[hwy19man]

Originally Posted by VANFLAMESFAN

Not a chance. Leafs/bruins and Sens/habs are the easy choices. You get the ratings juggernaut that is Toronto then an all Canadian match up in Eastern time zone. CBC is is the business of making money. To drive ad revenue, you need ratings. More people will watch those series over games that end at 1am EST and its not even close.

With these choices, CBC has 3 Canadian teams as opposed to 2.

For a guy who seems to be well versed in this kind of thing, it's pretty surprising you have this mentality.

I am not complaining about the Leafs-Bruins series being on HNIC. The viewership will be high especially from Ontario to the maritime provinces. There are many Bruins fans east of Quebec and the ratings will do well.

Vancouver is the second largest english market in Canada. It is really suprising that the CBC would concede this to its arch rival. The all canadian match up will have its audience rating split between HNIC and RDS. During the regular season the Senators and Habs played on HNIC on Super Bowl Sunday and the game did not make the top 30 programming. There were less than 927,000 viewers, but, RDS had 1,052,000 viewers.

Last season (2011-2012), these two teams played each other on HNIC twice.
The Friday, March 16 game had 851,000 HNIC viewers and it did not make the top 30 list on RDS which was less than 668,000 viewers.

The Saturday, January 14 game was a regional game to Ottawa and Quebec. The Rangers at Leafs game was shown everywhere else. The CBC had 1,841,000 and less than 697,000 viewers on RDS.

The 2010-11 season had three games on HNIC:
Thursday, April 7
653,000 HNIC viewers nation wide
850,000 on RDS

Saturday, October 23
It was 1,400,000 on HNIC, but it was a regional game to Ottawa and Quebec. The Leafs at Flyers game was shown everywhere else. There were less than 808,000 viewers on RDS.

Saturday, October 16
1,394,000 HNIC viewers nation wide, the Leafs did not play that night
904,000 on RDS
__________________________________________________ __________

For the 2009-10 season, there were two games:
Saturday, October 17
1,718,000 HNIC viewers but it was a regional game. The Rangers at Leafs game was on too.
921,000 on RDS

Saturday, January 16
1,169,000 HNIC viewers nation wide, the Leafs did not play that night.
less than 743,000

It will be interesting to see how close the ratings will be between the Canucks-Sharks and the Senators-Canadiens.