It’s a Grey Cup audience record for TSN

It was won (and lost) on the final play, which gave the telecast plenty of drama. It was unpredictable and strange, but never dull, although the first quarter did not look promising.

  And, it didn’t hurt that TSN’s leading CFL draw, Saskatchewan Roughriders, was in the Grey Cup game against the Montreal Alouettes.

  When it was over, all those factors helped deliver to TSN an audience of 5.087 million viewers – a TV record for the CFL’s championship game.

  TSN’s viewership, combined with RDS’s French language audience of 1.009 million, brought the national total to 6.096 million, which is also a record.

   These are preliminary figures and they could change slightly, but not much. The record will stand.

  The previous Grey Cup mark was set in 2002 when the CBC drew 4.416 million for Edmonton Eskimos-Alouettes (a English language record), and RDS pulled in 1.019 million, bringing the total of 5.435 million (a national record).

   But measuring the 2002 audience against the 2009 figure is an apples and oranges comparison. The new BBM Canada system of measurement, called the Portable People Meter, has significantly increased live sports audiences across the board since it was introduced to the English Canadian market in September.

  The big change involves group viewing. It’s now being measured and it wasn’t in the past. And for big events such as the Grey Cup, there is plenty of group viewing, at house parties and in bars and restaurants. Those audiences weren’t measured in 2002.

  RDS’s audience of 1.009 million was not a record. Its largest Grey Cup audience tuned in last year when 1.062 million watched the Als lose to the Calgary Stampeders. That audience was measured by the PPMs.

  For TSN, it’s 5.087 million ranks as its largest audience ever for any telecast, easily surpassing the 3.7 million  for the 2009 world junior gold medal game between Canada and Sweden.

  The audience peaked at 8.35 million at 9:49 p.m. ET, when Damon Duval converted his second attempt at a field goal to win the game 28-27 for Montreal.

   The afternoon pre-game show averaged 2.2 million viewers. The post-game telecast was watched by 2.1 million. Both are impressive numbers. TSN.ca had 2.9 million page views on Sunday.

  A full review of TSN’s Grey Cup telecast can be read on the previous post.

  Weekend audiences

 The absence of the Toronto Maple Leafs cost Hockey Night In Canada at least 250,000 viewers on Saturday night.

  The show’s 7 p.m. ET game, with the Leafs playing, had been averaging more than two million viewers. With Toronto idle on Saturday, a large segment of the southern Ontario market tuned out and the audience dropped to 1.783 million. Hockey Night aired three games: Washington Capitals-Montreal Canadiens went nationally, with Calgary-Columbus and Boston-Ottawa seen regionally.

  The pre-game show continues to draw exceptionally well. It had 644,000. The second game of the doubleheader, Vancouver-Edmonton, was watched by a 1.202 million, well above the average.

 Regional hockey: Friday, Calgary Flames-Detroit Red Wings, 228,000; San Jose Sharks-Edmonton Oilers, Rogers Sportsnet West 255,000. Sunday, Sharks-Canucks, 399,000, Sportsnet Pacific.

Football: Vanier Cup, Calgary-Queens, TSN, Saturday afternoon, 399,000. (The Score’s audience last year was 109,000.) CFL Player Awards show, Saturday, TSN, 212,000.

NFL: CTV’s regional 1 p.m. telecast, 735,000; Sportsnet 4 p.m. regional, 259,000; City TV telecast, 472,000; Sunday night game, Baltimore-Pittsburgh, TSN2, 205,000.

 Basketball: Toronto Raptors-Boston Celtics, Friday, TSN, 222,000;  Phoenix Suns-Raptors, CBC, Sunday afternoon, 334,000.

Alpine skiing: Saturday: Aspen women’s GS, run one, 63,000 viewers, CBC; Lake Louise men’s downhill, 119,000; Aspen women’s GS, run two, 199,000.

 Soccer: EPL, Sportsnet, Saturday morning, 67,000.

