GREY CUP TV # UP FROM LAST YEAR @ 4.012M

CFL Talk
1

The numbers are in from the Grey Cup and we have again surpassed the 4+M mark.
With the CBC up slightly at 3.202M(peaking at 3.614M)from last year and RDS having their second highest ever at 810,000(1.19M in 02).
Even the pre game show got rave reviews at 474,000 for nearly three hours easily beating the NFL game at 344,000.

Houston: Minor rise in Grey Cup ratings good for CBC
WILLIAM HOUSTON

Globe and Mail Update

All things considered, the CBC will happily accept its audience for the Grey Cup.

It wasn't much of a game compared to last year's overtime thriller. In this one, the B.C. Lions jumped into a lead and the Montreal Alouettes never really challenged.

Still, the audience increased marginally from last year, by 1 per cent, to 3.202 million. It peaked at 3.614 million between 8:30 p.m. and 9 p.m. EST.

The CBC is handicapped when the Alouettes are in the Grey Cup, because one of the two home markets is largely French language, reducing the potential for big increases in English-language viewership.

French-language RDS, on the other hand, thrives when the Als are in the championship game. RDS drew 810,000 viewers on Sunday, its second largest audience for the Cup, after 1.19 million in 2002 for Als-Edmonton Eskimos. Last year, RDS had an audience of 796,000 for the Als' loss to Edmonton.

The combined English-French 2006 audience was 4.01 million.

The CBC's record for the Cup was set in 2002 — 4.42 million.

The pregame show from 3 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. outdrew Global Television's viewership for its live National Football League telecast, 470,000 to 344,000.

And the full broadcast, from the player introductions at 5:30 p.m. through to the conclusion of postgame coverage at 10 p.m., averaged 2.79 million viewers, up 1 per cent from 2.764 million last year.

2

So there you go ... more Canadians watched the PRE-GAME SHOW than a live, NFL game. Good to hear ...

3

This is good news.

However, the bad news is that the league may have already signed the new tv deal.

They were discussing this rumour on McGown's show.

I hope they didn't undersell and got the league some big money.

4

AWESOME!!!!!! :thup: :thup: :thup:

Yes , the CFL is broken? :roll: :lol:

Even though this game was a little better than last years SUPERBORE , WOW what numbers! :thup: :thup: :thup:

And a sold out GREY CUP game! :thup:

THANKS FOR THE NEWS! :rockin: :cowboy: :thup:

5

I don’t think so , the GREY CUP is a no brainer. It is the regular season numbers for the last couple of years that matter.

6
:lol: :lol: :lol:

that is just too funny :lol:

7

THANKS , argotom.

As usual we have gotten the facts from you all year.

Have a good one!

8

You are welcome HT.
As a fellow Torontonian, we have a duty to spread the CFL word even during the dark days of Winter with no real football.
Go Argos and my CFL includes Ottawa.

9

I still say, we gotta find some way to infiltrate the media and point out these facts ... so that the masses realize the CFL is not taboo, and is worth watching ...

(listen to me, I sound like an evangelist)

10

No need to tell the media or masses. Print media stories don't have any affect, or very, very little, on people going to football games, only diehard fans read print media stories and they are fans anyway. I bet if you took a random selection, any sport any league, of people at a game, less than 5 percent of the people attending a game say that they read a sports story in the sports section of a newspaper more than twice a year, just my guess.
What affects people going to games are ownership and how they market the team and television exposure of the league/team, and the proverbial "word on the street" if it's a cool thing to do to go to a game, and of course price. Sports stories and print media IMHO don't count for much except to the diehards or big fans.

11

How many Canadians watched the 2006 Superbowl?

12

1 million+ less than watched both last years and this years GREY CUP.

13

I agree with you to a certain point. :thup:

In TORONTO , if people listened to our sports media about the CFL [or lack of coverage] no one would go to any ARGO games.

However , things like letter writing by more than just one person , polls and survey’s tell the media what people what people want to read about.

The MYTH is that people don’t care about THE ARGOS in TORONTO and that the NFL is far more popular. :thdn:

If they get no letters of complaint , the CFL loses many surveys and polls then it just says to them that we really don’t care and they will act accordingly.

However , there are certain writers who BASH the CFL regardless of any facts. Those writers will end up looking like yesterday’s men. :thdn:

A newspaper counts 1 letter as = 300 people must feel that way.

That also works for T.V.

I believe that our recent letter writing campaign to The STAR for instance , helped THE STAR to decide to do a DECIMAL POLL to see who was right? The sports writers or the people complaining?

Even though they forgot to put THE ARGOS in the survey , the whole thing back fired on THE STAR big time regarding the NFL. :thup:

Well , THE STAR certainly found out that the people complaining were actually right. :thup:

It may not change any thing , but at least we can say that we tried. :thup:

14

RIGHT ON , at least we are trying. :thup:

People if you see some thing about the CFL that is unfair keep those letters coming. :thup:

They actually work. :thup:

15

I'm less concerned with print media than with TV. The casual fan may not read a story in the paper, but probably will watch a TV spot. Fortunately, the TV bits I see about the CFL tend to stay positive, but there aren't nearly enough of them. It's not at all hard to find something about the NFL on TV, though. So if we can convince the media (and usually the same people own both the papers and the TV stations) that a lot of people DO care about the CFL, then more word about the CFL will spread.

16

RIGHT ON!

17

A agree that writing letters is important for both positive and negative CFL coverage.

On the positive side, I thought the CFL and Lions coverage in the "24 hours" free daily paper in Vancouver (associated with canoe.ca) was outstanding. In this tiny 16 or 20 page paper, the Lions regularly got a full page of stories and pictures. Leading up to the WDF and GC, there were regular Lions covers and multiple pages of coverage. The benchmark for me was that the Lions coverage each week always seemed to be 2 to 3 times as much as the Canucks coverage. Even now, I don't see that the Canucks are getting as much coverage as the Lions did.

To me, this is some of the best advertising the CFL can get: when the average person on the street sees CFL covered with equal or greater emphasis than the NHL, they can't help but start to take take it seriously.

[b]The only other places that have 24 are Toronto and Montreal; for folks out there, how was the CFL coverage this year?

If you agree with my impressions of the CFL coverage in 24, I would encourage you to write them and say "thanks". (http://www.24hrs.ca/)[/b]