerful all-Canadian match up on Hockey Night in Canada. The Canadian television industry salute, which was hosted by Glee Canuck Cory Monteith, managed 363,000 Saturday night on Global plus another 34,000 on Showcase for a combined total that fell under the 400,000 mark. Saturday’s HNiC tilt featuring the Toronto Maple Leafs battling the Vancouver Canucks drew a whopping 2,646,000 viewers, the highest CBC score of the season. The later game, Calgary at San Jose, drew 823,000.
Perhaps Don Cherry should host the Gemini Awards next year.
A repeat of Flashpoint at 8 p.m. drew 639,000 Saturday opposite the Geminis. Even a repeat of America’s Funniest Videos on YTV at 8 beat the combined two network take for the Gemini’s.
Next year: schedule this salute to Canadian TV on a Sunday night at the end of October, when many of the powerhouse U.S. imports are taking a week off to catch their breath for the November sweeps. Saturday night in November on Global is too deep a hole for even Cory Monteith to surmount.
3 Comments
Wow! You’ve really got a hate on for “Being Erica”. So the ratings have slid. No, need to kick her when she’s down! The show still remains one of the more interesting and compelling series being produced in Canada today. I read somewhere the show is now airing in over 80 countries. So, I think a few million people are still enjoying the show, even if you don’t!
Slid?? The show gets more promotion, on billboards, radio and on CBC air, than anything else at the network–ask the producers of the other shows. Yet it has never been a hit and has tanked this year despite being protected behind CBC hits like Mercer and Dragon’s Den. Where else can they try this show–Thursday night opposite The Big Bang Theory? Sundays? After two-and-a-half seasons, Erica is proven audience repellant in Canada.
As for the rest of the world, how much of that is PR spin? There was no evidence of the show in Argentina or Hungary when I visited both countries last month, I can tell you that. According to Wikipedia, it was pulled off the air in the Netherlands. In the UK it has been buried after midnight.
Yikes. I was one of those 34,000 people watching the Geminis on Showcase. I even liveblogged it: http://ow.ly/39naI
One thing Global needs to do re: the Geminis is get the technical kinks ironed out. At one point, the live musical performance of “Josephine” was knocked out by an already-aired segment of the program. At this point, I wonder if Global even cares about the Geminis.