TSN does well with bizarre Grey Cup

 TSN has televised better games than Sunday’s Grey Cup, but it’s unlikely that it has put a camera on anything quite as strange as the Montreal Alouettes’ double-jeopardy 28-27 triumph over the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

  What a bizarre game this was. It was fraught with errors, most of them by the Als. But the worst, the one monstrous mistake, belonged to the Roughriders.

   “It’s hard to absorb what we just saw,” said an astonished Chris Cuthbert after the Riders appeared to have the game won when Montreal’s Damon Duval missed a 43-yard field goal attempt in the final seconds, only to lose it because the Riders had too many men on the field and thus gave Duval a second chance.

   As Cuthbert cleverly noted, everyone was talking before the game about the advantage of the Riders’ 13^th man – the team’s overwhelming support in the stands at McMahon Stadium. As it turned out, it was a 13^th man on the field that cost the Riders the Cup.

   But TSN’s post-game reporting on the Riders’ mistake was thin. Sara Orlesky and Farhan Lalji interviewed only Alouettes players immediately after the game. We didn’t hear from the Rider coaching staff soon enough. Game analyst Glen Suitor gave us no real insight into this monumental screw-up, which no doubt will have the population of Saskatchewan grinding its teeth over the winter months and for years to come.

    The game was close, of course, and the ending weirdly dramatic, but it was often sloppy and not particularly well played.  That said, TSN delivered a strong telecast. The cameras caught everything. The CableCam was used judiciously but effectively, as was the shot from the helicopter. The crowd pans conveyed the energy of the crowd and the player close-ups did what they’re supposed to do, which is enhance the drama of the moment. And the multiple replays solved the mysteries of at least two reviewable calls, although the ruled Als non-catch late in the game was inconclusive even when TSN replayed the arc of the ball frame by frame.

   As for Cuthbert and Suitor, they’re veteran play callers and they can be counted on to do a reasonably good job. Cuthbert missed a few things. He didn’t tell us how long Duval’s game ending field goal attempt, the first one, would be. As for Suitor, he’s a non-stop information machine. Some of his analysis and commentary hit the mark, but there was often just too much of it. After a while I suspect many viewers just stopped listening.

   Cuthbert was even more verbose. He went on and on, reciting stats that nobody, most of us anyway, cared about. He wouldn’t give the telecast a second of silence or a chance to breathe.

   For example, on Montreal’s second quarter field goal, as Duval was getting ready to kick the ball, Cuthbert felt the need to talk instead of letting the moment speak for itself. He had to tell us that Duval was the league’s leading scorer in the regular season, had 242 points, was 18-18 in the regular season, but missed a field goal in the East final.

     Dave Randorf’s work as Grey Cup host was good. I knocked him a few days ago for seeming to yell rather than actually talk to his audience. But there was none of that on Sunday. His delivery was direct and controlled, but not over the top.

   Brian Williams and his producers delivered two good pre-game features, one on the 1989 Grey Cup, a thriller between Saskatchewan and Hamilton Tiger-Cats, and another a look back at the start of the western hoopla of the Grey Cup, in 1948, when Calgary fans made the trip east. In his interview with CFL commissioner Mark Cohon, Williams aggressively quizzed him on reports that clubs wish to reduce the starting roster spots for Canadians to four from seven. Cohon waffled, refusing to give a straight answer, probably because he can’t. The owners will do what they want.

 Milbury’s temper

  For a moment during Hockey Night In Canada, Mike Milbury seemed ready to pull off his shoe and use it on Ian Pulver. The big guy was sputtering over Pulver’s rules-are-rules attitude to a suggested solution for an NHL problem.

 Pulver, a Bob Goodenow acolyte and now a player agent, defended during the Hotstove segment the regime of Goodenow, the former NHL Players’ Association executive, to which Milbury, face red, said, “That was the most untrusting guy in the goddamned world.”

  The expletive wasn’t needed, but Milbury had it right about Goodenow. What’s more, the idea (which Pulver opposed) of retaining salaries in trades is a good one. True, it would mean a revision to the collective bargaining agreement, but it would loosen up the trade market.

