from David Shoalts of the Globe and Mail,
Television ratings for Hockey Night In Canada may be down this season but there was some good news for the show this week – viewers are slowly coming around to the Rogers Media version of the NHL broadcasts.
A survey by the Angus Reid Institute of 1,522 Canadian adults found fewer of them miss the CBC version of the show than in the 2014-15 season, the first year it came under the control of Rogers’s Sportsnet network. And while there is still a strong attachment to former host Ron MacLean, more viewers are getting used to George Stroumboulopoulos, who replaced MacLean as host of the Saturday night show.
The poll found that 63 per cent of those surveyed either do not miss the CBC version of Hockey Night or still miss it but are getting used to the new format. Thirty-seven per cent said they still miss the CBC broadcast. In last year’s survey, 45 per cent of the respondents said they missed the CBC show while 41 per cent said they did not have a preference and 14 per cent said they like the Sportsnet version better.
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Ratings data from the Bureau of Broadcast Measurement (BBM) show the Toronto/Montreal game reached 9.2 million Canadians, or 27 per cent of the population. The average audience for the Prime East game was up 16 per cent from the previous record of 2.85 million set on April 7, 2007.
“This is a fantastic start to the season and to the 60th year of Hockey Night in Canada,” said Kirstine Stewart, Executive Vice President, English Services, CBC. “We’ve missed hockey as much as every fan across the country and we’re thrilled that so many Canadians joined us in celebrating the return of our game on Saturday.”
The 1.49 million viewer average audience for the Winnipeg/Ottawa game breaks the previous Saturday afternoon game record by 36 per cent and 5.3 million viewers watched at least one minute of the game. Strong audiences continued into the late game as well with nearly 1.47 million viewers taking in the Anaheim Ducks/Vancouver Canucks match-up at 10 p.m. ET with 6.1 million Canadians tuning in for at least a minute of that game.
The brand new Hockey Night in Canada: 2nd Screen presented by Budweiser interactive experience launched on Saturday with 23,700 unique visitors logging on and engaging with the broadcast and in-game features throughout the day.
In terms of online viewership, the Toronto/Montreal game was the most viewed regular season game of the last two seasons with more than 80,100 views of the live streaming coverage at CBCSports.ca – more than twice the audience for last season’s HOCKEY NIGHT IN CANADA debut game. Nearly 34,700 viewers watched the live streaming coverage of the Anaheim/Vancouver game while another 33,000 viewers tuned into the Ottawa/Winnipeg game online.
(Television audience numbers source: BBM Canada, Total Canada, Preliminary Overnights, Ind. 2+, 2013)
(Online audience number source: 2013 SiteCatalyst)
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