HUGE TV # @ 750K FOR ARGOS-CATS

Well the numbers are in and it was huge for TSN for both games and especially for the Argos-Cats at 750,000.

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Wow - it's a wonder what can happen when you have games at primetime.

Mark Cohon is on Prime Time Sports on Sportsnet

He just said 250,000 people watched the game in Toronto.

Yes I also heard that, an awesome number and somewhat ironic for here in the US wanabee city.

That's great. Just goes to show Toronto and Southern Ontario love their CFL too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vou4qUu5YY Toronto press take note, import musical Artist! lmao
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vou4qUu5YY Toronto press take note, import musical Artist! lmao

But the Calgary-Edmonton game was down 8%. What's up with that? Still drew a large number though.

Toronto always does good numbers for the Argos. Much bigger then the RAptors, FC and Rock. And usually bigger or on par with the Blue Jays. Only team they don't stand a chance against is the LEafs. Amazing though the ARgos sitll get viewers even though the Buffalo Bills played a game in CAnada! I mean according to DAve Naylor and Stpehn Brunt, we should all be on our knees praising the god NFL. !

Devil’s advocate,

According to what?

add Marty York. He does this weekly interview on CKNW and he was advocating that the CFL should not play Sunday games because of the NFL. When the host told him about the ratings and that the CFL starts it's season before so maybe the NFL should change it's schedule (he was being sarcastic)Marty replied and said that will never happen.

And yet he says the CFL should change it's schedule. Why would the league do that, if numbers are good?

Like you said geroy, I posted last year TV numbers and those head to head on Sunday, it was no contest the CFL smoked the No Fun League.
You will remember "they" even scammed somehow the Nielsen ratings to put together several games per "time slot" and these combined games were still not even close to a single CFL game.
I agree let's put more games on Sunday head to head. Heck this week there are two.

what people forget is that the argos play once per week, and more than 60% of their games are in the eastern time zone, so obviously they will get good numbers, and they don't really play many weeknight games.

The fact that both the Esks and Stamps have better teams (atleast more exciting) and that the TV numbers went down...could be proof that the CFL has lost viewers by switching to a cable format only.
The increases TSN has seen this year over CBC (vs last year) could simply be a by product of two things; increased scoring and excitement, and/or renewed interest, and pride in the CFL because of the threat from the Buffalo Bills.
The fact that Alberta has one of the lowest cable/satalite subscriptionships in Canada (because of it's large yet minority rural population) could very well prove that the CFL decision to go exclusively with TSN (despite a 19% viewership increase) was in fact a mistake.
This debate will be settled in November, when the Grey Cup numbers come in.

It was probably the only game all year where viewership was down though, hard to base much when the overall numbers for the year are up AND the availability of the games per home is down.

Blin. You try to imply that viewership is down because of TSN, but then you give figures that show viewership is UP 19%. So therefore you must conclude viewership is up this year, right?

I'm sure the increase in viewership for the Toronto-Hamilton Labour Day game is at least partly due to the time. How many people who would have gone to an afternoon game stayed home and watched it on TV because they weren't able to stay out late on the season's first "school night"? I'm sure many from Toronto felt it wouldn't be wise to keep their kids out until 2 am as they made their way home from Hamilton.

Yet they still got nearly 26000 through the gates. You have to figure that an afternoon game -- which is NORMAL for Labour Day -- would have had little difficulty filling those 3000-or-so empty seats. That says a lot for Southern Ontario fans, who take a lot of criticism, much of it unfair.

Interesting…no more talk about how the viewership would drop because TSN is a cable channel :slight_smile:

LOL, exactly. This day and age I really don’t know anyone who doesn’t have TSN. Sure there may be the odd Walton’s or northern/boonie folk, but these people are not even sports fans, let alone CFL. Great product, and prime time slots, have given TSN the TV deal of their life.

Oh yes there is one other factor which did not make the article but is a reality, RDS numbers are around 250,000 per game.
So we have an unbelievable range of 1M viewers.