 Pulver argued against a CBA change, because he says the agreement needs time to “breathe.” Well, the agreement has been breathing or trying to since 2005, and for the most part it’s left the game gasping for air. U.S. teams are still struggling. And, thanks to the CBA, the season is less interesting, because trades don’t happen anymore.

 What is half a Tiger worth?

 Perhaps it was all Tiger’s fault, as he says, and his wife Elin acted “courageously,” but speculation about what motivated Woods to drive his Cadillac SUV into a fire hydrant and a tree in the middle of the night outside his Florida home has moved well past the assumed ire of his wife (over an alleged infidelity). Now. it’s all about the estimates of Tiger’s net worth in a divorce settlement.

  This line comes from a TV executive, “Is that the first time Tiger has hit a water hazard and a tree on one drive? The only questions now being are what iron did Elin use (to smash in back window of Tiger’s car) and what is half a Tiger worth? Greg Norman may soon think he got off easy.” Norman paid his wife $300-million (U.S.) in his divorce settlement.

Hodge out at CFRB

 Sources report – as does Toronto blogger Fred Patterson — that Rick Hodge, the long time sportscaster, has been dropped by CFRB. He’s been off the air for several days and his name no longer appears on the CFRB website. The affable Hodge was sports director at CHUM FM for the best part of 30 years before joining CFRB in 2008.

Advice for TSN’s Grey Cup commentators

 TSN will go wall-to-wall with football coverage this weekend by focusing heavily on Sunday’s Grey Cup game, but also airing the Vanier Cup on Saturday.

   The network has scheduled 25 hours of football programming; it will use 32 cameras to shoot the Grey Cup (Montreal Alouettes-Saskatchewan Roughriders); the crew at Calgary’s McMahon Stadium will consist of 150 production and technical people; the bells and whistles will include a cable cam (the robotic camera than runs along a grid above the field); a camera shooting from a helicopter; and a camera at the CFL command centre to shoot the deliberations of a review if it is required.

   Chris Cuthbert, who is announcing his 12^th Grey up, will be in the booth with Glen Suitor. At field level, co-hosts Brian Williams and Dave Randorf will provide commentary along with sideline reporters Farhan Lalji and Sara Orlesky. (Rod Black and Duane Forde will call the Vanier Cup at Universite Laval in Quebec.)

   Three of TSN’s franchise shows  – SportsCentre, Off The Record  and Dave Hodge’s The Reporters — will be live on location in Calgary. You can’t have a TSN football telecast without the panel of Chris Schultz, Matt Dunigan, Jock Climie and Milt Stegall, the combined weight of which is, according to a TSN release, 1,050 pounds (no metric conversion). For the pre-game on Sunday, Williams will interview CFL commissioner Mark Cohon. And after calling the Vanier Cup, Forde will fly to Calgary to provide more Grey Cup analysis.

  It sounds impressive – it is impressive — but to improve things even more, we have suggestions:

• That Dave Randorf talk to us instead of yell at us.
• That Jock Climie lose, just a little – and we know this will be difficult – his air of superiority.
• That Glen Suitor takes a breath once in a while. Yes, we realize Glen thinks he gets paid by a word, but he needs to say less. When the huddle breaks, we need to hear the quarterback make his call and Suitor needs to shut up.
• That Cuthbert dials it down. Cuthbert is a talented play caller, accurate, well prepared and smart. And it’s certainly important to bring energy to the telecast. But Cuthbert has a high pitched voice, and it gets higher when he’s excited. Like Suitor, he also needs to cut back on the verbiage.

Fan590 turns down Grey Cup

 The Corus chain of radio stations owns rights to the Grey Cup, but interest in Toronto, where the Argonauts are inept and nobody cares, was so low Corus offered the game to the Fan590 for next to nothing and was turned down.

  Corus’s AM640 will air the broadcast — the station wasn’t given an option, apparently — but will lose money on it because it will be pre-empting sold out programming, according to people familiar with radio in the city. Sources say Corus offered the Cup broadcast to the Fan590, which airs Argonaut games, for a price of only $500. The Fan said no thanks.

 Grey Cup record?

 If the Grey Cup pulls in a record TV audience, the most important factor will be the results produced by the new measurement system, the Portable People Meter, which was introduced to the English Canadian market in September.

