Not that it was ever in doubt, but you can bank on Jann Arden.
As reported here over a week ago, the CTV comedy Jann opened to an overnight, estimated 768,000 viewers across Canada on Wednesday, March 20. CTV bumped that up to 1.4 million viewers if you combine those who watched it live and viewers who saw the encore broadcast on Saturday, March 23, plus viewers who banked it on PVRs and watched it later over a five day period.
It’s a bit of an unusual stat in that “Total” viewers are generally considered to be everybody 2+ in Canada who watched live plus over a seven day period. When that total comes in covering two more days of viewing, it will easily be twice the initial, overnight number, again factoring in the Saturday encore — bringing Jann’s debut closer to 1.5 million viewers.
CTV says it is their most successful digital premiere to date. Given that it was available to stream over several platforms for 16 days prior to its broadcast premiere, that’s not surprising.
The CTV release also declares that Jann was its biggest Canadian comedy debut since The Indian Detective. That series, starring comedian Russell Peters, opened to around 1.6 million in November of 2017. The thing is, what happened to that series? It seemed to go four episodes and out. Perhaps Netflix were the ones to pull the plug there, but given the numbers in Canada, shouldn’t it have earned a second season?
The high PVR rate for Jann falls in line with the bank now, watch later reality for other Canadian comedies. CBC’s No. 1 series when it comes to PVR use is Schitt’s Creek, which more than doubles its audience once viewers who tuned in over a seven day period are added to the live total. Workin’ Moms and Kim’s Convenience also get big lifts from Live+7 totals.
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This week, overnight estimates for the second episode of Jann came in at 526,000. viewers. All the encore and PVR audience added later will likely push the total over a million. Second episodes usually do dip bereft of all the promotional push for Episode One, but we’ll be keeping an eye on Jann over the first four episodes to see where this all heads. I’ve screened next Wednesday’s third episode and it is probably the funniest of the first three.
Arden’s show was hammocked between The Goldbergs (446,000) and Grey’s Anatomy (1,044,000) this Wednesday, with new import Whiskey Cavalier drawing 789,000 overnight on CTV.
Global has Wednesday’s big show, Survivor, which pulled 1,405,000 that night. Chicago‘s Fire and PD followed at 879,000 and 651,000. CBC had a quiet night with Diggstown (279,000) and UK import Ordeal by Innocence (195,000). Citytv had nothing but reruns under 200,000. Ditto CTV Two.
The big draw in sports Wednesday in overnights was over on Sportsnet, which had the Leafs struggling against the Flyers (1,033,000).
