The Jays final at bat–Friday’s Game 6 of the ALCS–brought a record take to Sportsnet. The first three hours of the broadcast drew an estimated, overnight 5,052,000 viewers. An astounding 3,998,000 hung in there for the 42-minute rain delay, followed by 5,365,000 who watched to the bitter end.
Sportsnet rounded that off by issuing a release saying 5.12M watched the entire game, declaring it the most-watched broadcast in the specialty network’s history. The previous best was the 4.85M who saw the Jays come-from-behind win over Texas in Game 5 of the ALDS.
Friday’s final Jays tilt of the season was well up over the previous ALCS games against Kansas City. Game 3 on Monday, Oct. 19–election night in Canada–drew an overnight, estimated 3,641,000 viewers to Sportsnet. Game 4 on the 20th sank to 2,759,000.
Election coverage on the networks on the 19th broke down this way in the overnights (which likely represents pretty close to the total): CBC drew 1,616,000 from when the polls closed at 9:30 p.m. ET to 11 p.m., 1,856,000 from 11 p.m. to midnight and 1,756,000 from midnight to 1 a.m. CTV did 1,730,000 for seven hours of coverage starting at 7 p.m. Global grabbed 625,000 after NCIS signed off at 9 p.m.
With the Jays done for the season, will some of the new fall shows be able to bounce back? The Toronto team’s playoff run has impacted the fall rookies in October. Look at these early numbers among the fall fast starters (all overnight 2+ tallies, Live+7 totals are much higher):
Quantico (CTV): 09/27 1778k 10/04 1790k 10/11 (Jays 4.2M) 1129k 10/18 1493k 10/25 (Jays out) 1570k
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Blindspot (CTV): 09/21 1526k 09/28 1357k 10/05 1572k 10/12 (Jays: 4.4M) 1204k 10/19 (bumped to CTV2 due to CTV’s election coverage so toss this one out) 334k
Limitless (Global): 09/22 1610k 09/29 1308k 10/06 1329k 10/13 1077k 10/20 (Jays 2.8M) 987k