  Unlike the old system, the PPM measures group viewing, and that will push up TSN’s numbers significantly.

  One reader alertly pointed out that the first draft of my column yesterday reported that PPMs were new to Quebec. They’re not. They’ve been used in that market for more than a year. Therefore, RDS’s Grey Cup audience won’t show a huge increase from last year’s 1.062 million.

  That makes a record audience (TSN and RDS combined) difficult, but not impossible. TSN will need to draw at least 4.3 million and RDS 1.2 million.

  Another reader asked if audience figures affect advertising revenue. The answer is yes, but only future advertising dollars. Networks base the price of ad time on audience performances over previous years.

 Predictions

  Rogers Sportsnet’s two Grey Cup experts, Orlondo Steinauer and Giulio Caravatta, both former CFLers, pick the Als, who are heavily favoured, to defeat the Riders.

  Cavavatta stated in a Sportsnet release, “Saskatchewan has been proving people wrong all season, but I think the fairy tale won’t end on a happily ever-after note.”

 Mark Cohon will be interviewed on Sportsnet’s Connected on Friday.

 Controversial documentaries

  The Fight Network will air on Saturday (8 p.m. ET) a British documentary on families that involve their children, at ages 4 and 5, in Thai boxing, the fastest growing martial art in the Britain. The film titled, Strictly Baby Fight Club, shows 9 year old boys fighting in a cage brawl.

  The following week, Saturday, Dec.5, 8 p.m., TFN will air Bum Fights, which reports on the phenomenon of filming brawls involving the homeless and mentally ill, and selling the videos. TFN calls it a “big noisy film on an ugly shocking subject.”

 Milestones of the week

 Scarlett Johansson turned 25 on Sunday, the same day on which Rodney Dangerfield would have celebrated his 88^th birthday if he hadn’t expired five years ago. No respect. Joe DiMaggio would have been 95 yesterday. He died 10 years ago. And Tina Turner is 70 today. From 1971:

How the Grey Cup audience could skyrocket

  We could be looking at a record television audience for Sunday’s Grey Cup game.

   For that to happen, a confluence of important factors will need to come to the aid of TSN and RDS.

   But it’s very possible.

  For starters, the Montreal Alouettes-Saskatchewan Roughriders game will need to be entertaining and, by definition, close. Overtime is preferable.

   TSN drew the second lowest Cup audience ever, 2.439 million, for its inaugural telecast last season largely because of the low level of entertainment squeezed out by the Als and Calgary Stampeders.

   It wasn’t a good match-up, either. The absence of both of the country’s big English language market teams, B.C. Lions and Toronto Argonauts, hurt viewership.

   As well, TSN, a cable channel, fell about three million households short of the nation-wide distribution offered by the previous Grey Cup network, the broadcaster CBC.

  It also helps the TV numbers if the Grey Cup game as a strong halftime show.  In 2002, when the Grey Cup TV record was set (4.416 million for the CBC and 1.019 million for RDS, bringing the national total to 5.435 million), Shania Twain did the show. This year’s act, Blue Rodeo, is okay, but it’s no Shania Twain.

   Still, TSN and RDS have two important factors going for them. It’s a good match-up, despite the absence of the big market Argos and Lions. The Als, as RDS’s home team, will give the French language network a one million-plus audience. Without the Als, RDS would be looking at 200,000.

   For TSN, the Roughriders, as reported in our previous post, are the network’s CFL audience leader.

   But here’s the big factor. The new system of measuring audiences, the Portable People Meter, will push up the TSN audience by  a huge amount.

   In the past, group viewing wasn’t measured. The devise on the TV that recorded the number of people tuned in did not register multiple viewers.

   With the new system, the respondents carry around devices, like pagers. If they are at a Grey Cup party on Sunday, their attendance in front of the TV will be measured. If they’re in a bar, and the TV audio is turned up (audio is required to the trigger the devise) they will be counted.

   This will make an enormous difference to the audience.

   Since the PPMs were introduced in September, TSN’s CFL audiences have jumped 50 per cent and some cases even doubled.

