This has been going on for months now, half a year at least. Every time Donald Trump burps out another middle-of-the-night tweet or lurches into another Oval offside about Canada becoming the “51st State,” the fiercest pushback comes during the opening monologues of at least half a dozen US late night talk shows.
The folks at LateNighter.com — where publisher Jed Rosenzweig just jokingly nicknamed me the Canadian bureau chief (“Okay, he’s the entirety of our Canadian bureau”) — asked me to fact check a recent report from Parrot Analytics. It suggests that Canadians can’t get enough of the elbows-up antics of Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Seth Meyers, Saturday Night Live and others.
There is no dispute that Saturday Night Live is a massive hit in Canada. Global has simulcast all 50 seasons, and just listed it again as one of the tentpole shows Monday at their upfront to advertisers in Toronto. Parrot places it as the most in-demand series in Canada. Does, however, The Daily Show (ranked at No. 4), Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show (No. 6), and John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight (No. 10) all rank among the rest of Canada’s Top-10?
Certainly nothing in Canadian TV right now comes within kilometers of the NHL Stanley Cup playoff ratings on Sportsnet and CBC. Hockey aside, we put the Parrot assertion through the brioux.tv analytics wayback machine, a mix of actual overnight estimates and anecdotal observations. The results may surprise you.
Follow this link to the LateNighter feature for the full “Trump Bashing” breakdown.
2 Comments
SNL was simulcast on Citytv for its first decade
OK, I stand corrected. Folks at Global seem to think they always had it.