   So, on Sunday, let’s assume it’s a good game and TSN by the old measurement system draws three million viewers. That’s a good number, but not great.

   However, the new PPM system will spike that audience by at least 33 per cent. If so, suddenly, TSN is looking at a viewership of four million or more instead of three million.

   As for RDS, it drew a record 1.062 million for last year’s Grey Cup, using the new PPM measurement. The system was introduced to the Quebec market more than a year ago.  So, let’s assume RDS matches last year’s audience.

  If  TSN gets 4.5 million viewers, you probably will have a total that exceeds the previous high of 5.435 million.

  It’s a bit of a long shot, but that’s how a Grey Cup record audience is possible.

Little Team on the Prairie . . . is huge on TV

  They don’t play in a small market as much as they do a teeny-weeny market. And they don’t win all that much.

  But when it comes to television, merchandising and attendance, the Saskatchewan Roughriders are giants on the Canadian sports scene.

   Consider the popularity of the Riders, who will make their second Grey Cup appearance in three years, against Montreal Alouettes, after a reasonably good season of 10-7-1, tops in the West Division.

  They are TSN’s audience champions. Four of the network’s five most watched regular season CFL games involved the Riders.

  Last Sunday for the West final, the Roughriders along with Calgary Stampeders, delivered an audience record of two million viewers to TSN, the most to ever watch a CFL playoff game on TV.

   “[The Roughriders] are clearly the biggest draw,” TSN president Phil King said this week. “It kind of flies in the face of logic, but they just are.”

  They’re also a big gate attraction on the road. All figures weren’t available, but the Edmonton Eskimos, for example, set a club record for home attendance, 62,517, when the Riders visited on Sept. 26. In terms of retailing, nobody’s close. The CFL sells more Riders merchandise than the combined total of the seven other teams. In overall CFL sales, by the league and elsewhere, the Riders make up whopping 38 per cent of the total.

  Why are they so popular?

   You could perhaps invoke the mystic pull of the prairies, the ghost of Ron Lancaster scrambling around in the backfield. Or you could compare the appeal of the Riders to another wildly popular small market football team, the Green Bay Packers.

  But there is a difference. The Packers have a history of excellence, starting the legendary Lombardi teams of the 1960s and then the Brett Favre years. The Roughriders don’t. In their long history, starting in 1910 with rugby, they’ve won only three Grey Cups

   A more apt comparison than Green Bay, King says, is a U.S. college team.

  “If you went to Syracuse University, no matter where you live, you’re an alumni and a fan, and your kid becomes a fan,” he said. “I think Saskatchewan might be a little that way. Somebody living in Regina 20 years ago maybe has moved to Toronto my now, but he’s still a huge Green Rider fan and his kids are fans.”

  That intimate connection between a fan and the team doesn’t exist as much in other markets where a fan, say in Calgary, has two professional teams for which to throw his support.

  “Being the only pro team in that province, they obviously get a ton of profile,” King said. “If you’re a sports fan in the province of Saskatchewan, you’re a Roughrider fan. It just comes with the birthplace.”

   Roughriders resonate because viewers in Toronto, Vancouver and elsewhere are impressed by the popularity of the team in its home market. It gives the Riders status. They’re the little team everybody loves.

  “People like pulling for the underdog,” King said. “The old saying is they’re everybody’s second favourite team.”

  All of this, King notes, adds up to the contradiction of a small market team ranking as the league’s leading TV attraction.

  “It’s one of the biggest paradoxes I’ve seen in sports,” he said, “where the smallest team in the league is the most popular team on television. It just doesn’t follow logic.”

   In fact, the Riders are so big on TV that King says given a choice between having Saskatchewan in the Grey Cup or the Toronto Argonauts, which play in Canada’s largest TV market, he’d take the little team on the prairie.

  “If you ask me from a pure ratings point of view which team I would like to see in there, truthfully we’d probably say Saskatchewan,” he said. “If Toronto was having a great year with 15 wins and were marching along, would that improve it? I don’t know.

 “How about Toronto and Saskatchewan in the Grey Cup?”